Counterculture(s) Past: Izumi Suzuki s Terminal Boredom tor.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tor.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Verso, £10.99)
IN 1986 Izumi Suzuki, whose work as a model, actor and writer made her a countercultural icon in Japan, committed suicide at the age of 36.
Remarkably, this is the first English-language collection of her fiction but Verso has acquired the rights to all her stories and will publish a second volume in 2022.
This is excellent news because Terminal Boredom is a dazzling book, packed with memorable and unsettling ideas.
Sociopolitical commentary in science fiction is notoriously vulnerable to the ravages of time but, four decades after they were written, the seven stories in Terminal Boredom provide a powerful critique of a society based on manipulation and exploitation.
Where Every Coupling Depends on Lies, and Men Are Aliens
Credit.Pia-Mélissa Laroche
By Catherine Lacey
TERMINAL BOREDOM
By Izumi Suzuki
Translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O’Horan
In Izumi Suzuki’s story “You May Dream,” translated from the Japanese by David Boyd, a young woman concerned about a government lottery to cryogenically freeze citizens as a method of population control asks a plaintive question: “But haven’t you ever thought about … our dignity as human beings?” The reply comes quickly: “Nope, not once.” The worried friend goes on “law of death … crime against humanity … Blah blah blah” as our narrator zones out. It’s a typical exchange in this dystopian collection, “Terminal Boredom,” the first of the author’s work to appear in English.
The Rock Eaters/Robot Artists & Black Swans/Terminal Bordeom
Published April 18. 2021 12:01AM
Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar, The Washington Post Get the weekly rundown Email Submit
These days, novels are the default for most science fiction and fantasy writers. But in decades past, the short story could provide not only an income but also a great deal of exposure for authors. After all, it was a short story, The Lottery, that catapulted Shirley Jackson to stardom, and many novels, such as Isaac Asimov s Nightfall, started off as shorter works. So let s talk about some great new and upcoming story collections.
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