But as long as we believe that we are gods, that we've created this, so this thing will always listen to me and do as I say, then we are walking into deeper trouble.

I think Isaac Asimov said something to that effect. RASCOE: Well, I mean, it's pretty much - it's the Frankenstein issue, right? Or Frankenstein's monster, right? Like, you create something that you don't have any understanding of, and then it terrorizes you because it's dangerous to create things you don't understand - right? - or to play God.ĬHUNG: It's less dangerous if you are aware that you're never going to understand this. But probably engineers don't agree with me. So that means our prejudices, our misconceptions, our own hate and misunderstanding and discrimination is part of the data human beings created. And also, do we mistreat the technology as we give it more and more lifelike responsibilities?ĬHUNG: From what I read, human beings really don't understand what we created, and artificial intelligence and deep learning, machine learning, all these things are structured so that the machine would accumulate experience and data and information and analyze them and draw conclusions more like human beings do. Like, do you think that society is too dependent on technology. And, you know, AI is advancing so quickly. RASCOE: One of your stories also deals with, like, robots and artificial intelligence, which everyone is talking about these days. And I hope that adds some fresh elements to the familiar structure. And I add a Korean reality, the things that I see or the things that I heard from somebody else and wed that kind of magical twist to it. And I really love that structure, so I try to use it whenever it seems fun. So you've described these stories as, quote, 'like a fairy tale but with a little bit of a Korean twist.' Can you talk about what that means? They definitely felt like fairy tales to me.ĬHUNG: Fairy tales - usually, the European ones that we are kind of used to in the English-speaking world has a certain way of plot development. Author Bora Chung joins us now to talk about her collection.

It was translated from Korean by Anton Hur. Those are some of the bizarre, twisted plot lines in 'Cursed Bunny,' Bora Chung's first collection of short stories to appear in English, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. A girl whose brother feeds on her blood, robots that take revenge on their owner and a bunny lamp with a deadly curse.

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung