Sea Eye 13
Space Swamp 101
Moss Forest 135

Commentary | Drawing Beyond the "Closed World" by So Yoo-jeong (Literary Critic) 258
Author's Note 277

Winner of the Grand Prize in the Korean Science Fiction Literature Award and the Excellence Award in the SF Award
Cheon Seon-ran's novel series "Moss Forest"

“I thought I should write a story about saving people.
“I thought my story would ultimately be about salvation, but I thought I needed to make it a little more clear.”

From the story 『A Thousand Blues』 (winner of the Grand Prize in the Korean Science Fiction Literature Award long story category), which started with a note that said, "We all need to practice running slowly," to 『Nine』 (winner of the Excellence Award in the SF Award long story category), which started from a day when she imagined someone's sadness while "crying out loud and suddenly thinking that the trees and wild grass might be listening," Cheon Seon-ran's stories harbor a certain hope.
And resonating with this desire, readers may have selected him as 'the young writer who will be the future of Korean literature in 2022.'

If you're still alive in this world right now, it's hard not to know what it means to "want to be saved."
At some point, the will to save someone or something seems to have grown as strong as the strong desire to survive, to 'live'.
Perhaps this feeling has become more desperate in proportion to the pressure exerted on this tightly closed world with no exit.

So, as I was putting new stories out into the world, I thought, “I have to write a story that seeks.”
The author's voice, which confesses, "I thought that my story would ultimately be a story of salvation, but I thought that I needed to save it a little more clearly," does not sound ordinary at all.
This is because, rather than being a 'salvation narrative' that has existed in the world of the story, it suggests that this work was written with the author's strong desire to truly save someone or something, both inside and outside of the story.

The author, who never turns a blind eye to this world of living beings, is passing through a time with us, and this brings a sense of relief and strength to the readers through "Moss Forest."

“I want to go to a place where sadness can be unique.”
The most powerful defense against grief,
The power of extreme sadness that finally breaks through the closed world

This three-part series depicts the love, friendship, and adventures of six friends, set in a future where humanity has been banished to an underground city after the destruction of the surface.
The humans in the underground city are merely intermediaries, faithful workers, maintaining human civilization for the next generation, the generation that will rise again to the surface, but even within it, the six friends make eye contact, embrace, hold hands, and run together breathlessly.

"Sea Snow" is a work that depicts the painful growth of a boy who loses his first love as soon as he realizes it.
Marco, a security guard at an underground city research lab, is drawn into a trance by a singing voice coming from somewhere.
Eun-hee, a girl with a “beautiful voice like the cry of a giant whale or a shattered star,” awakens Marco’s pure heart and leads him into the world of love.
Of course, this love is not made up of joy alone.
Because the order of the underground city intrudes into it.

Marco is confused when he sees his senior, Kirkus, go on strike to protest unfair working conditions.
To him, who is still feeling mentally pressured and unable to make a decision, his friend Yu-oh says, “No one said anything.
“There is no need to be chased by your heart,” he says.
Thanks to this, instead of being oppressed by the burden of justice and duty, Marco was able to face the consequences of his choices—“What Kirkus wanted was a reward for his labor, and what the company held in its hands was Kirkus’ life.”
It was not a fair fight.
(…) moves toward the realization that “the circus was not defeated, but trampled.”
As he faithfully experiences the events of love and labor, Marco's height and physique, which were unusually small, become noticeably taller than those of his friends.
As the reader watches this physical growth, he feels a deep sadness that is difficult to explain.

"Space Swamp" is a letter to twin sisters whom I hate more than anyone else and love more passionately.
Yi-jo, who has been confined to a small room his entire life because he is not registered with the underground city's committee, is endlessly envious of and hates his twin sister Yi-ju.
To Yi-ju, who freely moves through the underground city, learning, working, and meeting others, Yi-jo tells a hidden story in a voice filled with clear anger.

Yijo discovers a pipe passage that allows him to travel through the underground city without being detected and follows Yiju.
One day, while he was tracing the life he could have lived, he made eye contact with someone over a ventilation shaft.
“You, are you a secret?” Chiyuki, a friend of Yi-jo, notices Yi-jo’s situation and teaches him to write.
And thanks to that learning, the emotions of the person move towards love and understanding.
The sentences that seemed to stab coldly overflow with heat as the pages turn, as if they would pierce through the stuffy underground city.
By the final part of the letter, the reader is left with a poignant glimpse of the truth that anger is in fact a yearning for life, and the astonishing deeds that yearning accomplishes.

"Moss Forest" is a story for those who live with the sorrow of loss.
Soma, who lost his beloved Yuo in a collapse accident, tries to escape the underground city with his friends by stealing Yuo's clone.
How can one explain the desire to escape to the surface with a clone that resembles Yu-oh but is not Yu-oh?
Perhaps those who have experienced sudden loss can understand this feeling.

The chairman of the underground city orders Soma to stop grieving and return to reality, but Soma disobeys, saying, "I still feel a strange sadness over losing that child."
Thanks to his friends, Soma reaches the top floor of the underground city, just below the surface, and finally takes a step towards the surface.
A mysterious landscape unfolds before your eyes, and Yu-oh is right next to you.

In this work, the longest of the three novels in the series, the narrator tells the story in a voice filled with sadness throughout.
It's as if they're resisting those who don't want the feeling of 'sadness' to last, those who want 'mourning', which can't be said to have an appropriate period of time, to be neatly completed.
As the story unfolds, readers will come face to face with the long-held sadness that has been buried within their hearts.


The power of extreme sadness contained in the serial novel “Moss Forest” finally breaks through the closed world.
Through this work, written with the most powerful advocacy for grief and a desire to be saved, I hope you will experience the energy of Cheon Seon-ran's novel world. When the story ends and you return to the ground you once stood on, I hope you will feel the power that makes you want to live without losing love, even in despair.

* It was first serialized in Crema Club as a ‘Yes24 Original’.

* 『Moss Forest』 was announced as the third series of CJ ENM's 'Untold Originals' project (Untold Originals, a brand slogan meaning 'infinite stories yet to be discovered' that CJ ENM discovers and presents).
This project aims to present an IP jointly planned by CJ ENM and Blossom Creative as a novel and then expand it into video content.
Bae Myung-hoon's 『Space Island Sabi's Strange Ballistics』 and Kim Jung-hyuk's 『Deleter: I'll Make You Disappear』 have been released, and Kim Cho-yeop is preparing the next one.
The story continues to expand.