A Spoonful of Time (Recover)
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Description
Book Introduction
Author Koo Byeong-mo's best-seller "A Spoonful of Time" has been given a new look.
From his debut work, "Wizard Bakery," to "Gills" and "Breakthrough," author Koo Byung-mo has been responsible for a new axis of Korean literature with his provocative and fantastical imagination, fresh and vivid characters, outstanding prose, and narratives of comfort and healing. "A Spoonful of Time" delicately yet calmly depicts the process by which "Boy Eun-gyeol," who comes to live in a laundromat, gradually learns the secrets and mysteries of life hidden within the finite human time, presenting a new world of Koo Byung-mo.
From his debut work, "Wizard Bakery," to "Gills" and "Breakthrough," author Koo Byung-mo has been responsible for a new axis of Korean literature with his provocative and fantastical imagination, fresh and vivid characters, outstanding prose, and narratives of comfort and healing. "A Spoonful of Time" delicately yet calmly depicts the process by which "Boy Eun-gyeol," who comes to live in a laundromat, gradually learns the secrets and mysteries of life hidden within the finite human time, presenting a new world of Koo Byung-mo.
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index
A Spoonful of Time 7
Author's Note 251
Author's Note 251
Detailed image
Into the book
The corpse's face is pale and taut, as if it had just passed away today, and it smells like insect repellent instead of body odor.
The thought of having to report it to the police immediately only lingers in the back of Myeong-jeong's mind, and she touches the corpse's cheek with her fingertips, just as she would have done if her son had been found.
As with all senses, the sense of touch also becomes dull, leading to illusions rather than understanding situations. However, at that moment, I realized that the texture of the skin that had seemed human was quite different from that of a human.
When a person dies, does their original skin turn into something like urethane rubber?
No… …it is not a human corpse.
Then you discover a thick white binding on the object's back.
In a deluge of indecipherable English, he recognizes one word: ROBOT.
--- pp.16~17
At that moment, the tears that were irregularly reflecting from Siho's eyes penetrated Eun-gyeol's artificial nerves.
At first glance, these tears, which do not seem to be from yawning, are sadness, pain, loneliness, longing, joy, etc. Eun-gyeol compares them with the awards she has, but they do not match with anything.
His calculations wander through a fog that resembles gun smoke.
The 0s and 1s, as if a fight had broken out, became jumbled, blurred, and eventually became transparent.
Human tears are more difficult to decipher than any other physiological function, as they can be unrelated to emotion, simply intoxication, or sometimes both.
Eun-gyeol's artificial heart begins to beat rapidly.
--- p.106
The language system is tangled.
Where in the human world does the smell of loneliness find its texture and form, and what is the smell of sadness?
He lacks the language to express the smell that is located somewhere outside the space and time of everyday life.
If you're saying that's sad, if he were in his right mind, this would be exactly what it means to be out of your mind.
Where does this illusion come from, when there is no place for the mind to reside inside a machine?
Eun-gyeol knows that she is an imperfect sample, but why do she have so many calculation errors? Is it because of these errors that she resembles a human more? Is it because her brain itself, which determines that an error has occurred, is an illusion?
--- p.107
The fact that it became random on its own without any separate random option being set is a kind of declaration to the robot.
In the imagination and consciousness of Myeongjeong, the robot's learning is processed and expanded beyond the constraints of binary.
Eun-gyeol can control herself and change the time of her sleep mode autonomously, but she can also refuse to go to sleep at all.
Then, eventually, you may forget or ignore the warning that this is where you will return.
If such minor changes are now merely symptoms or temporary phenomena resulting from the accumulation of computational errors, then perhaps one day, changes will also come about with their own, undisclosed purpose.
--- pp.134~135
Look, you have physics and biology, as well as chemistry and astronomy inside you.
You will know all of the history of the universe, to the extent that humans have discovered it so far.
The universe is a little over 13.7 billion years old.
Even the Earth, a tiny bean in that universe, was born 4.5 billion years ago.
Compared to that, a person's life is just the time it takes for a spoonful of blue detergent to dissolve in water.
So, once you've carefully decided how you want to fit into this world, you're already melting away.
Myeongjeong says this as she opens the lid of the washing machine and looks down at the trail of powdered detergent gently spreading out inside.
--- p.184
“Do you know what satisfaction is?”
“Now I know.
“It’s not just cool to have lived longer than your father.”
Of course, we have not yet reached the level where we can feel everything naturally, without even having a clear awareness of feeling it like a human.
He still has to learn everything from scratch, re-enter everything that deviates from the results of his calculations, and, depending on the time, situation, or person he encounters, he has to set up new area folders to add learning that doesn't fit with the existing learning results due to changes in his life, society, and culture.
Furthermore, we should not completely discard existing learning, which may at first glance seem to be useless, and we should always recognize the need to add new responses to the same stimulus or, conversely, to pull old responses out of the drawer.
It is a pattern of relationship behavior that has been engraved in the genes of the human species and passed down.
The thought of having to report it to the police immediately only lingers in the back of Myeong-jeong's mind, and she touches the corpse's cheek with her fingertips, just as she would have done if her son had been found.
As with all senses, the sense of touch also becomes dull, leading to illusions rather than understanding situations. However, at that moment, I realized that the texture of the skin that had seemed human was quite different from that of a human.
When a person dies, does their original skin turn into something like urethane rubber?
No… …it is not a human corpse.
Then you discover a thick white binding on the object's back.
In a deluge of indecipherable English, he recognizes one word: ROBOT.
--- pp.16~17
At that moment, the tears that were irregularly reflecting from Siho's eyes penetrated Eun-gyeol's artificial nerves.
At first glance, these tears, which do not seem to be from yawning, are sadness, pain, loneliness, longing, joy, etc. Eun-gyeol compares them with the awards she has, but they do not match with anything.
His calculations wander through a fog that resembles gun smoke.
The 0s and 1s, as if a fight had broken out, became jumbled, blurred, and eventually became transparent.
Human tears are more difficult to decipher than any other physiological function, as they can be unrelated to emotion, simply intoxication, or sometimes both.
Eun-gyeol's artificial heart begins to beat rapidly.
--- p.106
The language system is tangled.
Where in the human world does the smell of loneliness find its texture and form, and what is the smell of sadness?
He lacks the language to express the smell that is located somewhere outside the space and time of everyday life.
If you're saying that's sad, if he were in his right mind, this would be exactly what it means to be out of your mind.
Where does this illusion come from, when there is no place for the mind to reside inside a machine?
Eun-gyeol knows that she is an imperfect sample, but why do she have so many calculation errors? Is it because of these errors that she resembles a human more? Is it because her brain itself, which determines that an error has occurred, is an illusion?
--- p.107
The fact that it became random on its own without any separate random option being set is a kind of declaration to the robot.
In the imagination and consciousness of Myeongjeong, the robot's learning is processed and expanded beyond the constraints of binary.
Eun-gyeol can control herself and change the time of her sleep mode autonomously, but she can also refuse to go to sleep at all.
Then, eventually, you may forget or ignore the warning that this is where you will return.
If such minor changes are now merely symptoms or temporary phenomena resulting from the accumulation of computational errors, then perhaps one day, changes will also come about with their own, undisclosed purpose.
--- pp.134~135
Look, you have physics and biology, as well as chemistry and astronomy inside you.
You will know all of the history of the universe, to the extent that humans have discovered it so far.
The universe is a little over 13.7 billion years old.
Even the Earth, a tiny bean in that universe, was born 4.5 billion years ago.
Compared to that, a person's life is just the time it takes for a spoonful of blue detergent to dissolve in water.
So, once you've carefully decided how you want to fit into this world, you're already melting away.
Myeongjeong says this as she opens the lid of the washing machine and looks down at the trail of powdered detergent gently spreading out inside.
--- p.184
“Do you know what satisfaction is?”
“Now I know.
“It’s not just cool to have lived longer than your father.”
Of course, we have not yet reached the level where we can feel everything naturally, without even having a clear awareness of feeling it like a human.
He still has to learn everything from scratch, re-enter everything that deviates from the results of his calculations, and, depending on the time, situation, or person he encounters, he has to set up new area folders to add learning that doesn't fit with the existing learning results due to changes in his life, society, and culture.
Furthermore, we should not completely discard existing learning, which may at first glance seem to be useless, and we should always recognize the need to add new responses to the same stimulus or, conversely, to pull old responses out of the drawer.
It is a pattern of relationship behavior that has been engraved in the genes of the human species and passed down.
--- p.246
Publisher's Review
“A young part-timer recently joined the neighborhood laundromat.”
The story of Eun-gyeol learning the secrets of life through the repetition of staining, washing, bleaching, and drying.
Myung-jeong, whose wife passed away a few years ago, runs a laundry shop alone in a slightly run-down and slightly poor neighborhood.
Even her only son, who lived abroad, passes away in an unexpected accident, and one day, a package addressed to her son arrives at Myeongjeong's door.
What appeared before Myeongjeong's eyes as he carefully opened the box was a 'robot' in the form of a 17-year-old boy.
Myeong-jeong gives the robot, which seems to be the last gift her son left behind, the name she wanted to call it when she had her second child, 'Eun-gyeol', and they live together.
Eun-gyeol, who is “not a robot that is controlled remotely by a remote control or a central computer, but a humanoid robot that databases all external stimuli immediately after the basic setup is complete, sometimes makes its own judgments, and automatically programs the results of its calculations and choices to move” and is an “imperfect sample” with “no creative use other than housework and simple tasks,” helps out at the laundry shop by Myeong-jeong’s side and naturally blends into the daily lives of the neighborhood children Si-ho, Jun-gyo, and Se-ju.
Nine years have passed since Eun-gyeol's arrival, and the children have grown up and are living their own lives, while Myeong-jeong begins to feel the need to slowly sort out her own life.
And although Eun-gyeol does not change and always seems the same, she learns emotions, empathy, and will little by little through processing countless pieces of information.
"are you okay.
“Because anything that has a form is bound to get dirty.”
“But people erase and erase again.”
Everything life taught me by a spoonful of blue detergent that fell into the water and dissolved.
As it is created, the brain faithfully accepts stimuli and information, stores what it has learned in memory through advanced computational processes, and reacts according to the data.
However, human life is one in which variables that are difficult to answer even with complex and sophisticated calculations suddenly appear.
"A Spoonful of Time" shows the time of not only the thoughtful owner Myeong-jeong through Eun-gyeol's quiet gaze, but also the neighborhood children - Si-ho, Jun-gyo, and Se-ju - who live lives full of variables.
Siho, who tries not to lose his vitality and pride despite his family's poor circumstances, Jun-gyo, who looks after those around him with his honest and strong personality, and Se-ju, who first awakened Eun-gyeol through the initial settings and manual input, all break down and suffer in the process of enduring the inevitable poverty and hardships of life.
However, at some point, he accepts that “everyone must live with a stain that cannot be removed or corrected at some point in their lives,” and that “like leather that has been carelessly left to swell and contract, he must accept his irreparable self,” and tries to maintain “his basic attitude toward life, pride, and beliefs.”
One day, Myeong-jeong tells Eun-gyeol that compared to the age of the universe, which is over 13.7 billion years, and the age of the Earth, which is 4.5 billion years, a person's life is "just the time it takes for a spoonful of blue detergent to dissolve in water."
So, once you decide how to permeate this world, the short time that will already melt away will disappear.
At first, Eun-gyeol, who only understood and analyzed information objectively, began to show actions and reactions that could not be calculated and executed by the heated calculations of an artificial brain.
Even though it is a computer error that occurs because it is an incomplete sample, it becomes a source of immense comfort to the children and Myeongjeong who have a single stain in their hearts.
“Siho thinks that the words of a robot that is nothing after the power is cut off shine like a light at the end of a tunnel.” (p. 170) Eun-gyeol the robot’s comfort is also conveyed warmly and touchingly to us who, during “A Spoonful of Time,” “are angry with all our might, love, and do not forget our desires even in despair, and endlessly pray and pray for something.”
Each and every sentence is written with devotion and sincerity, one by one.
This cover work was reinterpreted by designer Park Yeon-mi using the work of embroidery artist Lee Eun-jeong.
The beauty that blossomed with each drop of sweat and sincerity resembles the world of artist Koo Byung-mo's work, which he pushes forward with all his heart and soul, sentence by sentence.
Embroidery artist Eun-Jeong Lee creates a world by collecting life's most precious 'moments'.
The embroidery works, which depict the dream space and the dreaming space through fragments of the most shining moments, memories, time, and emotions in life, seem to reproduce the mysterious and fantastic world of Gu Byeong-mo.
The cover captures the happiest moments of the characters in the novel, those shining and beautiful moments, and depicts the scene in “A Spoonful of Time” where a person puts a handful of seeds into the pocket of the person they love.
The way seeds are sown and flowers bloom, even if a spoonful of blue detergent dissolves in water and disappears, the seeds bloom and sparkle like little beads here and there.
I hope that this book will become a seed that will bloom in the hearts of readers.
The story of Eun-gyeol learning the secrets of life through the repetition of staining, washing, bleaching, and drying.
Myung-jeong, whose wife passed away a few years ago, runs a laundry shop alone in a slightly run-down and slightly poor neighborhood.
Even her only son, who lived abroad, passes away in an unexpected accident, and one day, a package addressed to her son arrives at Myeongjeong's door.
What appeared before Myeongjeong's eyes as he carefully opened the box was a 'robot' in the form of a 17-year-old boy.
Myeong-jeong gives the robot, which seems to be the last gift her son left behind, the name she wanted to call it when she had her second child, 'Eun-gyeol', and they live together.
Eun-gyeol, who is “not a robot that is controlled remotely by a remote control or a central computer, but a humanoid robot that databases all external stimuli immediately after the basic setup is complete, sometimes makes its own judgments, and automatically programs the results of its calculations and choices to move” and is an “imperfect sample” with “no creative use other than housework and simple tasks,” helps out at the laundry shop by Myeong-jeong’s side and naturally blends into the daily lives of the neighborhood children Si-ho, Jun-gyo, and Se-ju.
Nine years have passed since Eun-gyeol's arrival, and the children have grown up and are living their own lives, while Myeong-jeong begins to feel the need to slowly sort out her own life.
And although Eun-gyeol does not change and always seems the same, she learns emotions, empathy, and will little by little through processing countless pieces of information.
"are you okay.
“Because anything that has a form is bound to get dirty.”
“But people erase and erase again.”
Everything life taught me by a spoonful of blue detergent that fell into the water and dissolved.
As it is created, the brain faithfully accepts stimuli and information, stores what it has learned in memory through advanced computational processes, and reacts according to the data.
However, human life is one in which variables that are difficult to answer even with complex and sophisticated calculations suddenly appear.
"A Spoonful of Time" shows the time of not only the thoughtful owner Myeong-jeong through Eun-gyeol's quiet gaze, but also the neighborhood children - Si-ho, Jun-gyo, and Se-ju - who live lives full of variables.
Siho, who tries not to lose his vitality and pride despite his family's poor circumstances, Jun-gyo, who looks after those around him with his honest and strong personality, and Se-ju, who first awakened Eun-gyeol through the initial settings and manual input, all break down and suffer in the process of enduring the inevitable poverty and hardships of life.
However, at some point, he accepts that “everyone must live with a stain that cannot be removed or corrected at some point in their lives,” and that “like leather that has been carelessly left to swell and contract, he must accept his irreparable self,” and tries to maintain “his basic attitude toward life, pride, and beliefs.”
One day, Myeong-jeong tells Eun-gyeol that compared to the age of the universe, which is over 13.7 billion years, and the age of the Earth, which is 4.5 billion years, a person's life is "just the time it takes for a spoonful of blue detergent to dissolve in water."
So, once you decide how to permeate this world, the short time that will already melt away will disappear.
At first, Eun-gyeol, who only understood and analyzed information objectively, began to show actions and reactions that could not be calculated and executed by the heated calculations of an artificial brain.
Even though it is a computer error that occurs because it is an incomplete sample, it becomes a source of immense comfort to the children and Myeongjeong who have a single stain in their hearts.
“Siho thinks that the words of a robot that is nothing after the power is cut off shine like a light at the end of a tunnel.” (p. 170) Eun-gyeol the robot’s comfort is also conveyed warmly and touchingly to us who, during “A Spoonful of Time,” “are angry with all our might, love, and do not forget our desires even in despair, and endlessly pray and pray for something.”
Each and every sentence is written with devotion and sincerity, one by one.
This cover work was reinterpreted by designer Park Yeon-mi using the work of embroidery artist Lee Eun-jeong.
The beauty that blossomed with each drop of sweat and sincerity resembles the world of artist Koo Byung-mo's work, which he pushes forward with all his heart and soul, sentence by sentence.
Embroidery artist Eun-Jeong Lee creates a world by collecting life's most precious 'moments'.
The embroidery works, which depict the dream space and the dreaming space through fragments of the most shining moments, memories, time, and emotions in life, seem to reproduce the mysterious and fantastic world of Gu Byeong-mo.
The cover captures the happiest moments of the characters in the novel, those shining and beautiful moments, and depicts the scene in “A Spoonful of Time” where a person puts a handful of seeds into the pocket of the person they love.
The way seeds are sown and flowers bloom, even if a spoonful of blue detergent dissolves in water and disappears, the seeds bloom and sparkle like little beads here and there.
I hope that this book will become a seed that will bloom in the hearts of readers.
GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: September 10, 2016
- Format: Hardcover book binding method guide
- Page count, weight, size: 256 pages | 360g | 128*188*20mm
- ISBN13: 9788959130580
- ISBN10: 8959130583
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