Lagging behind…. I did read the first story some time ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The lingering feelings at the end! I loved the writing style, and it gave me a lot to think about. I tried to write up something, but I couldn’t articulate my thoughts very well (my brain’s a bit of a mess lately) so I gave up on posting at the time, but I’ll try and update !
I then got distracted again by other books I had already started…. Hopefully catching up soonish when those are done.
You can set this thread to “Watching” by pressing the bell 
button. That way you will be sent an email notification for every reply in this thread. That’s what I did for this thread. 
I have it set and I did get emails before but not for some time. Except now for your reply… I even check spam folder, but they are not there either.
Edit. Oh, wait… It wasn’t set on watching, the site is a bit confusing. No idea why I got emails before, nor why I got one now.
I’m excited to announce that although I have not yet read the 4th story, I have found plenty more candidates for future book clubs if there is interest. Just discovered a new author and I feel like the Korean sci-fi sphere is absolutely bursting with talent
배명훈 - 타워
김보영 - 얼마나 닮았는가
이산화 - 기이현상청 사건일지
Ooh, sounds interesting! I’m in, but maybe 2 weeks for a story if they are as long as these?
Finished 소금물의 주파수. For some reason this made me cry a lot even though I don’t think it was outstanding.
I did read as weeks went on, but I’m bad at logging on and posting
Week 3: I did like this, but to me this is more a concept/vibe story than a character one. I did find both alien species interesting, both the POV species being a hivemind that can also morph their morphology based on other species, and the mysterious species on the shipwreck and their birds and how they stored information. Kinda gave me a bit of arrival vibes in that there is a bit of work done to figure out how to communicate/parse the information of a completely foreign species.
Week 4:
I really enjoyed the first part from the dolphins perspective. Also got to learn a lot of whale names! I did manage to guess the dolphin was probably an artificial construct prior to the reveal. For some reason though I thought the rest of the story was just kinda OK but didn’t really stand out as much to me.
We will be in week 5 in a few hours so I’m changing the title!
Seems like I’m falling behind. The end of the year is quite busy and I still need to read the previous story again. I’ll see whether I’ll be able to join the next reading group after this one. It might be too much if I haven’t finished reading these stories either.
Idk how many people are following along (not me, I’m on story 5) but we’re on story 6 now
Sorry, I’m busy with work recently but I plan to catch up around the year end holidays.
I just finished Week 4 story. I didn’t manage to guess it before the reveal 
I finally finished re-reading this story. The first part was easy and I hadn’t missed much, but when the humans came along… I really needed to re-read this with a dictionary. Unfortunately it took me weeks to do it with everything that has been going on, so I’m not sure I even remember enough to say anything much about it. I really liked the part where the dolphin was the narrator (though I did figure out what it was), but then was kind of not captivated by the human side of the story except towards the end where the demonstrators were basically arguing for an artificial dolphin to have rights to live according to its species.
Sorry if some of this is considered spoilers, I’ve tried four times and I just can’t get the spoiler tags to work
Well I finished the book seemingly first, as is my duty, and I’m here to tell you that the middle section is definitely the worst. My ranking:
I think the top 5 were pretty interesting.
So to those of you who may be stuck on the 3rd and 4th stories, fear not – it gets better (imo).
I also just finished, read the stories mostly in line and took a while for the last one
Id say my ranking is:
Which is basically the same with some adjustment in exact spots at the bottom.
I really didn’t find 고요와 소란 interesting at all. I get it was trying to have some comment on perception and group hallucinations but it just didn’t hit for me at all.
For the last two they were both more interesting premises, so were more interesting. 달고 미지근한 슬픔 about simulation theory and purpose, and 비구름을 따라서 about alternate worlds. I also enjoyed some of the quips surrounding board game players lol.
I will say I overall enjoyed the stories that took in much more explicit sci-fi settings more, whereas the more light sci-fi worlds interested me a bit less.
Overall a solid book. Ill have to read more short story collections before I rate it, but if I had to rate it today Id probably rate it 3.5/5 on average. Which is 3.5x more than Never Lie so not bad!
Lmaoooo well you’ve inspired me to explain my ranking more then.
양면의 조개껍데기 - this was just really fun to read. I really enjoyed the world of the story and the idea of beings with two consciousnesses, plus the details about the deep sea diving. The idea of two consciousnesses with different gender identities in one body loving the same person is just wild, and I felt for them both.
수브다니의 여름휴가 - reading this was an interesting experience. I really liked the commentary on personhood and art. This story offered the most to discuss, imo.
비구름을 따라서 - tbhI was just trying to finish at this point, so I’m not sure I fully engaged with the story, but as someone involved in many of these board game groups, I found all the details related to that to be charming. I enjoyed the alternate worlds with bizarre objects that were presented, as well as the suggestion of (what I interpreted as) FxF romance. I was a bit disappointed that there was no actual membrane-crossing. Why send all the letters, then?
달고 미지근한 슬픔 - The twist / background of this story is insane, but I couldn’t help but feel that it dragged a bit.
고요와 소란 - this one also mega-dragged. This is where I was stuck for a while. I did enjoy the idea of the spiders weaving webs for humans to walk into, but the conclusion that the spiders were simply sound collectors from somewhere else in the universe was a bit mundane…
소금물 주파수 - this story felt the least original to me, but it did make me cry at least
진동새와 손편지 - I actually did find the alien species featured here to be interesting. This story just didn’t invoke as many emotions for me as the others, so it’s at the bottom.
Putting the best stories in the beginning and at the end must be the oldest publisher trick ever.
I just finished 고요와 소란. got really bored with the story that I was just speed reading it. The story just doesn’t click with me
I finally finished the book yesterday.
Out of all the stories, I particularly enjoyed 양면의 조개껍데기 and 소금물 주파수. These two stories felt more satisfying to me compared to the others, which left me feeling weird or with an open-ended, unresolved ending. Overall, I’m glad I tried the science fiction genre (other than Doraemon, of course 
), but I realized it’s not my cup of tea.
I’ve gotten to the second to last story! The one before had too many unknown words for me and felt like work but this one is much easier and flows much better. I decided to not read the last two stories twice like I did with the others.
