Izumi Suzuki (1949–1986)

I acquired this one after I saw a review on a booktube channel. I did like this book, but the author’s writing style is very spare and bland. However, I can’t help but think this might be due to this work being a translation. On the other hand, the sci-fi ideas present are interesting but not the primary focus of these stories. They center on characters that are profoundly emotionally dysfunctional. The common theme among them seems to be that of a failure to emotionally connect with show more other human beings (be they from Earth or not). The titular story Terminal Boredom was not a favorite, but I really liked the idea that the nonhumanoid aliens are truly alien with completely nonhuman psychology and mind, matching their squid-like bodies.

[M]en came to dominate society through violence and cunning, and thereafter they made nothing but war. They seemed to find their raison d’être in conflicts both great and small. War found its way even into everyday life, and so were born ‘traffic wars’ and ‘admissions wars’. Such terms became so common that the word ‘war’ lost all meaning. [pg.2]

As for the individual stories within this book, Night Picnic is my favorite, and The Old Seaside Club is reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode Welcome to San Junipero at least to me. Women and Women could have become a typical YA dystopia tale of young love save for Suzuki’s emotionally damaged heroine. I enjoyed the somewhat grim ending to that one. It’s what would happen in YA if the heroine decided to accept the dystopia as normal and good. It finishes with the selfish lament of a citizen of a doomed society (the heroine): […] I have no intention of sacrificing my life for some underground resistance movement. But who knows, it might come to that someday. […] Someday, surely someday . . . something will happen. [pg.34]

You May Dream had a great premise, those in suspended animation due to overpopulation can access the dreams of volunteers (often friends and family) to continue to “live”. However, by the halfway point the story already felt too long. The rest are worth reading though in the least for the ideas/an idea that they feature. Likewise, Forgotten explored a great idea of an alien offshoot of humans that can live forever but 99.9% of the time choose to die.

For them, dying before they’d fulfilled their potential, before they’d attained either absolute despair or the resolve to die, must have been truly tragic. [pg.168-169]

I tend to grasp onto the larger ideas featured within these stories and the actual focus on the personal level of the characters was not where my interest in the story typically lay though sometimes this primary drive of the stories did break through to me.

I had this one crazy experience smoking pot. It felt like I was being reborn alongside the birth of the universe. Even when I was aware of talking to someone, five minutes felt like a hundred years. It’s rare to get an experience like that. Usually, I just get hungry and sleepy. [pg. 134]

I liked this book and could recommend it to someone looking for sci-fi that aims for much smaller person-on-person interactions and dysfunction against a background or using an idea common to typical science fiction.

Favorite Quote:

‘But this is a good song. Do you know it? Apparently, Eva Braun used to sing it when she smoked because Hitler hated cigarettes.’

‘Large-scale con-artists like him often have a spartan side to them. I also have an extremely stoic side to me. Don’t laugh,’ he said. [pgs. 135-136] show less

Jagged. That is the word that comes foremost to mind. Jagged, painful stories within lives not worth living. Caustic, and eerily beautiful too. Drugs might be able to mask this hurt, but they would not be able to heal it. Nothing could but death itself. All unique stories. All scraping the edges of their containers - finger nail screeches on chalk boards.

So, 35 years after her suicide at the age of 36, Verso Books - together with various translators - bring us the first work to appear in English of this remarkable woman. This collection of 7 short stories would be interesting enough but, given the distance in time, the science fiction and dystopian worlds that Izumi Suzuki depicts become even more intriguing.

The opening story of the collection ('Women and Women') portrays a society where men are imprisoned in underground ghettos, women are show more in relationships with each other, and the planet has been devastated by human exploitation. In another story, teenagers video call each other, struggle with eating disorders and watch real-life video clips of violent street attacks filmed by strangers. Other stories feature drug use, a small group of human survivors struggling to survive, and a couple of friends having a 'holiday' on a resort planet.

Not all of the stories grabbed my attention, but on the whole this is a remarkable collection, well worth a read. And, as someone who normally doesn't read speculative SF, that is a big recommendation! I hope that more of Suzuki's writings will get future publications now, on the back of what is (hopefully) a successful and well-received outing for this book. The final title story, where the state offers an implant to take away stress and boredom, is a chilling and timely one indeed. To escape real life, to see the world as if it were just a reality TV show, becomes the dream:

'Even in this day and age, we still revere truth. But at the same time, we devote ourselves to the task of erasing the distinction between truth and fiction.'

Astonishing for its vision - and indeed for the author herself - this is a must-read collection that deserves to be out there. show less

This is an acerbic and astounding collection of short stories originally published in on the late 70s and 80s. They are varied in their tone, subject and quality, but all share Suzuki's isolated alien outsider perspective explored through science fiction.

It's genuinely difficult to not believe these are contemporary srories initially published when the translations came out a few years ago. There is a prescient and modern sensibility throughout, with the exception of the handling of gender show more non-comformity/ transphobia and sexual assault in the first story.

I need to revisit these stories and this review when I have actually managed to get a night's sleep. But suffice to say this is a phenomenal collection in Suzuki's distinct dark voice that evokes Philip K Dick, Jordan Peel, Charlie Brooker, with some making me imagine is Jeanne Thornton wrote an episode of Black Mirror.

These bleak, outcast stories really spoke to my sad girl soul, and the only reason I can't give this full marks is because of problematic elements that actually made me put this book down for quite some time, before devouring it. show less