RaveThe Asian Review of Books... the novella returns—very effectively—to the image of the membrane time and time again...This clever refrain allows the story to constantly consider the conditions needed for life, and humanity’s simultaneous desire to control those means and incapacity to look after them properly ... So often in speculative science-fiction, especially shorter works such as this, the ingenuity of a story’s concept can drown out its narrative. The contextual backdrop—whether that be life on a distant star, or a world of perpetual darkness—is either underdeveloped to the point of feeling like a gimmick, or overdeveloped at the expense of plot and character depth. The Membranes avoids these pitfalls, and lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre. Chi weaves a complex contextual background (the migration to a subaquatic society) into the story, providing a succinct yet satisfying rundown of political and territorial disputes, before returning to Momo. What’s more, the novella’s final third delivers a sucker-punch of a plot twist. In this climactic moment, the world of the novella and its plot overlap with such precision that it feels effortless ... What makes The Membranes so compelling though, is Chi’s ability to interweave these broader issues with questions of gender, sexuality and queer identity, as we watch Momo interact with her own body and the bodies of others. It should come as no surprise that Chi brings these themes together in such a graceful communion—he is renowned for both his contribution to queer fiction and the study of Taiwanese queer literature. The addition of this cornerstone work in English is very welcome—not only as an opportunity to discover Chi’s work anew, but also as a slice (in translation) of the diverse landscape of queer sci-fi fiction published in Taiwan during the 1990s by authors such as Lucifer Hung ... Chi’s story—and translator Ari Larissa Heinrich’s prose—never feel weighed down with didacticism or overly preoccupied with asking the \'big questions\'. Instead, the story is meticulously crafted to lead the reader to those questions of their own accord through a gentle crescendo of revelations about Momo and her life.
