Coding the Self: Translating Taiwan’s Silicon Dreams — A Conversation with Terao Tetsuya on Spent Bullets

In his award-winning debut collection Spent Bullets, Taiwanese author Terao Tetsuya explores the brilliance and quiet despair of the global tech elite—those who ascend to the heights of Silicon Valley only to lose their sense of self along the way. Set between Taiwan and the United States, these linked stories trace the brief, blazing life of Jie-Heng, a prodigy undone by the pressures of genius, love, and conformity. With cool precision and haunting empathy, Terao examines how ambition, alienation, and identity intersect in a world that prizes performance over humanity.  

 

 

 

Terao Tetsuya graduated from National Taiwan University with degrees in Computer Science Information Engineering. He earned a master’s degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon and worked as an engineer at Google before turning to writing full-time. He published debut short story collection Spent Bullets and essay collection Overfitting. Spent Bullets won Taiwan Literature Awards’ Golden Book Award and the New Bud Award. A movie adaptation of the same title is under active production. He lives in Taiwan.

 

Matthew M. Mucha is a PhD Candidate in the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, with Collaborative Specializations in Diaspora & Transnational Studies and Women & Gender Studies. He is also co-editor of The Taiwan Gazette, a publication affiliated with the Global Taiwan Studies Initiative at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. His current research project, entitled “Dictatorial Cultures Across the Luzon Strait: Gendered Memory in the Martial Law Literatures of Taiwan and the Philippines,” undertakes a comparative literary analysis of novels written by women authors about martial law in the Philippines and Taiwan.