Showing results by author "Charles Yu" in All Categories

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: He’s merely Generic Asian man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy - the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. At least that’s what he has been told.

We are being watched. That this statement no longer shocks is itself shocking. Post-Snowden, we know that the government - everywhere - has been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and watching whatever we do on the Internet. The only thing concealed is the nature of our watchers. In Watchlist, some of today's most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, reflect on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live.

DESPRE AUDIOBOOK. Cum arată viața cuiva care nu se simte protagonistul propriei existențe? Care sunt constrângerile unei astfel de vieți? Ce și până unde îi este permis să viseze? Willis Wu și-a dorit dintotdeauna să fie Tipul Care Se Pricepe La Kung Fu, dar până una alta, trebuie să se mulțumească cu a fi unul dintre miile de Bărbați Asiatici Generici care-și găsesc un rost pe platourile de filmare ale serialelor polițiste de la Hollywood. Își va îndeplini el visul, va reuși el să-și găsească locul în marea narațiune americană și dacă da, cu ce preț?

Jane is the only person left on the planet, minding the only business left: a gift shop. She wasn’t born on Earth, but her ancestors were; they lived there before the AI in charge of geoengineering failed and the oceans got too hot to sustain the terrestrial food web and before humans took off to colonize other planets. She’s heading to college on Jupiter in the fall of 3020, so her days on the home planet—selling “American Epoch” postcards, “History: The Poster!” and “War: The Soundtrack” to tourists from the suburbs of Europa—are numbered.