The Membranes

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding.

Chi Ta-wei is a renowned writer and scholar from Taiwan. Chi’s scholarly work focuses on LGBT studies, disability studies, and Sinophone literary history, while his award-winning creative writing ranges from science fiction to queer short stories. He is an associate professor of Taiwanese literature at the National Chengchi University.

Ari Larissa Heinrich is a professor of Chinese literature and media at the Australian National University. They are the author of Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (2018) and other books, and the translator of Qiu Miaojin’s novel Last Words from Montmartre (2014).

Chi is an excellent novelist and Momo’s story, with the unanswered questions, her mental state and the climate change issues and consequences, all help make this a first-class novel.

Mind-blowing . . . This 1995 Taiwanese sci-fi with casual queer characters is a short read, but it kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Way after finishing the story, the questions it posed still linger, surely to haunt me for a long time to come.

A plunging submersible disguised as a novel—filled with incisive, inventive peculiarities.

There’s something very timely about [The Membranes'] play with gender fluidity and the social construction of identity. There’s also something timeless about Chi’s future, because of how it bends and defies time itself. The novel is about how identity is a story we tell ourselves through time — or back through time. And that story, for Chi, is queer . . . English readers who finish it now, 25 years after it was first published, may regret finding it so late, and missing out on all the stories and selves we could have been, even as it seems like it’s been here the whole time.

The Membranes is a welcome addition to the small but growing ranks of international science fiction available in English translation, and is an excellent early example of climate fiction.

Stella Jiayue Zhu:
On the one hand, in this book, gender, sex, sexuality, and attraction are all fluid, evincing a body politics that is refreshingly and unapologetically queer . . . On the other hand, the story strips down the notion of ‘the real’ so completely that it gives rise to an ontological horror grounded not so much in our fear for living in unreality, as in an anxiety about losing grasp on any meaningful notion of realness altogether . . . In the end, The Membranes speaks as much to hard-core sci-fi fans seeking an exhilarating read as to regular readers who desire a moment of introspection.

A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it.

A fascinating new book.

Readers will notice prescient echoes of modern life in Chi’s depictions of all-absorbing media consumption and loneliness in the midst of hyper-connection . . . [T]his captivating novel is rich and rewarding.

Mingwei Song, coeditor of The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction:
A classic that appeared far ahead of the current new wave science fiction in the Sinophone world, The Membranes remains a unique alterity in terms of genre-crossing and gender reflexivity. Chi’s beautiful, mesmerizing, provocative narrative creates a splendid labyrinth of metaphors and significances that leads to a revelation about the (post)human changeability in a matrix of monotonous inhumanity.

Susan Stryker, executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly:
What a breath of retro-fresh air! This wicked-smart cyberpunk throwback from the early days of networked digital culture presciently foregrounds issues of gender, embodiment, identity, and technology that have become all the more relevant over the quarter-century since its original publication.

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars:
This rather astonishing science fiction novel is a powerful story about consciousness and connection with other people. It cuts right to the heart of our current moment by way of metaphor, but in a manner that is entirely Chi’s, and thus a new thing for English-language readers. What a surprising and exciting addition to science fiction and world literature.