Bookwild - Identity, Immigration and Intent: Isabel J. Kim's Sublimation

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

In this episode, I talk with Isabel J. Kim about her debut speculative fiction, Sublimation!   Listen to hear about: How Isabel J. Kim's inspiration for Sublimation came from her own experience growing up between Korea and the United States and wondering how different her life might have been if she had stayed in Korea permanently. Why "instancing" (where you split into two people when you cross a border) worked so well as a speculative framework to explore identity, immigration, belonging, and the ways environment shapes who we become over time. The process of expanding her short story into a novel, which required adding new perspectives and characters to show that different people would experience the phenomenon of instancing in radically different ways. How she chose to approach borders as both physical and social constructs, examining how governments, corporations, immigration systems, and personal choices all influence identity and belonging. Why speculative fiction often isn't really about the future—it uses imagined worlds to examine present-day social, political, and cultural tensions through a different lens. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This ago I got to talk with Isabel J. Kim about her fantastic debut speculative fiction novel sublimation. It is entirely a different story than Severance. I want to say that. But if the concepts that Severance explored with kind of a division in your identity and in yourself was really interesting to you, I think you'll really, really like this one with the lens more on immigration, but also on borders of all kinds. Here's the synopsis. The border cuts you in two. When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind. An instance. One person enters their new country. The other stays trapped at home. Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like So Yong Rose, leave home at 10 years and never speak to their other selves again. Rose in America never imagined going back. to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral. She doesn't know that Soyung plans to steal her body and her life. How far would you go to live the choice you didn't make? That is such a good synopsis. She packed so much into this book. There is

Korean folklore. There is the Odyssey. There is some Adam and Eve in there, if you can believe it, as well as commentary on natural borders, sociopolitical borders, and how complicated it is, that you're just one individual trying to live somewhere where a government of many individuals and many motivations is controlling how you live. That being said, let's hear from Isabel. I am so excited to talk about sublimation. I know it's going to be one of my top reeds of of 2026 for sure. But I do like to get to know a little bit about you first before we kind of dive into the book-related questions. So I know this story even kind of started or won an award as a short story, but what was your like whole journey to writing like?

Like sublimation. Yeah. I can talk a little bit about that. So, okay, so I was originally born in New Jersey. Like, you know, I'm just going to give you my whole life story, right? Because That's where all this comes from. But I was born in New Jersey, and then about eight weeks later, my dad got a job in Korea. So we moved to Korea when I am basically a baby. And then we are jumping between Korea and California for about five years before we're in Korea for about another five years. So I spent a lot of my childhood between the states and Korea kind of feeling like a foreigner in both countries. Because in Korea, I'm like, oh, that American kid who's going to international school.

But in the States, it's like, well, she goes to school in Korea and she's Korean. Obviously, she's Korean. Right. Before we move back to New Jersey when I'm like 10 or 11, and I promise this is all relevant. No, it seems relevant. And then, like, I want to say that, like, later when I'm in my early 20s, I'm back visiting Korea for the first time in a few years. And I realize how much the place has changed and how everyone treats me differently depending on if I am dressed like I am a Korean-Korean or if I am dressed like an American. And that kind of got

me thinking about how my life would have been different had I stayed in Korea that entire time as opposed to moving back to the States. And that's kind of where the idea for instancing came from. And that's kind of where the story all started. Yeah. Yeah. And what was it like? Because like I actually read the short story version two before I ended up listening to the book. What was it like? taking that concept and flushing it out into a full novel? It was a lot of fun, but it was difficult in a way that I wasn't expecting because I think really was short fiction. What I tried to do when I write a short story is it ends at about the quarter or one-third

mark of where a novel would be, if that makes sense, because you've opened up the world, you've answered a couple of questions, you've left a lot of things unsaid because you have 6,000 words to do it. But then the thing is, was a short story. You can only fit so much stuff into it. So what the challenge was, was figuring out what would be organic to, like, weave into the short story portion to make it a longer narrative and to make it, like, have the seeds for a longer story. So, like, for example, in a short story, Eugene and YJ don't exist. And we only they see things from Rose's perspective. And this is because it is very much more tightly about Rose going back to Korea and feeling very strange about it. And it matters less what

her instance is thinking because that's not really like the protagonist of the short story. And then so my thought when I was opening up the novel is, okay, first of all, we can't do this with just two characters. And I want to provide a contrast for these two characters in the way that they feel about having instance to show that this is not how everybody feels. This is her specific neuroses. Yes, yeah. And so... And of course, people would feel different about it.

Yeah. Of course, there's not one experience. Yeah. Right. So then I was like, okay, so she needs a counterpart. And then what is the most organic way to introduce that counterpart and where does he come into the story? Yeah.

So that was, I think that was the most difficult part of trying to figure out where he fit at the beginning so that he would continue to make sense as the story would like unfold. And then like writing So Yang's perspective was honestly, that part was, It wasn't difficult. That was very fun. Yeah. Yeah. We do, we have kind of, well, not kind of. There are four people that were basically following, even though like two are instances of the other two. But I thought, I thought that structure was so fascinating because there's even a point where you kind of talk about like, what is the difference between yourself and your instance? And like,

is it like being twins? Like some people would kind of think that. And you mention how like the instance is you until they've made enough decisions that they kind of quote unquote aren't you anymore until they've made enough decisions that they are a different person. And that had me also kind of thinking about like it's a little bit like nature versus nurture in the sense that it's like same personalities but because they go they're living in different places. They're in different cultures. They're like pursuing different things. eventually then they kind of change because of that even alone. So was that something you were kind of like planning on writing about or did it just kind of like come about as you were writing it? It's definitely something that I wanted to write about because one of the things I wanted to get into a sublimation is very much like you are a different person if you are shaped by a different environment and not necessarily in a bad way or even in a really like stereotypically cultural way, but just kind of the experience of,

either, like, living in one place versus the other or having that experience of having left does change the way that you then think about the world and then you think about your identity. And I think it's kind of interesting because, like, so YJ and Yujin, who are like two of the instances, they start out thinking of each other as, like, they start thinking about themselves as we are one person. And then as they, like as 10 years passed, as 10 years pass, they stop thinking that way, but they don't tell each other about it, which is kind of an interesting situation. But also it's like a very human thing where, like, you've changed your mind, but you don't know how it's going to be received. So yeah, like I did want to talk about like the way in which your environment shapes you.

And one of the things I thought was most interesting about writing sublimation was being able to, like, think about that in the context of characters and like give that kind of give a structure of thinking about the sort of thing for people who are reading the book if that makes sense yeah yeah the other thing that I thought was really cool is you bring in that there's like some Korean folklore that is interspersed throughout we have like the fisherman's story you you leave Adam and Eve into it as well so there's so there are all these other like touch stones to kind of talk about borders even in terms of like internal identity and like how you come to understand yourself essentially and I thought it was so cool because it was like I'm trying

not to give any spoilers but we would be in a scene where something was happening and then it would kind of be like and then Eve chose to eat that but like it's very like whimsically is like the word coming to mind I don't know if that's right kind of placed in through. throughout the story how like these questions of identity and choice and all of that have kind of been around since humans have been around. So what was it like kind of choosing which of those to kind of bring into the story? First of all, I'm so glad those worked for you because truly like paralleling the actual narrative with the interspersed like legends and myth and stuff like that was truly like my God, I was moving around paragraphs trying to figure out where things fit.

But I basically I had a couple of touchstones that I went with for like deciding what would be included because you know like I was trying to figure out what in human history makes sense to rewrite for this world both from a people will understand a reference or it is easily explained it is culturally relevant either to the Western canon or to the culture that the characters are from and also it makes sense thematically. for the section that it is paralleling. So those were like kind of the three guidelines I went in with for what gets put in there. And also like I also wanted to create sort of a sense of deep time with what stories I included because part of my goal was including these was to kind of show that instancing was like love or like death or like the moon or like the sun. It is something that has been part of our culture, the human like the human culture, I guess. since like the inception of like storytelling.

And the way that people feel about it has changed very much depending on what culture you're in, but it is still there and it shapes the stories that we're in. So that was kind of my thought process going in. There were a couple of other things I thought about that never, like, I ended up not using like the Epic of Gilgamesh, which I didn't use because it is an old enough story that it scans as strange to us. And most people aren't familiar with like all the beats. It's also unfinished, which I guess arguably could have been.

good thing because then I could have written more of it. And also like the journey to the West, which I just didn't end up using because I ended up using the Odyssey instead just because I was more familiar with the Odyssey because they made me read that three times for school. Yeah, yeah, you'd be pretty familiar with it at that point. Just a little bit, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the other thing that really stood out to me, too, is you do use instant, like there's,

there are multiple points where you kind of talk about how the. instancing or instantiation happening comes from intent. So it's like, it's like you might not think that you're going to end up kind of like permanently wanting to live somewhere else. And you may think you're fine. And then something in you changes and you instance without like you're not cognitively, like consciously choosing it. So what kind of led you to setting the world building up that way? So I wanted to do that just to kind of mirror the way that when you move anywhere in our reality, you don't necessarily know that this is going to be permanent or you might not tell everyone that this is how you feel or you might be burying those feelings from yourself.

And that was kind of my intent there. And I also wanted to kind of mirror like, the messiness of like I wanted the messiness of human emotion to really be the driver here because then it adds uncertainty to everybody's like decisions and it adds uncertainty to everybody's like traveling and it also kind of provides a reason that like people might want to have reassurance that this will or won't happen when they cannot organically have it which leads to the like you know the tech thriller aspect of the book yeah yeah and then all of the elements where corporations basically are now getting involved trying to again I'm avoiding spoilers here but trying to like find ways to help individuals uh maybe have like more control over over it a little

bit which I thought was perfect like you're saying for a tech thriller because then we're getting into the ethics the corruption all of that of corporations kind of capitalizing on something as personal as like feelings that caused this to happen. So was that something you kind of always wanted to write towards as well? It was something that I was really excited about including in the novel that I did not get the chance to talk about in the short story. So yes. Yeah.

That makes sense. You also kind of cover like how there have been natural borders throughout history. Like even water at like at a beach. So like even like the ocean meeting the sand essentially is like where we used to have natural borders. And obviously now we've kind of forced borders like everywhere where it's like when you, especially as I was reading this book, when you really think about it, it just seems it just becomes even more abstract to this concept that we've said like this is this place and this is this place. And here's this random spot that delineates it. And there's a quote that kind of says something like crossing the border creates instances, but creating a border manifests the capability for instances.

So what was it like kind of writing about like the physical borders and then also like kind of the ramifications of that? Yeah. So that part was something that I think came in pretty organically from the beginning because one of the things I'd wanted to talk about was also like how a border is a piece of social technology. And so in this world, like an immigration checkpoint is a. piece of social technology so that people don't instance on the plane when they're going somewhere and stuff like that. And how like a lot of human society is also a way in which we try to impose our will on the natural world. Because like, instancing at the beginning of time was very much like the way that I had characterized it was like, okay, so you instance when you have gotten to a point where you feel like you were not coming back. And that means that it's either a like a large river

that you probably aren't going to cross again or like it's going to be like I have crossed like now the scenery has changed and I'm definitely not in my hometown. But then I was also thinking a little bit about the DMZ in Korea. So I'm Korean as evidenced by my last name. And it is very, it's interesting talking to older people about like Korea and the partition because it is very much kind of like, it is within human memory that these things exist. But then if you talk to anyone who's younger, they've only known this world as it exists right now. Right. Yeah, yeah, that was fascinating too. It's just like such a broad topic, obviously, to talk about, like, sociopolitical borders.

But I thought that was so fascinating too because, like kind of like you're saying, there also have to have been instances of people who, for all kinds of reasons, could be displaced. But sometimes it's war. And you think, like, of course, I'm going to go back to, like, where, what I consider home. and then sometimes maybe home doesn't exist anymore because of what was happening. And in other times, maybe you have been there long enough that like the definition of home starts to kind of like change for you in your mind. So was that kind of even like some of what you were thinking of with those things too? Yeah, definitely.

Like I was thinking a lot about the experience of like you go somewhere and you don't think you're coming back. Oh, no, sorry, you go somewhere. You think you're going to come back, but you've lived there for a while and now you know you're not going to come back, which creates an interesting problem for the person who is not an instance, which is that if they ever go back to their home country, they will instance then. And then I was also thinking about like, this didn't really make it into the book because it would have been a much darker book. But no, because the fact that like basically if you were getting

displaced through some sort of like humanitarian crisis or like some sort of like war or some sort of like situation beyond your control, there's a pretty good chance that you leave a copy behind to continue experiencing whatever horrors you're escaping from. So this is like a worse world than the one we live in. Yeah. And a lot of it didn't make it into the book because it is, it would have been a dark book. It would have been a very dark book. And, but that's definitely in the background of what I was thinking about. Yeah. And I know like you don't like explore it at length in it but there is like a sentence that kind of talks about that where I was like it like you couldn't hurt or you couldn't judge someone if they were like you're saying in the midst of some

humanitarian crisis for the fact that they don't want to be there anymore. Yeah. Then like you're saying like do you leave do you leave a part of yourself behind you then has to live through the horrors? And then even like you kind of alluded to um like YJ who is the one. who is the instance who is like in America and working. His deal with his like original self is that like he'll kind of accumulate all of this knowledge. And then it will help quote unquote both of them. But of course like the longer he lives like YJ does, of course he's starting to feel more and more like his own person. Which was also kind of like reminding me.

It's not the same thing. But it was like reminding me of the parts of like Westworld that I really enjoyed where it's like you're giving these. quote unquote robots or whatever. I can't even remember if they called them something else in the show. But you want them to seem humans so that it's fun for real humans and you're giving them all this emotion and all this pain and then you expect them to never like feel like their own person. So was that like kind of when you like took it from a short story to a novel and you were showing like YJ's experience as well with it where you kind of wanting to talk about that like eventually of course you start to feel like your own person yeah like a little bit i think

mostly what i wanted to talk about first of all west world season one is so good um and um what i i think what i wanted to talk about was really that like what you want is going to change over time based on your experiences and that will make you a different person and yeah like one thing i wanted to get really across in this book is that like people like the decisions people make that like seems simple on the outside, actually have a lot of thought leading up to them in most circumstances. Do you know what I mean? Like when people talk about like, oh yeah, I immigrated to this place, unless you like, it is kind of rude to interrogate them on their choices, you know what I mean? But it is kind of like, if you, everybody has a reason for doing what they're doing and it might

not be what you think it is and it might not be what they thought it would be in the beginning. And like, especially as like YJ and Eugen, I wanted to kind of talk about how like what you want is going to change over time. And if you have obligations to people that you made when you were, when you felt differently, it might be hard to disentangle them from, disentangle yourself from those promises, especially if the person you have promised is your other self. Right. Like, that's a really hard problem for him to be in.

And I kind of get why he spends so much of the book being very much ambivalent about it, but not bringing it up because that's a hard conversation. And it's not one that like socially he's ever been expected to make. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's such a unique tension because it's like, I think he gets a point where he's like not wanting to video chat himself anymore because like his other self is going to like know his tells and his mannerism and like what's actually going on. And that's what I thought was that's where like the narrative tension was really prominent. for me was like with both of them it happens with like rose and so young too is yeah like your what kind of starts to feel like your adversary more in y j's case is your own self too and so like how yeah

how do you how do you like outsmart yourself how do you like contain your own sense of self when there's another self version of you yeah like he knows everything i know and also he has my life back in Korea and he like um and also we were the same person for like 20 years like he's like if i want something different and i act weird he is going to immediately call me on it yes yeah and it's so hard to know which i think is kind of what you've been talking about even it's so hard to know who you're going to be and what you're going to want because we think we are so sure of like every part of our personality but then it it is location and setting and other events events that happened to us that also change us as well. So we're you kind of like wanting to write

about that like how well can we even know ourselves thing. Oh yeah 100% like that was also like why I made it so that instance thing is based on intent as opposed to like the just a physical movement because then it adds that element of like okay do you really know what you want like in your heart do you know what you're going to do. Do you know like how you feel about these things or is something that you haven't interrogated and it's just something that you've assumed. Yes. So, yeah, I really wanted to talk about that. And I really wanted to talk about how, like, people will move toward goals that they don't always understand why they want, like, why they want them.

Or people will move toward goals and maybe not actually even want the thing that they're going to get. Yes. Yeah, totally. Those are things that's very timely. But I'm sure you were writing this also before. some of our in America, some of the citizenships have got a lot worse. I wrote this during the Biden administration. It would have been a darker book if I had written. Only thing I'll say, I wrote, it would have been a darker book if I wrote this now, much darker. Yeah, I believe it. Because it's like, as I was reading it, I think not everyone who doesn't like read a ton or doesn't

always listen to authors doesn't realize how long publishing takes. And that means like you were writing, you were a different self. Consequently, when you were a different self. Consequently, when you were, even writing it and you were living in a different setting in a different political climate. But you touch on some really like interesting stuff that has also been true about the U.S. for a long time. It's how we ever really got our shit together about how we collectively treat immigrants. And you, you kind of talk about like it's like, they give me you're tired, you're like that, that part that we say.

But then when you come here, you're like Korean. or you're African American. Like we put all of these labels in front of it as well. And that it's actually like, it's like the U.S. does want to somewhat welcome immigrants in. And there's even like a part where you kind of talk about like being an intelligent or useful immigrant is what can make you feel safer, which is very unfair and uncool. but yeah like what what was it like writing about like just the U.S. immigrant experience in that sense, not that it's a monolith. Yeah. So like I mean, I think the first thing I wanted to get across was that it wasn't a monolith and that the two two or four characters that we're talking about here are very much representative of two specific immigrant experiences.

So specifically, you are, like, the first one is, like, you come over when you're a kid and your parents make the decision for you. But you're from, like, quote unquote, like, a wealthy-ish family or, like, your parents have a good job. So you basically assimilate into American society at, like, the upper middle class level. Yeah. The second is, you're a student and you come across and you manage to, like, essentially hustle your way into being part of, like, basically he is kind of, YJ is sort of part of the, like, um, like consultant class, if you will. Yes. But he is still from somewhere else.

And he is, his immigration status is still intimately tied with his job and his employment. Yeah. So he has like, he is more tied to his job than a citizen would be because he needs that job or any job to make sure he doesn't get like deported. Yeah. And he's more neurotic about it than the average person would be. but he, you know, that's who he is. So it was interesting writing that, and I think the one thing I really wanted to get across

is that, like, America is built, like, America talks a big game. America, like, culturally, like, and it is built on a beautiful, it is a beautiful dream that is built on, like, a bedrock of, like, if you, like, of lies, essentially. Yeah. But, like, to some degree. But it's also kind of, like, like, to some degree, agree the American dream is real in that like it is a much more multicultural society than if you

like you can't immigrate to Japan if you were not like ethnically Japanese or like you can't it is much harder to immigrate to Korea if you were not ethnically Korean and a lot of like a lot of societies are more xenophobic than the states is and to some extent like you know we're doing okay but we could do much better like compared to the rest of the world especially like my god we could be doing so much better, like, recently. And then there's always been attention, I think, in the states of, like, whether you can become American and what being American even means depending on, like, your community or, like, or how, like, quote, unquote, assimilated you are or what assimilation means, like, in the states. And I wanted to get a lot of that messiness across

in the book, because they aren't exactly living in our world, but they are living in a very, very close like facsimile of it. So this was very scattered. The point being that like I was thinking about a lot. I hope that people read it and come to their own conclusions. That too. Yeah, that too. As you're kind of mentioning, there are, uh, we have like these, these four characters

as the main people telling us the story. What was like the out, or maybe you don't outline, but how did you kind of like keep them straight since they were like themselves and also someone else? Was there like anything to that? Oh, God. Okay. So let's get into the structure of this book. It is, okay, formally, the structure of this book is like crazy.

Basically, there are a bunch of rules behind the scenes that I am working with to make this all fit together. Okay, yeah. And the way that I was thinking, so from the character's perspective, the way that I was thinking about it is, okay, what are the core character traits that each pair of people have? And then how are these character traits then expressed, depending? on circumstance. So for like, we've talked more about like Yij and Yujin, so let's talk about Rose and Soyang. Basically, this is a person who doesn't like talking about their feelings. And that is going to be true in both versions of herself.

And it is also, she is also a person who is like, she is very determined to get what she wants and she always believes that she's right. Yeah. And that expresses itself differently between Rose and Soyong. But these are kind of the two core character traits that I've seen. thinking about how would they then be expressed through this person's experiences and their knowledge. So that's sort of what I was thinking about. And then that meant that when, I don't want to get into spoilers, but yeah, so that meant

that like the decisions that they make are based on the fact that these are the things that are true about them. Yeah. And then with like YJ and Eugen, it was very much, this is a, this guy is a people pleaser. This guy is a people pleaser and he wants everyone to be happy. and also he is kind of bad at figuring out what he wants to do. And those two things were kind of what, like, the way that that expressed itself and the two versions of him were different because one of them had a much more stressful job and the other one felt like he had been left behind. But that was kind of what I was going for.

Like basically, so going off of that was how I started writing everybody. And then basically what I did is I wrote, like, Rose, I already knew how she was going to sound. So young, I tried to base on Rose, but Rose, like, Rose, but, like, colder. And then Yijin were very much the same version of the guy, just more stressed and less stressed. And basically, like, for him, it's very much, like, did I get a job when I was 22? And that has changed the entire trajectory of my life. And then formally what's happening is that I guess this isn't what you ask, but I'm going to talk about it anyway, which is that each chapter that is told from like somebody's perspective. So like if it's a rose chapter, it cannot have another rose chapter.

It has to have either a Sojung, YJ, or Eugen chapter after that. And this is the pattern that repeats itself across the novel so that everybody kind of gets a similar amount of air time. Yeah. And it also made writing, I kind of regretted doing this later because it did make figuring out which scenes to include a little bit more difficult because I'd be like, Yujin's not doing anything. Eugene's in Korean, everyone else is in the States. I need to figure out what he's doing. And so stuff like that. But I think it works to balance out all the perspectives.

Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. But now that you're saying it, I'm like, okay, yeah, we really were alternating every single time. The other thing I wondered about is the choice to do is second person P-O-B. Because almost everyone has a big feeling about that. And I just felt like it worked really well, but I was interested in what your choices were in doing it that way. Okay, so I knew it would be controversial. And I'm sort of surprised the publisher let me do it.

I'm surprised that neither my editor nor my agent was like, Isabel, you got to write this thing in third person. And then I would have been like, okay, fair. Like I would have immediately folded because it was a controversial choice. But I did it very purposefully because the second person is so good at creating a sense of like alienated intimacy is the kind of the way I've been describing it, where you see things from like the first person closeness of the POV, but it feels wrong to read. And that's what I wanted to get across with the instances' perspectives because the way that I was sort of. thinking about in my head was the instance perspectives are like a memory after they've been integrated again. So that was kind of my thought process there. And then when people are reintegrated,

then they're from the third person perspective because then it feels they have like a broader view of the situation that is more objective. And so that was kind of the logic there. And I have heard from various people on whether it works really well or it doesn't work at all for them. And I think everybody is valid. Yeah, I know. Some people, it's not that I've read tons, but it was like, coincidentally, I was reading like a kind of a literary mystery before this and it had, I think, three perspectives and there was only one that was in second person. And it was also like, the least frequent perspective, essentially. So it was just like a little bit of it. But I, I don't typically read it and I like listen to that one and then I listen to this one and I was like it's really

not that big of a deal. I think a lot of people it's just so infrequently used. It might be like circular. Like because it's not used frequently people get scared and then it's not used frequently. But I really liked it and that it kind of kind of like you're saying like the alienation effect that you get from it is like you are. you, which is like the whole second person perspective. It is it is kind of like being told what you're doing. And like there's not a completely solid sense of like identity in the narration. I guess is what you would call it.

Yeah. But I mean, it really worked for me. Nice. So the other thing like you, I was blown away like we couldn't even go through all of them by how many different like unique ways you used it. to talk about everything from like literal borders to like identity like I was kind of talking about you have like the story of someone who gets so identified with work that he's like instances at work I don't think that's enough of a spoiler um to be a huge deal I thought that was so smart in a very capitalist society I thought that like really well um and then what was there was like oh

And then we have a character who like travels all the time so that he never feels like he has a home. Like a home. Yeah. Which kind of felt a little bit like dissociation and like all like all of this like mental mind games to avoid certain like feelings or whatever. So how did you think of all these ideas? Did they just kind of come as you were writing them? Like there are so many. Okay.

So basically the way that I thought about all of these. things was that like I wanted to use instancing and like I came up with this mechanism and I was like I need to put this mechanism into as many things as possible because that's how people would feel about it in the real world but not the real world the world of the story. And that part was super fun because it was very much like okay so let's what is a border like you know like let's really stretch our definition of what a border is and also kind of the other thought I had was that like I wanted this book to like feel like quote unquote good to read even if you have never like left your hometown or something but there's probably other experiences you've had that felt like you could have taken a

different path in life so kind of trying to stretch that um like stretch your imagination that way by like putting out a bunch of examples and also because i knew that when people were reading this they would have a bunch of like okay so do you instance when you do x y z thing or like what happens when like children cross a border or like do babies instance or do animals instance. And like so I try to include as many of these facts as possible because like yeah, I do want to answer your questions. Like, you know, we're all here to have a good time. Right. And with the guy who is constantly traveling so that he never instances, I really wanted to get across like sort of like there is like a strata of like like wealth where you are not so much tied to a country anymore as much as you are tied.

Like you are traveling between global hubs of wealth. If that makes sense. Like you're, you go to Miami. You go to like San Francisco. You go to like, you know, St. Farts. Like you're in New York. And then that is the sort of guy that I was trying to, like, like show that this man was by doing that. And also that like, yeah, some people are really neurotic about the idea of leaving someone behind or being the person left behind. Yeah. There's also like a couple of other versions of people that I would like to include if I ever wrote a sequel, which I've told every, I've told my agent and editor there's no sequel

and neither of them believe me. So like, I think there is. It's like, okay, the things I didn't include but would have liked to have included were like somebody who's like agoraphobia who instances when they leave their house. Oh, wow. And somebody who basically feels so at home in every country that they visit, that they have left instances across the globe and eventually are like denied visas anymore because they're like, dude, you cannot keep leaving people. You cannot keep leaving people in these countries. Like you have single-handedly increased the population by like 15 people.

That's what it was starting to make me think about. It's like, yeah, like if everyone was leaving that many versions, like we would end up, we'd end up with a population problem. if it could happen so frequently. And I thought that was what you're pointing out about the wealth as well, where, like, he's the guy traveling all the time is even another version in some ways of workaholic or like worshiping greed or money or whatever. It also highlighted, like, not everyone would even have the resources to, like, there's tech that can be used to hopefully keep you.

from instancing. Not everyone's even going to have access to it too. So it is such a like good example of like even like the club, not class warfare, but just like all the different levels of class. Yeah. At each different class. Yeah. Was there anything about writing it that you like surprised yourself with or that was kind of like surprising during the writing process? Um, something that surprised me was how prominent the house became as like kind of like a location and a character because it doesn't really exist in a short story. And I added it for the novel because I wanted there to be more physical representations of like, more physical representations of like legacy but also of conflict in the sort of your,

your parents or grandparents have given you an object that you now need to deal with. I think this might have also been because my parents were downsizing. So truly, while I was writing some of this, so truly I was thinking about, damn, there are objects in my house that my mom. is like, you need to put this in your house because I can no longer have it in mine. And so I think that surprised me. On a technical perspective, the amount of times I rewrote the ending surprised me just because I had thought that I had the ending the first time.

And then I ended up rewriting it about four times. Wow. The ending, like the whole book. The ending. So probably I would say like the last 50 pages. Like it wasn't all like huge edits. It was. but it was things that were like, okay, so different combinations of people end up going different places.

Let me put it that way. So that sort of surprised me. The rest of it felt pretty organic to write. I guess the other thing that surprised me was how much like certain characters took more prominence than others. I wasn't expecting like Megan to end up as important as she did. Because when I started, I was like, okay, she's probably not going to come up on screen. And then I realized that like the government plot part of it would be a little bit more prominent than I was expecting. Yeah.

There was, that was one of the other lines that I pulled is there's like a mention when you're kind of talking about the intention behind instancing and like the fact that it can kind of happen even when a person isn't totally planning for it to happen. There's a line where you talk about. But like humans are like, are these beings with like hearts and all of these complicated designs. desires, but then governments are made up of tons of people with tons of like conflicting motivations and stuff as well. And I thought that was, again, it's kind of exploring like in some ways the silliness of borders and like having laws change just because you like cross over a certain space. So it sounds like that part was like you weren't maybe necessarily headed towards kind of talking about the government, but it kind of naturally ended up being talked about.

A little bit. I was, I think the first version of this. So it was interesting writing of this because I had a couple of different, there's a world where this is very much a family story more than it is anything else. And that would have been both a shorter book and probably an easier book to write. And it wasn't the book I wanted to write. The book I wanted to write was one where I talked about, like, okay, so here are the global implications of the way that people would feel about this. And I thought it would be more about the tech company. And it ended up being about how the tech company interfaces with the government to, like, to, you know, control things. And is this relevant to our world?

Who can say? Right. I know. The whole time I was reading, I was just like, oh, my goodness. It was also making me think about, like, Octavia Butler has obviously written so many things that were very predictive. And she kind of saw a lot of things happening. that did end up happening but like when people would tell her like you're so prophetic

is she like didn't love that because she was like I don't think I'm seeing anything that you guys couldn't see like I'm just paying attention to what's happening like that's all that I'm doing so is there is that somewhat the feeling that you're having I mean even as you're saying like writing it during the Biden administration is there some of it where you're like well of course I was like writing this because like this stuff has always been there a little bit Yeah, like honestly, like, like I tell people all the time that like writing science fiction or writing like speculative fiction isn't really writing about the future. You're writing about the present through the lens of the future or through the lens of an alternate history or basically making the problems of our world just changed enough that people will read this and not feel attacked.

Yeah. that is kind of, I think, the goal of a lot of science fiction that's like talking about, like, social, like issues or like, like, um, like you said, the stuff that like Octavia Butler was doing or like Ursula K. Like, when was doing, it's very much like, no, we're talking about the present. We're talking about the way that people are now if they were in this situation. Yeah. And I don't know. Like, I feel like, um, I would love for the books to not be relevant. You know what I mean? Like, it would have been great if this was just kind of like, oh, this is like a, um, a story as opposed to a mirror, you know what I mean? But I do feel like a lot of the time, I mean, so I wrote a short story like last year that was very much about like human relationships with AI in the future where AI is, quote unquote, a person. And every time I see a headline about like some sort of like weird chatbot situation or like some guy who is like I'm in love with my computer.

I immediately go and I immediately think like said the six months ago said the six months ago. This is exactly what's happening. And it's a weird feeling. Yeah. It's got to be. I know. And then for me at least, sometimes it like adds to my frustration that other people are like, it's a whole big subject. It's multiple subjects.

But how many people are like, well, it can't happen because of this. And you're like, I think it might happen though. Like you're saying, it's not something you want to be right about. It's not something where when it happens that you're like excited to say, I told you so because you're like, I didn't want this to be the end game. Yeah. Yeah. It's tricky. Well, I obviously loved it. I loved it so much. I do think this is my favorite speculative fiction I've read in years. Oh my God. Wait. Thank you so much. I just loved it so much. My husband, I could not stop talking about it. I was like, you're just going to have to like read it so that I can talk to. Just don't know about it. And as of today that it's airing, you guys can go grab a copy. I just got the physical copy for the U.S. version. It is beautiful. The like end papers, like all of it is, it's beautiful.

Also, I listen to it. And for anyone who loves audiobooks, there's something I want to tell you about it that is very cool in the production, but it's a spoiler. So just trust me that if you love audiobooks, you will love it. but at the end I do always ask as well if you've read any books that you've loved recently or if you have books that you would like always recommend to people. Ooh. Books that I've loved recently. What I'm in the middle of reading right now is the, God, this is like an old book.

I feel like I should be talking about like a new book to be like, no, this is a new book. But I was reading the years. We need to talk about backlist too. I've been reading the years of rice and salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Okay. Which I'm also mentioning because it has like a very, it has a really interesting structure. It is like structurally very much, you are with the same characters who are in different personalities and bodies across time.

And so if you like weird formalism in your fiction, that really works. Yeah. That sounds good. It kind of reminds me there was a fantasy I read recently called the Queen of Faces. Where, like, the wealthy could basically buy other bodies that they could, like, shift through. And it was really fun use of that. Like, what is it like to be yourself in a different body? I really loved that one.

Well, where can people follow you to stay up to date on everything you're writing? Yeah. So you can follow me on Instagram at at Isabelle J. Kim or on blue sky at isabel.com. And then most like for the real formal like, you know, viewing experience, I am at isabel.com just generally online like as a website. Perfect. Well, I will add those to the show notes for everyone. And thank you for writing it.

And thank you for coming and talking about it. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was super fun. Good questions. 10 out of 10. Thank you.