A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran (translated by Kim Chi-Young) is on its face a science fiction book. The book opens with a robot jockey who accidentally gets an AI chip that allows it to develop a more human personality. But robot jockeys and servers and search and rescue teams aside, A Thousand Blues is really about a family – mother Bogyeong and her two daughters Yeonjae and Eunhye – brought together by that robot and his relationship with the horse that he rode called Today.

A Thousand Blues opens from the perspective of the jockey robot (who comes to be called Coli). Robot riders mean that horses could achieve greater speeds, and Coli’s human characteristics give him a much closer connection to Today who becomes an award winning racehorse. But this racing wears the horses out and before Today can run itself to death, Coli sacrifices himself, getting smashed in the process. He is rescued and rebuilt by Yeonjae, who turns out to be an expert in robotics, and slowly wins the heart of the family. Meanwhile Yeohjae’s wheelchair-bound sister, Eunhye, has become fixated on saving Today.

A Thousand Blues is a book about growth, friendship, empathy and redemption. It fits neatly within a Korean genre of popular culture known as healing style – which are are characterized by a variety of characters with their own stories, set in familiar and nostalgic spaces, and featuring characters recovering from pain. In this case, despite the futuristic setting, the main characters can be found at the racecourse, school or Bogyeong’s chicken restaurant. But also in this vein, it is a book about slowing down – about taking time to look at the sky and to really think about what is around you. Cheon Seon-ran writes a little about her journey to understand this lesson in a short Afterword.

It cannot be forgotten that the main character of this book is a robot. Coli does drive the plot and his actions and observations cause the other characters to change underpin consideration of what it means to be human (or at least a good human). This is reminiscent of the robot protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.

A Thousand Blues won the 4th Korea Sci-fi Literature Award and in 2024 was turned into a musical. And while it is not particularly ground breaking science fiction, it is heartwarming, though provoking and endearing and that is more than enough.

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

7.5

7.5/10