In 2021, mystery novels will be born for a full 180 years.
The world epidemic has been repeated, hot searches have emerged in an endless stream, and the people have carried the burden forward... In such a big environment, the speculative fiction market in 2021 is slightly flat, and the annual Shanghai Book Fair has not arrived as scheduled. Some people say that 2021 passes quickly, as if nothing has been done to pass, but in fact, the world has news every day, and fragmented information is wrapped up in us and moving forward.
Fortunately, reading—this ordinary and slightly extravagant thing—we have been doing it, it is a private thing, and with one book by one person, we can smell the flowers in the distance and hear the songs of the depths.
Reading is also like a relay race, from the author to the editor, from design to marketing, to the express delivery, to our hands, the page and the word, it is in this process of integration, with meaning.
The same is true of the publication of speculative fiction in China, after year after year of development, until 2021, we found that there are classic works reprinted, there are also phenomenal works of popularity, some people are retrieving the memories of the past, and some people are imagining the future direction. Speculative fiction is still one of the most colorful, blossoming, and vibrant literary genres.
Today, let's review the publication of domestic speculative fiction in 2021 with a masterpiece of January.
Written by 丨Lu Yehua (Member of Shanghai Writers Association)
Headhunting Game [Norway] by You Nesbo
January
Headhunting Games, by [Norway] Yu Nesbo, translated by Rongbin Chen, January 2021 edition of Nova Press. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
Yu Nesbo is the best-selling detective mystery novelist in the entire European circle today.
With the development of speculative fiction, with the change of the times, each country and region has now produced a relatively stable readership and style, for example, Asian readers prefer to explore human nature, implicit emotional expression and the instant test in front of right and wrong through their works. The contradiction between misunderstanding and stubbornness often hits the softest part of our hearts, so the best-selling mystery writers and works in the entire Asian circle often discuss propositions around love and sacrifice. So did Keigo Higashino, and so did Zijin Chen (the original author of "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth") who had been on fire in China in the past two years. In addition, the new benge works that retain the core of classical reasoning also have a large number of fans, and the romantic fantasy elements contained in them are unmatched by other works.
European readers prefer fast-paced crime novels. Due to the sparse proportion of the population, the friction between people is not as close as in the Eastern countries, and going alone for a truth in the ice and snow has become the ideal picture for them.
And Yu Neisbo's novels perfectly inherit this imagination, such as this headhunter, the motivation of the characters is not for the minimum survival and emotional needs, but for a variety of difficult desires. The story is constantly advancing and reversing in the intertwined desires, and the author's excellent writing also makes the struggle of each character and the despair of each result become a flood of ice and snow, revealing from the black and white words and invading the reader's heart.
Such a style of speculative fiction is not uncommon in Europe, but Yu Nesbo seems to be a genius, or born to do whatever he wants. Whether it's playing football, forming a band, financial analysis... In every experience before writing, he has been at the top of the professional level.
Since his debut, his works have been translated into more than 50 languages, swept more than 50 countries and regions, and sold more than 45 million copies. Hopefully, this time, he won't change his career.
"The Trap of Cancer Disappearing" [Japanese] by Kazuma Iwaigi
February
The Trap of Cancer Disappearing: The Mystery of Complete Cure, by Kazuma Iwaigi, translated by Tong Fan, Taiwan Straits Publishing House, February 2021.
February 2021 is the New Year, so the overall book publishing is small, and among the mystery novels published in February, which is not much, I chose this "The Trap of Cancer Disappearing".
It represents a writing style and direction of today's intrinsic reasoning. The question is often asked: Has the ruse of speculative fiction been exhausted? My answer is no. The times are developing, society is progressing, and the various kinds of knowledge that our times have come into contact with may not have been imagined by previous people, and since science and technology are developing and information is increasing, there is no reason for ruse to be exhausted.
This book "The Trap of Cancer Disappearing" gives a good example, how cancer, as the king of diseases, disappeared for no reason. And not one case, but many examples! Of course, we know that this cannot be a medical trick, otherwise the author would not have used it to write speculative novels, but directly published papers to win the Nobel Prize, which can only be some kind of blindfold, that is, the so-called "trick" in speculative fiction.
Not serial killing, but serial survival, and it is impossible to survive the survival of life, such a novel mystery is the development of the times brought about by the new creative ideas, and I believe that in the future, there will be more new knowledge that we cannot imagine at present, combined with speculative fiction.
He is the editor-in-chief of the series Weasby of The Collected Works of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Novels
March
"Chinese Modern and Contemporary Novels Collection" series of books, Wasby finished, pastoral culture | Beijing United Publishing Company March 2021 edition.
This series of books has been published since March 2021, and there are currently four books in total, namely Lu Yuan'an's "Detective Li Fei", Liu Bannong's "Liu Bannong Detective Novels", Zhao Yuan's "Hu Xian Detective" and Nanfeng Tingchang's "Chinese Detective Luo Shifu".
The so-called modern novels, in fact, the creation year of these authors is basically in the Republic of China period, that is, in the same period, the British Agatha Christie has just debuted, and Japan's Edogawa Ramp also began to publish short stories in magazines. It can be seen that if we want to trace the roots, the development of our Chinese speculative fiction is not later than that of these countries.
It is just that for many reasons, a large number of these works have been lost in the tide of history, and what we can still read in volumes today is nothing more than Cheng Xiaoqing's "Hawthorne Detective Collection" and Sun Yihong's "Rogue Lupin" and other masterpieces.
Of course, even in the golden age of Europe and the United States, a large number of speculative writers have emerged in a short period of time, and today we are still reading Agatha, Quinn, Carl and others, and many of the remaining works are either submerged by history or circulated among the minority, and now readers want to appreciate the style of the time, researchers want to consult the data, writers, editors, and speculative fans want to find the source of inheritance, and "picking up the remains" has become very necessary.
The editor-in-chief of this series, Wasby, was an independent book critic before, and now works for the domestic cultural company Pastoral Culture, before which he had been immersed in the study of the reasoning of the Republic of China for many years, and bothered to sort out a large amount of information.
As a reasoning author and reasoning reader, I am very grateful for the publication of this series of books, and its significance and weight, from the perspective of the entire history of reasoning, may be far more important than the publication of several best-selling novels.
"The Mystery of the Alphabet" [Japanese] by Seiichiro Oyama
April
"The Case of the Alphabet Mystery", by Seiichiro Oyama, translated by Cao Yibing, Reader Culture | Henan Literature and Art Publishing House, May 2021 Edition (Click on the cover to purchase)
The book seems very young in the whole history of reasoning, and it is "only" a novel published twenty years ago, first introduced in 2021. However, from the perspective of the author's name and the style of the work, it is not difficult to think of the purest intrinsic reasoning flavor of the Golden Age.
"Alphabet Puzzle Case" contains a total of four short stories, the first three are slightly shorter, there is no nonsense, after the case is confessed, several easy chair detectives chat while solving the case. Although the length is short, the pseudo-solutions, logical chains, and subterfuges used in solving the case, including the quantity of foreshadowing, are not lost to many novels. Bombarded with such a concentration of reasoning pleasure, the author sacrificed a "super big move" in the last article, which absolutely surprised the reader.
The author, Seiichiro Oyama, is known as the "god of short stories", and his short stories have the advantages mentioned before, with many elements and average standards. Today, when short videos have become the mainstream, his speculative fiction is like a condensed but never condensed version of long-form reasoning, which is very suitable for newcomers to get started.
In the recently unveiled Douban annual list, this "Alphabet Mystery Case" ranked second among the most concerned novels of the year as a dark horse, second only to Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro's "Clara and the Sun", which shows its popularity.
"Aoi No Yan" [Japanese] by Takashi Yusuke
May
"Qingzhiyan", [Japanese] by Yusuke Takashi, translated by Ding Ding worm, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, May 2021 edition. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
"The Perfect Crime for a Seventeen-Year-Old".
This is Chinese version of the slogan, simple, but full of suspense: Perfect Crime? Is there a perfect crime in the world? Did he really accomplish the perfect crime? Seventeen? Why do people kill people at this age? And...... Does he have the ability to orchestrate the perfect crime?
Of course, don't worry about leaking the bottom, because this book is based on the seventeen-year-old teenager as the main perspective to tell the story, follow the story, the reader knows his reasons for killing people, and even the method of killing, what is unknown is whether this seemingly perfect crime is really seamless? And where will this teenager's tomorrow go?
There is a paradox in speculative fiction: how smart are people who plan complex and perfect crimes? And if he is really so smart, how can he be stupid enough to solve the problem by killing people?
Although this paradox is not explicitly discussed in this book, we seem to have some solutions after reading the book. This is a refreshing, constantly reversed book, and at the same time a book with full potential. The title of the book, "Qingzhiyan", represents both the cyan flame that is more fierce than red, and the light of youth that is burning.
The author, Yusuke Takashi, is an all-rounder, who writes science fiction novels and can write works of such a high degree as "From the New World"; writes horror novels, can write the ultimate psychological fears of "Hanging Shadow in the Black Room"; writes popular novels, can write "Lotus Classroom" such an addictive and clear theme of "Cool Text"; writes speculative fiction novels, and can write such a secret room famous article as "Glass Hammer".
In any field, Kishi Yusuke can write the top level in the field, this 1999 publication of "Aoi No Yan", it seems to be a speculative novel, but at the beginning of the murderer, motives, techniques all accounted for, because Takashi Yusuke has this confidence, even so, he can still attract readers to see the end, let you surprise, and think for a long time.
"Underground Game" by Wu Fei
June
Underground Games, by Wu Fei, CITIC Publishing Group, June 2021 edition. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
Strictly speaking, this is not a speculative novel, because it is not all books and words.
More strictly speaking, it is also the purest mystery novel. Because it is a contest between the author and the reader.
In terms of publicity, it has a more market-oriented label: three-dimensional interactive mystery novels. More suitable for its description is "single-player script killing", it has a story, characters and main text, there are causes and consequences that will be found in all novels, there are suspense and tricks that will be found in all speculative novels, but in addition, it makes the clues inside more concrete, such as emails, maps, WeChat, etc. Of course, the reader knows that he is exploring a fictional story, but in the process, it presents a real experience.
Wu Fei's last work, "Winner Out", is also of the same genre, the story takes place in Shanghai, all the scenes are real in reality, and even a model of the Wukang Building is accompanied by the book. The stage of this "Underground Game" has moved to Line 10 of the Beijing Subway, and the same tense story, strangers who get together, have to find out the truth while escaping from danger.
Speculative fiction is not all about competitiveness and gameplay, and even there are not many works that focus on competitiveness and gameplay. But in the matter of gameplay, this three-dimensional interactive form of reasoning, compared with the traditional "Wendou", has evolved a lot, and there may be more such works in the future, and it is not known whether it will become a new genre.
"Blue" [Day] Ye Zhenzhong is prominent
July
Blue, [Japanese] by Ye Zhenzhong, translated by Lu Lingzhi, Nova Press, July 2021. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
About this "Blue", I have introduced it separately in the previous column, and interested friends can move to read "The protagonist is like a "tool man", but the people who meet him have changed the "color" | Suspenseful Doubts".
To put it simply, Ye Zhenzhongxian has obviously found the most suitable writing style and theme for him, from the Showa snapshot of "Absolute Scream" to the Heisei wave of "Blue", he places the most core protagonist of his story in the background of the times, and depicts his fate with a strong sense of penetration, this kind of writing style with small vision is very challenging, but after completion, the work must be superior.
Although "socialist reasoning" is still popular now, there are many different points that can be tapped into the social school itself, and there are writers who are good at topics such as needlework, family relations, and women's dilemmas.
The reason why socialism is popular is because we can always see the world and see ourselves in this kind of speculative fiction. Are human tragedies and joys really not connected? Not necessarily.
"Detective Past" was written in the morning
August
"Detective Past", written by Shi Chen, the pastoral culture | Beijing United Publishing Company September 2021 edition. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
China's original speculative fiction has developed by leaps and bounds in the past decade, and writers have come more quickly than any country in the history of reasoning from imitation to forming styles to exploring the path of localization. Readers have also made progress from the beginning of "I don't know Chinese write speculative fiction", to "Chinese speculative fiction is not authentic", and now slowly cultivated a large number of Fans of Chinese Speculative Fiction.
Counting the short stories of reasoning published in magazines, Shi Chen has been debuting for more than ten years and has always been one of the most representative writers of original reasoning. This "Detective Past" is completely different from his previous style of works, the story is set in the Republic of China period, many reasoning predecessors written by famous detectives gathered together to solve strange cases. In terms of text style, he retained the wording of the time, and the case setting adopted the current popular reasoning elements. And the theme is clear and full of emotion.
In 2021, Shi Chen also opened the only reasoning theme bookstore in China, "Lonely Island Bookstore", which is one of the most classic elements of speculative fiction, but people who love reasoning can get together, and it will never be an island.
Murder on the Owl by Anthony Horowitz
September
Murder on the Owl, by Anthony Horowitz, translated by Yujia Wang, Nova Press, September 2021. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
Anthony Horowitz, is certainly a more advanced Agatha fan than I am.
From the beginning of Murder of the Magpie, his work has been filled with a strong Agatha style, which even overshadowed his own style and became his own style.
"Murder of the Owl", like "Murder of the Magpie", adopts the narrative of the work-within-work, that is, to add a fictional novel to the original fictional novel,this novel is written by the characters in the book. In order to emphasize the sense of realism, the editors of Nova Press also made this work into a separate book.
Looking at the work alone, it looks like Agatha held his hand and wrote it. It's a complete mystery novel, but it also contains plenty of clues and details that point to the truth of the case that took place in the book Murder of the Owl. This kind of nesting doll-style speculative fiction, with "interlocking links", can not express its subtlety and difficulty.
Anthony Horowitz's reputation is good enough, not only is it always number one on Japan's list, but Douban's annual suspense novel "Owl Murder" is also on the list.
On Christmas Day, I did a live broadcast at Nova Press, revealing the top 10 sales of their new books published in 2021, and the first place was this "Owl Murder".
So, if you can sink your heart and finish reading this thick-looking book, you will definitely thank yourself.
"Kaneda Ichikkaku Collection" [Sun] Written by Masafumi Yoko
October
"Kaneda-Ichi Detective Collection" (all 10 volumes), [Japanese] Yokogou Masashi, translated by Yu Zhuangsun Yatian and others, new classics | South Seas Publishing Company October 2021 edition. The 10 volumes are: "Prison Gate Island", "Honjin Murder Incident", "InuYasha Family", "Devil's Colorful Ball Song", "Eight Tombs Village", "The Devil Blows the Flute", "Masquerade Ball", "Three Heads Of the Tower", "Queen Bee", "Night Walk". (Click on the cover page to purchase)
Regarding this set of books, I have also introduced it separately in the previous column (if there is no him in the history of Japanese speculative fiction, Benge reasoning will be greatly lost), and I will not expand on it here.
Kazunosuke Kaneda is one of the most famous detective figures in the history of Japanese reasoning, and even removing the "one" is indispensable, his masterpieces are too many, and the bibliography of this collection is personally selected by the author Masashi Yokomizu, which includes his debut works, the most successful works, his most satisfactory works, and works of unique significance.
Yokomizu Masashi, like Agatha, only reads one or two books they wrote, can not appreciate the charm, the more you read, the more you will feel that they are powerful, and then put these works on the timeline of the history of reasoning, you will find that this is not only powerful, it is simply terrifying.
Regarding the works of Masashi Yokomizu, if you want to read it, this set of anthologies is definitely enough. Comprehensive bibliography, binding, translation, gift of peripherals, etc., there should be no better planning in China in the future than this set.
The Life of 华丽"[Sun], by Kotaro Isaka
November
"Gorgeous Life", by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Lu Lingzhi, November 2021 edition of Nova Press. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
In the last issue of the year-end Q&A (speculative fiction is a game of enjoyment and loss| "Suspense of Doubt" year-end dialogue), the editor asked me who the hardest writer to write about was this Isaka Kotaro.
His books, thinking about it, are only suitable for one introduction after another, and it is difficult to have logical lines to organize, because his characteristics, or advantages are too many, such as novel and interesting characters, endless golden sentences, exquisite structures, light and pleasant style, unexpected reversals, etc., each feature can derive a lot of excellent works.
And the book "Gorgeous Life", all the above characteristics, almost all of them are included.
The book seems to consist of several unrelated stories, each with excellent characters, like short stories of very stable quality, until the end, only to find that these stories are connected in an unbelievable form, and this series is not for showmanship (in fact, it is very cool), but for a higher level of theme, and this theme is not out of reach, but directed to each of our readers. Therefore, after reading Isaka Kotaro's novel, I will always love this world a little more, there is no reason to speak of, it is more love.
So, "Gorgeous Life" is a wonderful novel, even like Kotaro Isaka's style, and like the cover of the book, it is an undefinable novel. But those messy things will have a clue after reading it.
The Girl She's Dead by John Dixon Carr
December
"The Girl She's Dead", by John Dixon Carr, translated by Wang Xueyan, Nova Press, December 2021. (Click on the cover page to purchase)
As the "Golden Age Big Three" alongside Agatha Christie and Ellery Quinn, John Dixon Carr has no reason to be buried in any era.
If the previous writers such as Kotaro Isaka and Yusuke Takashi were very rich in weapons arsenals, then Karl had only one weapon, but his weapon was strong enough to break through the entire history of reasoning, and he is still the well-deserved "King of the Secret Room" to this day.
The Chamber of Secrets is the most challenging mystery in speculative fiction, the room where the door is unlocked, how does the murderer kill the victim, and how does he escape? It is such a mystery that challenges the reader with constant variations in Carl's pen. The ruse could not be exhausted, but the chamber trick was almost finished by him alone.
Carr's work was not the first time it was introduced to China, but the previous version was more than a decade ago, when there were not as many domestic speculative readers as now, and the introduction was not systematic. Many readers have only heard of his masterpieces such as "Three Coffins" and "The Window of Judah", but more dazzling chamber tricks have not been able to read.
This "The Girl She's Dead" is one of Carl's very good works, and Carl's ability is not that he can write one or two high-quality impossible crimes, but that he can continue to create and renovate the mysteries he has already challenged.
Many readers are not familiar with Carl's work, and taking advantage of this re-introduction, you can get a glimpse of the "King of Secrets". Chamber of Secrets reasoning, as a classic genre, never goes out of style, and when we look at Karl's book now, we make the same exclamations as readers a hundred years ago.
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The above is the publication of the simplified version of speculative fiction in 2021. One book per month, can not be summarized, for reference only.
Do you like these works? Or have you bought it yet? There are also some excellent speculative works published in 2021 that impress you, welcome to discuss in the comments section.