It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality. 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. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go. Named a Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2021 ― Tor.com A Books of the Year 2021 selection ― The White Review Chosen as a Best Translated Book of 2021 ― Words Without Borders Books are all time-capsules, of course, but Chi’s novel offers an exquisite dual experience―because while The Membranes is a modern classic, it hasn’t lost an ounce of its provocative significance. As a gently incisive puzzle-box it works to pry at the readers’ own emotions about the nature of stories and how we’re made of them; as a novel of queer attachment, it explores how we attempt to connect to one another through endless membranes―and often fail to do so. ― Tor.com 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. ― Los Angeles Times 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. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars 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. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 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. ― Publishers Weekly A fascinating new book. ― MIT Technology Review A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it. ― Literary Infatuation 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. -- Stella Jiayue Zhu ― Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing Book Review Network 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. ― Booklist A plunging submersible disguised as a novel―filled with incisive, inventive peculiarities. ― Du Mois Archival Institute, 2021 Reading List Selection It is almost unfathomable that, in 1995, Chi could have imagined a world so full of the terrors that technological rises inevitably bring, but he does and mostly to devastating effect. Chi’s project is large, as is his vision . . . it imagines the future like the best of our dystopian meditations. ― South China Morning Post Magazine 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 th