Written by Lee Ji Eun et al. and Illustrated by You Kyung Hwa

The selective collection of award winners and excellent applicants in the 6th Han Nak Won Science Fiction Novel Award


Was my great-great-grandfather a pro-Japanese collaborator?
No, way! Please, please change your belief, great-great-grand-pa!


This award winner work, ‘Finding My Great-Great-Grandfather’, deals with ‘time travel’ theme. The main character, I, who realized that my great-great-grandfather was a pro-Japanese collaborator, began journey to persuade my ancestor to change his belief by using time traveling to Japanese colonial period. I tried my best to change myself in the present time by changing my own past through technology. And the twist created during this journey is that we eventually build our own history itself. This is the message the writer tried to provide in a humorous way. ‘B.I.M’, the contradiction of ‘Beautiful Idol Mask’ (Excellent Applicants), is a deformable mask with which people can change face into the face of idol stars they like. Would people ever give up the passion to resemble celebrities in appearance no matter how much the technology has advanced? Can the technology really resolve overrated appearance-centered society also pointed out as modern issue? We will have to consider various thoughts and ideas while we watch the main character’s choice.

Other works introduced as excellent applicants, such as ‘Reflecting between clouds’, ‘Ji Mo Do, a mail carrier in universe’, ‘Exam is hard’, also make us imagine how our life would change along with advanced science technology. What if we live in a time when we treat our pets as family members? Or if we live in a time when an alien creature visits the earth and lives with us together, what kinds of relationship would we build with aliens? Through the story, ‘Reflecting between clouds’, readers can dream of the future where we live with creatures not coming from the earth. If mail delivery among stars in universe is possible, and if we can visit anywhere in universe very easily, we may go to public schools in Saturn, and leave for volunteer work to Pluto, just like the main character in ‘Ji Mo Do, a mail carrier in universe’. In the story of ‘Exam is hard’, characters take ethics exam by using virtual reality. Even though the technology have drastically improved, we have to have considerations on ethical judgement, and we always have to be asked to choose ethically right in our daily life.