Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Law, Lucas K.

  He continued filing up the shapes, pronouncing the sounds, and when he accidentally dropped his quill to the floor, he could not help feeling he had been here before. Had he not seen this same thing happen when he was watching the mirror so many moons ago? Yes, he recalled he had been watching himself scramble, and he noticed the bedchamber filled with sheets. He leaned back in his chair. Had he been seeing the future?

  During the next two weeks, a public decree announced the establishment of the Hall of Worthies. Farmers, shoemakers, and blacksmiths sat with scholars of the aristocracy or yangban, writing the admitting examination. There was a buzz among the people, about the fairness and openness about it. Sejong’s public approval soared.

  A fortnight passed by as he furiously worked on the Hangul chart. The men for the Hall had been picked and a formal induction ceremony had been completed.

  Later, when he followed Jang Young Sil to her discovery room, he was surprised when she asked, “You seem happy, Jeonha. Has the Hall of Worthies quelled your worries?”

  “Worries? Why should I have any, when I have the Lady of the Future herself by my side?”

  He watched her face. Even in the glow of a single lantern, he could see the play of emotions dance across her face. Surprise, fear, contemplation, reserve, and contradiction.

  She stilled and poured herself some hwachae, “Took you long enough,” she said. “What gave me away?”

  He pointed to that rectangular object lying on the table. “I saw that in the mirror the other day. One of the men was holding it to his face as he talked. I truly have an excellent memory, you know. Then there was the painting. I’ve seen the monks paint and received plenty of paintings as gifts from the Ming kingdom, none so vivid and colourful as the one you have on the wall.”

  She smiled, as she turned to the painting, her fingers tracing its edge. “It is exquisite, isn’t it? An original by Kim Hong Do. Probably won’t be available for another three hundred and fifty years. Many dynasties will rise and fall before that, Jeonha. It’s almost lifelike. There are many objects in the room lying in the drawers and chests with objects from the future. Of course, I did not carry them all here. I did make them, but some of them are useless unless we build the basic requirements.”

  He was intrigued. “What are these requirements?”

  She smiled. “Slow down, Jeonha. The first step is for you to create Hangul. Most of the people living in your kingdom will be able to create a Joseon that will surpass your dreams, only if they knew how to read and write.”

  He swallowed a laugh, smoothing down his robe.

  “You are going to become a great king. One who will be responsible for many scientific discoveries and inventions. You will go down in the history books as a hero. Poems will be written about you, and schools will be named after you.”

  He shrugged. “How will all this come to be, for the mirror offers me very little at a time?”

  “The time space continuum, as it is called by us in the future, lets you look into the future not for you to learn from it, but to instill hope that you can do it. You will have noticed, over the past eight moons, the mirror only showed you what you’ve already done, working day and night on drafting, recreating, and studying the alphabet. Maybe you’re restricting yourself by following Hanja script. Look at the other scripts as well: Phoenicians, Tibetan. Surely, there must be a clue somewhere. “

  “How did you get here if you are from the future?”

  “I used a Faraday Cage, which uses electric fields. The physics that involves Einstein’s theory of relativity and large sources of energy with a ninth polynomial helped transport me back to a time I wanted.”

  He did not understand, but he took her words for what they were. “But why are you here,” he stuttered, “and when will you go back?”

  She sighed. “I came to warn and help you. There is no going back to where I came from; the great Joseon is at constant war, divided by communists and capitalists. Several powerful weapons have been unleashed, and the people in the north are starving while the people in the south are indebted to foreign rulers. Therefore, I have come back to tell you that we must make peace with our neighbours, we must perpetuate the idea of non-alignment. Joseon will be great if we accept the good and get rid of the evil, before it has a chance to destroy us.”

  “How does Hangul help us to create this great Joseon of the future?”

  “We need the help of the masses. Ours is a small nation. We need every man and woman to be part of this great legacy. The only way forward is to have everybody moving in the same direction.”

  “And what will I say of this Jang Young Sil? People want to know where I get these ideas from. The cannon was a good example. But the drawings of the rain gauge and the iron printing press, will they be accepted? The cannon was a good invention, it will instill fear into our enemies. The general accepted it without questions. But the rain gauge, charts of the stars, and iron printing press, they are all new inventions, that people have never heard about. My own council will want to know where these ideas are coming from, the same way they ask me how we can create a new language for our people. Do you think I can develop Hangul? And will it be really helpful to my people?”

  He watched the woman of the future with her cool stare and wry smile blink, once, twice before she answered.

  “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Let’s make Joseon great, one candle at a time. Shall I turn on the mirror?”

  Author’s Notes:

  Sejong the Great and Jang Young Sil were responsible for many inventions. Among them were the sun dial, Chuegugi (rain gauge), the iron printing press, and the development of better agriculture methods to sustain cultivation all year round in Joseon (Korea). Hangul was developed fully by the end of his reign, though it was shunned by later kings who wanted to subjugate the masses. After World War II, which was about five hundred years after his reign, Hangul became the main language of South Korea and remains in use to this day. King Sejong’s legacy, as an inventor and discoverer, has been widely propagated as a man who was far ahead of his time. Jang Young Sil, according to the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, was expelled from the Courts and no written record of Jang’s death was ever captured.

  Jeonha: Your Majesty

  Yangban: aristocracy

  Balmkasin: shoes worn by the aristocracy

  Hanboks: traditional Korean dress

  Hwachae: fruit punch

  Gyeongbokgung: Gyeongbok Palace (the main palace of the Joseon Dynasty), largest of the Grand Five Palaces. A must-visit palace for first-time Seoul visitors.

  Wintry Hearts Of Those Who Rise

  Minsoo Kang

  Kings, lords, generals, and ministers are not made from a special blood.

  —The Grand Historian

  The true power behind the absolutist reign of the sixth emperor of the Serene Dynasty lay with two men of humble origins. The ruler’s chief advisor, the High Chancellor of the Six Ministries and the Thirteen Extraordinary Offices, was the great intellect on the left side of the Eternal Dragon Throne. And his top military commander, the Invincible General of the Six Armies and Eighteen Commanderies, was the strong arm on the right. They originated from the same eastern village and were sons, respectively, of an estate clerk and a tanner. The histories that make much of their low backgrounds represent them as exemplary cases of “new men” who rose spectacularly to prominence in the mid-dynasty period. In the single surviving copy of the initial version of the Grand Historian’s Veritable Records of the Serene Dynasty, one finds a rather curious story of the first collaboration between the two men who would go on to help each other rise to the pinnacle of power. It is unclear why the Censorate suppressed this episode when it authorized the publication of the official edition of the Veritable Records since its political implication is obscure at best.

  Long before the two men became the High Chancellor and the Invincible General at the imperial court, they were once a young legal advocate fresh out
of the Hall of Great Learning at the North Capital and an officer who received his first commission after meritorious action in the War of Thirty Leagues of Bloody Bandits. They stood before the low mound of a commoner’s grave, the sky above them reddening in the autumn dusk. The advocate wore the night blue robe of a licensed graduate while the officer was in his West Front Army uniform of blackened leather vest and cap, the short sword of a third leader at his side. They remained in solemn silence for a while.

  “Ah,” the officer suddenly said, a pained smile breaking out over his scarred face. “I was too hard on him. I did not show proper respect to him as a son. Not since the time I got the whipping at the estate. Do you remember that?”

  The advocate nodded. “When the heir to the estate and his friends tried to trap you and your brothers.”

  “Twelve of them against the three of us. Once they cornered us at the ruin of the old administration building, we were supposed to submit to a beating.”

  “But you fought back. You broke the heir’s nose, made him run home crying. We all heard about that.”

  The officer laughed. “Then the steward of the estate and his thugs came to our house. My father went down on his knees and begged for forgiveness. He grovelled all the way to the estate as they took me to be whipped. I had to be punished publicly as an example, for daring to hurt the heir. No one mentioned the fact that I was defending myself and my brothers against an unprovoked attack. And Father, he was so sorry about his son’s insolence. So very sorry. Ever since then, I didn’t regard him as a man, never mind a father. After I recovered from the whipping, I went back to doing my chores and obeying his orders. But he could tell that I had nothing but contempt for him. And he knew that when I was old enough to leave, I would go and never return.”

  “Yet here you are,” the advocate pointed out.

  The officer shrugged. “Why did it never occur to me before now that there wasn’t anything he could have done? If he had defended me, tried to protect me, they would have just whipped him too. All these years, I blamed him for something he had no control over.”

  “You had to blame somebody,” the advocate said, “for a sense of meaning in a life without justice.”

  Another long silence passed.

  “So,” the officer said, “the lady of the estate wants to build a flower garden here.”

  The advocate nodded. “This land would complete the great circle she has in mind for it. Unfortunately, your father did not keep the paperwork updated at the administration centre. Not for many years.”

  “Too cheap to hire a scribe.”

  “The lady of the estate could very well annex it. She would have to take the matter to court, but the imperial magistrates these days are sticklers about paperwork. Her advocates could overwhelm them with documents, while the only thing you have is an outdated deed that was never recertified in the new reign.”

  “So the situation is hopeless?”

  “Let’s say highly difficult.”

  The officer thought for a moment. “Do you think she would make me an offer to avoid going to court at all?”

  “A pittance, perhaps. But you have the right to fight for your land. Your status as a meritorious war veteran will help with the magistrates. Not even the lady of the estate can cut you off from the source of your ancestral fortune.”

  “The source of ancestral fortune,” the office repeated emptily, looking up at the sky with a contemplative look. “I have no faith in that.”

  “No?”

  “The war has taught me that I do not live in a magical world. In battle, I saw countless prayers to the gods go unanswered, spells fail, and men die clutching talismans that were supposed to protect them. Source of my ancestral fortune. Never did my father any good. Not his father either. I mean to make my fortune far away from here. So fuck the source of my ancestral fortune. Go and ask that old bitch what she will give me to go away. Let her dig up my father’s cowardly bones and throw them away somewhere so she can plant her pretty flowers. She can smell them while her whore’s body starts stinking with old age. Fuck her, fuck this land, fuck this whole village.”

  The advocate, though not surprised by the officer’s bitter words, pondered them for a time.

  “How much would you be willing to take?” the advocate asked.

  “I don’t know. Five silver standards? Is that a realistic amount?”

  “That’s about how much she’s likely to offer.”

  “Well, at least I’ll have a feast with good meat and fine wine before I return to base. Celebrating my final departure from this shit-stinking place!”

  The advocate arrived at the grand estate at dawn, as he was instructed to do, but he waited at the central courtyard of the master’s mansion for most of the morning before he was finally summoned to the outer chamber of the lady of the estate. The wide, high-ceilinged space was filled with luxurious furniture, precious vases and plates, and colourful paintings of idyllic scenes of nature, all recently acquired by the lady in a spending spree at the North Capital following the death of her miserly husband. The widow was a former courtesan who had become a concubine to the late master of the estate and then his official wife after the first wife had been ousted from the household. It was rumoured that she had engineered the first wife’s fall by spreading the slander that she had engaged in an affair with the master’s cousin, a government inspector who had stayed at the mansion for some time. The disgraced woman protested her innocence, and ultimately drowned herself in a lake.

  Still beautiful in a sharply graceful way in her late middle age, the lady of the estate sat on a grand throne-like chair with thick cushions covered in radiant worm fabric of green and blue. She wore a flowing robe of white, the colour of death, as she was still in her mourning period. But the dress was also made of the finest radiant fabric with ethereal streaks of pink dancing across its shimmering surface. Proper mourning attire was supposed to be made of coarse material, but the estate had no one left with the authority to lecture her on propriety.

  Her immaculately painted face bore an expression of weary indifference as the advocate approached her with his head bowed down in a respectful manner, prostrated himself on all fours to touch his head to the floor, and got up to extend his formal greetings.

  “You are the son of our former clerk?” she said in a condescending tone that made the question a contemptuous accusation.

  “Yes, great lady,” the advocate answered. “My father had the honour of serving the grand estate in that capacity.”

  “But he sent you to study at the Hall of Great Learning.”

  “Yes, great lady.”

  “How wonderful today’s world must be for the likes of you. The son of a clerk goes off to the capital to become a legal advocate. In my day, people knew their places. They had ambitions befitting their stations in life and let those of good blood take on the higher responsibilities of society. But it seems that we now live in a time of upstarts. An age of insolence, as they say.”

  Ever since she became the lady of the estate, she put a great deal of effort into erasing her own lowly background as a concubine who had also harboured ambitions beyond her station. She had bribed the local officials to manufacture documents to show that she was from a respectable family. And to further solidify her social position, she had taken on the air of the most aloof and arrogant of aristocrats.

  “Only in such an age,” she went on, “would I have to suffer this outrage of the son of a tanner sending the son of a clerk to argue with me about some paltry piece of land.”

  “Great lady, he is a meritorious veteran of the War of Thirty Leagues of Bloody Bandits and an honoured officer of the imperial army,” the advocate said while bowing his head down even lower to soften the challenge of his words.

  “I suppose, in this age of insolence, that gives him the right to insult his betters at will,” she shot back.

  “Not at all, great lady,” the advocate said, maintaining his submissive position.


  The lady of the estate sat in silence, deliberately extending the tense moment. The advocate recognized her intimidation.

  “Very well,” she finally said. “In consideration of his service to the empire, I am willing to grant him an award of ten silver standards. He will receive it after signing a document prepared by my own advocate. This will prevent him from making further mischief over that piece of dirt.”

  “I will inform him of your great generosity, great lady.”

  “And I will bear no more insolence from you, son of a clerk.”

  “You need not trouble yourself, great lady. I have returned here only to settle my affairs before moving permanently to the North Capital. Once this matter of my friend’s property has been settled, I have no cause to offend you with my lowly presence in your lofty home.”

  After leaving the lady of the estate, the advocate walked down the mansion’s central corridor and passed by the open doorway to the office of the estate’s clerk. As his father had worked there for most of his life, curiosity made him stop and peek discreetly from the side of the doorway. Behind a wide desk covered with neat stacks of paper sat the thin, ruddy-faced figure of the current clerk, a humourless and discontented man whom the advocate’s father had groomed to be his assistant and eventual replacement. The advocate considered how he would have ended up working all his life in that office if history had not intervened to send him on an utterly different course.

  During the reign of the previous Serene Ruler, the emperor, through his vast wisdom and endless benevolence, allowed qualified commoners to take the entrance examination to the Hall of Great Learning. The advocate’s father saw it as a great opportunity for his intellectually gifted son, so he stopped teaching him the duties of the estate clerk and hired tutors to prepare him for the examination. And he took on a new apprentice, the son of a spice merchant. When the merchant could not provide for all six of his sons, he sent his youngest away to be trained as a clerk. Although the young man had proved to be capable and diligent enough for the work, his perennially sour expression and curt manner showed his resentment at being a disinherited son.