A dystopian future, a prophecy of modern life: loneliness, media consumption, and queerness
In a dystopian future at the end of the 21st century, humanity has been forced to migrate to the ocean depths as a consequence of an unsustainable exploitation model. Meanwhile, on the ravaged surface of the Earth, cyborgs maintain the productive and war machinery in a world controlled by large tech corporations.
Momo, the most sought-after esthetician in City T, remains practically detached from this ecosystem, concerned only with perfecting her dermatological technique to escape her mother's shadow. However, reuniting with her mother will lead her to question her identity and even the very limits of gender, memory, and reality.
Almost three decades after its debut in Taiwan, Membranas, translated into Spanish for the first time, surprises with its lucid predictions of a future dominated by climate change, colonization, wars, and migrations.
Its pages feature themes such as viral pandemics, the power of technology, loneliness in times of hyperconnectivity, motherhood, and trans identities. With an almost cinematic style, Chi Ta-wei invites reflection in a constant rereading process that ultimately reveals itself as an act of writing.
Reviews and opinions in the media
Membranas is a fascinating and beautifully conceived novel, deceptively simple and seductively profound. --Astrid Møller-Olsen, Xiaoshuo Blog
Membranas is not only a novel of its time but also of what is to come. It extrapolates a future where humanity retreats underwater to escape deadly holes in the ozone layer. It is a future where the most powerful company in the world sells its products on computer disks. Yet in other respects (its practical approach to sexuality, its young adult narrative rebelling against parental and corporate control, and its final twist that turns the whole book upside down) this is a novel as modern as anything currently published. Whether as a time capsule or a prophecy, this novel retains its power. --Adam Wescott, Politics & Prose Staff Picks
Membranas is a title that won’t let you stop reading, becoming increasingly moving as it progresses toward its surprising and unsettling conclusion. --ABC News (Australia)
This science fiction novel surprises with a powerful story about consciousness and connection with others. It goes straight to the heart of our present through a metaphor, but Chi Ta-wei does it in a unique way and will therefore captivate readers. What a surprising and exciting addition to science fiction and world literature! --Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars
What a fresh breath of retro air! This perversely intelligent cyberpunk throwback about the early days of digital culture on networks highlights issues of gender, embodiment, identity, and technology that have come true during the quarter century since its original publication. --Susan Stryker, executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
A classic that anticipated the current new wave of science fiction in the Sinophone world, Membranas remains a unique otherness in terms of genre crossing and gender reflexivity. Chi Ta-wei’s beautiful, fascinating, and provocative narrative creates a splendid labyrinth of metaphors and meanings leading to a revelation about the (post)human variable in a matrix of monotonous inhumanity. --Mingwei Song, coeditor of The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction
Readers will observe prophetic echoes of modern life in Chi Ta-wei’s descriptions of immersive media consumption and loneliness. This irresistible novel is exquisite and provocative. --Publishers Weekly
There is something very timely in Membranas’ metaphor with gender fluidity and the social construction of identity. There is also something timeless in Chi Ta-wei’s future, because of how time itself is bent and challenged. The novel is about how identity is a story we tell ourselves through time, or backward through time. And that story, for Chi Ta-wei, is different... Readers who read it now, a quarter century after its first publication, may regret having found it so late and having missed all the stories and people we might have been, even when it seems we have been here all along. --Los Angeles Times
