Renowned Taiwanese queer writer and researcher Chi Ta-Wei will join us in London for a conversation about his 1995 queer sci-fi novel The Membranes. Chi will reflect on his journey over the past decades, as he has sought to advance popular and academic understandings of Taiwanese LGBTQ+ literary history.

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.

Hailed as a visionary piece of writing since published in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in the Sinophone world. 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.