Review of Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

I became a fan of Isabel J. Kim instantly when I read “Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole”, a brief and witty send-up of Le Guin’s famous short story that I suspect Le Guin would have approved of. So when I heard her first novel, Sublimation, was coming out, I jumped at the chance to get an eARC from Tor and NetGalley. This is every bit what I expected from Kim, and quite a bit more. It is sharp and intelligent science fiction that pulls from a lot of recognizable (and some very topical) tropes yet still delivers a unique experience. In particular, I think it does something really clever in how Kim blends an unrealistic novum with an otherwise contemporary, albeit subtly distinct, version of our world.

This is a difficult novel to discuss without getting into spoilers. I’m going to be relatively spoiler-lite for the first part of the review, and I will warn people when I get into heavy spoilers.

Here is what we learn in the first couple of chapters. In the world of Sublimation, throughout human history, leaving your home behind permanently results in a phenomenon called “instancing.” You split in two as you cross a border: one of you stays behind; the other goes forth into the vast world. Fast-forward to modern times, and instancing is as bureaucratic and policed a process as you might expect in our twenty-first-century world of strict borders. Soyoung Rose Kang instanced when she was ten years old and her mother took her from South Korea to America. Now Rose in America, she receives a summons from Soyoung back in Korea: their grandfather just died. The story follows Soyoung/Rose, along with Soyoung’s friend, Yujin, and his instance, and revolves around the plot point that instances can reintegrate as a result of physical contact.

Even just all of this—Rose returning to Korea, meeting her instance, the whole “sliding doors” trope—would be perfect for a short story or a novella. I am so, so glad Kim decided to turn it into a novel. As a result, we end up with this haunting and at times existentially scary story about personhood and personality.

There are some obvious allegories her for the experience of immigrants. I will leave that for more qualified reviewers to discuss. I’ll simply say that I really enjoy how deeply Kim interrogates these ideas and examines them from so many facets. Rose is very settled in her American life, though we get a sense of lingering trauma from the racism she faced as she grew up. YJ, driven as he is by the compact he has with his instance back in Korea, is less settled in America, and Kim captures the precariousness not just of his employment but his entire life. I can imagine that instances returning to their homeland and reintegrating is a metaphor for the way that sometimes you do go “home” again, whether or not that return home is desired or happy.

Kim expands on this even further with tiny interjections within and at the end of each chapter, where the narrator infodumps to readers about this world with instancing. We get historical lessons, discussions of famous mythology—such as Odysseus instancing in The Iliad/The Odyssey, or the treatment of instancing in the myriad versions of the Korean “Arirang.” These moments might be too distracting if they were longer. Kim keeps them short enough that they become welcome diversions.

They also balance out the narrative voice from the main parts of the story, which is in second person! Kim invites us to become Rose, Soyoung, Yujin, etc. Second person feels even more intimate than first person, in my opinion; rather than the main character speaking to the reader, the reader becomes the main character. In a novel such as Sublimation, where identities are fractured and fluid yet nonetheless well defined, that is a dazzling proposition. Kim kaleidoscopes Soyoung and Rose, showing us how they are cleaved from the same template of a person yet divergent and, as with any person, even self-contradictory at times.

The obvious comparison, which the book’s own cover copy makes, is to the hit AppleTV show Severance. (Now, by way of disclaimer, I have only watched the first season, and I found it intriguing and clever yet also ponderous and slow, and I am not in a rush to watch the second.) This comparison is fair: both stories are about how space and place shape our identity as much as time. We are used to seeing our identities as in flux along a linear spectrum of past–future; we are less used to interrogating our identities as points within space, which is fascinating. I often think back to the person I was for the two years I lived and taught in the UK (by far my most adventurous period, and the only time I have lived outside of my hometown). Though I didn’t instance in a literal sense, one might say that my UK self came back to Thunder Bay and “reintegrated” with the person I had been when I left. I am not the person I was when I lived there (not even the same gender, lol), yet I am indelibly transformed as a result of those years.

Whereas Severance is about corporate shenanigans, exploitation of labour, and the drudgery that is working a nine-to-five in corporate America, Sublimation is a lot more about borders, migration, mobility, and the intersections of tech and governance. This brings me to my spoiler-heavy section, so if you want to bail here, I get it! You should buy this book.

Spoilers ahead. You have been warned.

So of course, the huge plot device here isn’t even instancing itself, which Kim has baked into the world. It’s reintegration and who controls reintegration. We’re introduced to this concept fairly early: Kim tells us about the legend of the fisherman who inadvertently reintegrates after one instance has fatally stabbed the other. It’s also on Soyoung’s mind, given her grandfather’s dying wish, and we quickly learn that both Soyoung and Rose are wearing expensive tech designed to prevent reintegration. This is the first hint we have that instancing in this world is a physics phenomenon rather than a fantastical one and something tech bros might seek dominion over.

Kim teases the prospect of Soyoung and Rose reintegrating nearly from page one, yet I didn’t expect it to happen so soon! I was thrown. Then when Soyoung-Rose learns about the reintegration reversal technology, it all makes sense. This is a quest to unbite the apple.

From there, Sublimation becomes in many ways a lot more conventional as a science-fiction thriller: this is a story about governments, big tech, and control. Like any good science fiction, it asks us questions about present-day society through the cloak of futuristic technology. Instancing and reintegration are such interesting technologies! They feel, to me, like they are one step removed from cloning. Human cloning as usually portrayed in SF is, of course, unrealistic—but we can clone cells and even animals in real life. What Kim has done here is remove us into, honestly, a very fantastical place, yet kept everything else so grounded that Sublimation remains a very trenchant and relevant piece of contemporary commentary. This is so challenging to pull off!

Along the same lines, I really appreciate how she resists the urge to turn this into a Bourne-style fugitive-from-the-state/corp plot. Yes, there is some espionage happening, questionably legal actions by the protagonists, etc. There’s a frisson of cloak and dagger, just as a treat. The story avoids anything too over-the-top, however, and I think that works well for the mood.

In addition to the allegory for immigration, this book presents a similarly obvious yet no less satisfying allegory for tech control over surveillance and policing of our identities—both in the real world and offline. As I write this review, people are being arrested for being ID'ed by doorbell cameras—or sometimes from licence-plate-reading AIs. In cyberspace, we’re facing an apocalypse of age verification that encroaches on privacy and refuses to acknowledge the complex fluidities of name, gender identity and expression, and how our identities shift even across the porous boundaries of the spaces we inhabit within these servers. It’s a lot to take on, and Kim doesn’t tackle any of it directly. But you can read between the lines.

This is why Sublimation hits for me: it makes me think. It’s not that it provoked any big revelations in my understanding of these issues per se (though I enjoy any opportunity I have to broaden my understanding of South Korea beyond XO, Kitty and KPop Demon Hunters). But with the contrasting portrayals of instancing/reintegration seen in Soyoung/Rose and Yujin/YJ, along with the amorality of characters like Drew and Megan, this book is such a delightful balance between tasty story and provocative plot.

It’s a challenge to write truly excellent science fiction that doesn’t lean too heavily into the worldbuilding vibes or the novum exploration. With Sublimation, Kim nails it. I can’t wait to read more from her, and I hope you read this.