Spent Bullets

Set in Taiwan and the Silicon Valley, a collection of linked stories that explore the meaning of success and the purpose of existence, centered on the short life and long shadow of an engineering genius who descends deeper into despair while rising higher on the professional ladder.

The hard-working geniuses of Spent Bullets are the crème de la crème of the meritocracy. Educated in the best schools in Taiwan, they move to lucrative positions in America's big tech, reaching the pinnacle of career prestige. Yet there is a dark side to their relentless focus and achievements.

In an age that idolizes success, Terao Tetsuya's piercing collection explores the grotesque contortions of psyches shaped by hyper-competitive systems, where the measure of one's worth is a capacity for suffering—witnessed through the brief, shining life of Jie-Heng, a prodigy who can solve any logic problem—but not the problem of human relations. Jie-Heng...