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annabend's review
3.0
An interesting project with a wide variety of topics. The thirteen stories selected range from space operas to weird phenomena, often dwelling in that undefinable "what if" space speculative fiction loves so much. I liked seeing the fullness of imagination reflected in this collection
For me, the stories that stood out were:
"A Gift from the Sea" by Awa Naoko, translated by Sheryl A. Hogg — this one is about a little girl who buys sakura shells from a weird woman at the market and learns that the women by the sea are not exactly who she thinks they are;
"The Big Drawer" by Oda Riku, translated by Nora Stevens Heath — about a family who is very good at learning lots of information very quickly, but how and what is their mission in life remain a mystery until the son of the family stumbles upon a dying man;
"Mountaintop Symphony" by Nakai Norio, translated by Terry Gallagher — the symphony is scrambling to get ready for a big performance, squabbles break out, the managers are running around trying to make deadlines...all seems normal, except that the score they are playing is infinite and the next movement within the symphony calls for impossible instruments and 800 players.
The other stories were mostly alright for me and only one—Q-Cruiser Basilisk—dragged on for so long that I gave up on it. The translation in each seemed really great as well. Nothing really stuck out as strange or out-of-place.
A couple of stories I was disappointed with because they had great concepts (ex. a world within a black hole where the singularity distorts time and space in several villages) but they defaulted into a common, problematic trope. The trope being that the story is told by some dude (young or old but always self-assured) who is reflecting on an "extraordinary" experience in his life. The story goes that he met a strange, whimsical woman with whom he instantly fell in love with and who serves as the conduit for telling the reader not only about how beautiful the man finds her and how he struggles to get her attention but also about the speculative event that the story should actually be about. I was so annoyed reading these kinds of stories! It's unnecessary and also feels like a cop-out for writers. The fact that a teenage boy is obsessed with a beautiful stranger is uninteresting—if anything, it takes away from the original speculative ideas instead of adding any sort of relatability to them. And frankly, it totally dismisses the female character. She usually has no voice except to intrigue or beguile the man telling the story. And she usually disappears or dies so that the man can go through a transformative experience of self-discovery and then tell us about it later. *eye roll* In the story mentioned above, the girl is literally caught in an eternal death, stretching across the horizon as she drifts into the singularity. And the man? Oh well, he grows old, watches her die every day and tells some kid about it who thinks the old man is eccentric. Sorry, that's not romantic. That's horrifying. I'm so tired of speculative stories like this. Come on, guys, you can do better. But anyway, I can see why the editors might have chosen these—I just wish they were better written.
The biggest disappointment though (one that bumped this down from 4.5 stars to 3, if not lower) is the production of this anthology. Besides one or two typos, which I will forgive with effort, there were some really questionable choices made. For example, take a look at the cover. I didn't notice it when I ordered it, but as soon as I had the book in my hands I couldn't unsee it. Love the image and the bright lettering and the Japanese characters up to BUT the woman in the picture is clearly WHITE (even blond). What....How is this even a thing? For a project dedicated to introducing the work of little-known Japanese writers to the English-speaking world, this is not acceptable. For a speculative fiction work, this is especially not acceptable. Surely, our imaginations are better than that. There is enough whitewashing out there—to see it on a project that tries to bridge cultural barriers is just a slap in the face.
The artist of the picture, by the way, and the designer are not credited anywhere in the book. Even if the artist and the designer were the listed editors of the collection, they should be credited for work outside of editing the book. This just makes the book seem unfinished and makes it seem like Kurodahan doesn't actually care about the talent it's trying to support.
And my last bone to pick—on par with my annoyance with the cover choice—is with the contributors' section. I LOVE that they gave space to the translators. That's really important. BUT. THERE ARE NO BIOS FOR THE JAPANESE AUTHORS. Are you kidding me?
This is incredibly problematic because: 1) these are the stories THEY wrote and we should know who the writers are, it's disrespectful to writers; 2) these stories are translated by Western people and not including information about the Japanese people who created them makes it seem like you can enjoy their content but their identities are not actually important, that's just another form of Othering; 3) purely from a reader's enjoyment perspective—if I liked a story, I have no context for it, can't find out more about the person behind it, but I sure have plenty about the person who translated it, which is not as satisfying.
Of course, I'm inclined to believe that the editors and Kurodahan didn't actually MEAN for the book to be problematic. But, it just shows that this project wasn't well thought-out. I sincerely hope the next several volumes fix these problems, but I'll be cautious about picking up the next book from them. I'm not sure the publisher even saw this as something to fix.
If you've read volumes 3 & 4, let me know what you thought!
So what was a great idea, wasn't executed in the best way and I hope more of this kind of work is done in the future but in a less thoughtless way. It's a shame, because a lot of the stories were great.
For me, the stories that stood out were:
"A Gift from the Sea" by Awa Naoko, translated by Sheryl A. Hogg — this one is about a little girl who buys sakura shells from a weird woman at the market and learns that the women by the sea are not exactly who she thinks they are;
"The Big Drawer" by Oda Riku, translated by Nora Stevens Heath — about a family who is very good at learning lots of information very quickly, but how and what is their mission in life remain a mystery until the son of the family stumbles upon a dying man;
"Mountaintop Symphony" by Nakai Norio, translated by Terry Gallagher — the symphony is scrambling to get ready for a big performance, squabbles break out, the managers are running around trying to make deadlines...all seems normal, except that the score they are playing is infinite and the next movement within the symphony calls for impossible instruments and 800 players.
The other stories were mostly alright for me and only one—Q-Cruiser Basilisk—dragged on for so long that I gave up on it. The translation in each seemed really great as well. Nothing really stuck out as strange or out-of-place.
A couple of stories I was disappointed with because they had great concepts (ex. a world within a black hole where the singularity distorts time and space in several villages) but they defaulted into a common, problematic trope. The trope being that the story is told by some dude (young or old but always self-assured) who is reflecting on an "extraordinary" experience in his life. The story goes that he met a strange, whimsical woman with whom he instantly fell in love with and who serves as the conduit for telling the reader not only about how beautiful the man finds her and how he struggles to get her attention but also about the speculative event that the story should actually be about. I was so annoyed reading these kinds of stories! It's unnecessary and also feels like a cop-out for writers. The fact that a teenage boy is obsessed with a beautiful stranger is uninteresting—if anything, it takes away from the original speculative ideas instead of adding any sort of relatability to them. And frankly, it totally dismisses the female character. She usually has no voice except to intrigue or beguile the man telling the story. And she usually disappears or dies so that the man can go through a transformative experience of self-discovery and then tell us about it later. *eye roll* In the story mentioned above, the girl is literally caught in an eternal death, stretching across the horizon as she drifts into the singularity. And the man? Oh well, he grows old, watches her die every day and tells some kid about it who thinks the old man is eccentric. Sorry, that's not romantic. That's horrifying. I'm so tired of speculative stories like this. Come on, guys, you can do better. But anyway, I can see why the editors might have chosen these—I just wish they were better written.
The biggest disappointment though (one that bumped this down from 4.5 stars to 3, if not lower) is the production of this anthology. Besides one or two typos, which I will forgive with effort, there were some really questionable choices made. For example, take a look at the cover. I didn't notice it when I ordered it, but as soon as I had the book in my hands I couldn't unsee it. Love the image and the bright lettering and the Japanese characters up to BUT the woman in the picture is clearly WHITE (even blond). What....How is this even a thing? For a project dedicated to introducing the work of little-known Japanese writers to the English-speaking world, this is not acceptable. For a speculative fiction work, this is especially not acceptable. Surely, our imaginations are better than that. There is enough whitewashing out there—to see it on a project that tries to bridge cultural barriers is just a slap in the face.
The artist of the picture, by the way, and the designer are not credited anywhere in the book. Even if the artist and the designer were the listed editors of the collection, they should be credited for work outside of editing the book. This just makes the book seem unfinished and makes it seem like Kurodahan doesn't actually care about the talent it's trying to support.
And my last bone to pick—on par with my annoyance with the cover choice—is with the contributors' section. I LOVE that they gave space to the translators. That's really important. BUT. THERE ARE NO BIOS FOR THE JAPANESE AUTHORS. Are you kidding me?
This is incredibly problematic because: 1) these are the stories THEY wrote and we should know who the writers are, it's disrespectful to writers; 2) these stories are translated by Western people and not including information about the Japanese people who created them makes it seem like you can enjoy their content but their identities are not actually important, that's just another form of Othering; 3) purely from a reader's enjoyment perspective—if I liked a story, I have no context for it, can't find out more about the person behind it, but I sure have plenty about the person who translated it, which is not as satisfying.
Of course, I'm inclined to believe that the editors and Kurodahan didn't actually MEAN for the book to be problematic. But, it just shows that this project wasn't well thought-out. I sincerely hope the next several volumes fix these problems, but I'll be cautious about picking up the next book from them. I'm not sure the publisher even saw this as something to fix.
If you've read volumes 3 & 4, let me know what you thought!
So what was a great idea, wasn't executed in the best way and I hope more of this kind of work is done in the future but in a less thoughtless way. It's a shame, because a lot of the stories were great.
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