Editor's note: In recent years, there has been a boom in science fiction literature in China, and many Japanese science fiction works have also been introduced. In the past Nandu book list, we have also recommended masterpieces such as "Japan's Future Tense: Japanese Science Fiction and Science Fiction Japan" and "Self-Referential Engine" by The Round City Tower. This time, we have collected other Japanese science fiction masterpieces published in recent years and recommended them to readers. Earlier classics, such as Yasutaka Tsutsui's "The Girl Who Traveled Through Time" and Komatsu Sakyo's "The Sinking of Japan", if you are interested, you can find it yourself.
"Drunken Walker"
(Japanese) Taizo Kobayashi, translated by Ding Ding Worm, September 2019 edition of Beijing Times Chinese Literature Bureau, 49.00 yuan.
This book is the masterpiece of two-time Japanese Nebula Award winner and contemporary Japanese hard science fiction master Yasuzo Kobayashi. The book includes hardcore science fiction "Drunken Walker" and another horror story, "Toy Repairer", showing Kobayashi's great skill. Time travel, quantum mechanics, no one has ever written about time travel science fiction like that. The seminal work of exquisite conception and advanced setting, through the hand of science fiction to dissect time and human thinking consciousness, is enough to subvert and burn the brain, leading readers to carry out a brain collision of time and space, which is nearly 20 years ahead of the "Butterfly Effect" and "Memory Fragments" of the same genre. If you're going to pick only one Japanese science fiction novel to read, Drunken Walker might be a good choice.
Klein's Pot
(Japanese) Okajima Duo, Chemical Industry Press, November 2019 edition, 48.00 yuan.
This is the book of prophecy of the legendary mystery writers and the duo of Okajima, who conceived a virtual reality game experience device 30 years ago with super technical foresight. The story tells that the protagonist Akihiko Uesugi wrote a story that was bought by Epsilon R&D Company, and is about to make a new game of the subversive era, Klein 2, and is invited to work with the young girl Isa as a game tester. Uesugi is completely immersed in the perfect virtual world created by K2 and is amazed by its realism. However, as the test progressed, epsilon's behavior was so mysterious that he became suspicious, and the game constantly heard someone warn him: "Run!" "It's a brain-opening sci-fi masterpiece.
Old Will's Planet
(Sun) Written by Issui Ogawa, Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing Co., Ltd. September 2019 edition, 46.00 yuan.
Kazumizu Ogawa is a famous Japanese science fiction writer who is 45 years old this year. His science fiction works are extremely rigorous in technology and readable, and are widely favored by readers. He has won the Japan Nebula Award four times for "The Sixth Continent", "Drifter", "Arisma's Favorite Monster", and "From Mount Chloe to Jupiter Troy". Old Will's Planet is Ogawa's first collection of short and science fiction stories, featuring four of the best stories about how different intelligent beings survive in extreme circumstances. Isolation, apocalyptic crisis, true and false life, boundless loneliness... From individuals, teams to races, the protagonist of the story will find life and the meaning of life in the midst of crisis.
"Substitute Body"
(Japanese) Soki Yamada, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, September 2019 edition, 45.00 yuan.
The setting of Yamada's work is that in the future, human beings will invent artificial bodies that can store consciousness, the substitutes. By transmitting consciousness to the surrogate, a seriously ill person can use the surrogate to work normally and live when the body is hospitalized. An accident breaks the peaceful life of substitute adjuster Akira Hatta. The physical body of one of the progenitors he was responsible for died suddenly, but the surrogates mysteriously disappeared. Hatta then learned that someone had stolen the avatar and tried to use it to gain eternal life. Japanese biologist Shinichi Fukuoka commented: "Transplanting or integrating consciousness is an area that science is constantly exploring, and novelists take the lead in turning it into reality through imagination." It's a work worth pondering. ”
"Dream Reed Flute"
Written by Hayato Ueda, Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing Co., Ltd. July 2019 edition, 38.00 yuan.
This collection of novels is a recent novel by Japanese science fiction award winner Hayasato Ueda. The past and the future, spells and science, humans and monsters, the amazing world that no one has ever seen before, is here... This short story collection includes not only science fiction in the narrow sense, but also several works with bizarre and fantasy overtones. In Japan, such novels can be called science fiction in a broad sense as long as they actively interrogate topics such as "the meaning of human and social existence" and "the definition of intellectuality". The book revolves around the "essence of man", the theme is unified, the dimensions shown are also rich, and it responds to the most important motif in the history of science fiction.
"The Reason We Stole the Constellation"
(Japanese) Beishan Mengbang, translated by Zhang Beichen, October 2019 edition of Nova Press, 42.00 yuan.
"The Reason We Stole the Constellation" consists of five short stories, including a high school girl with a crush on the elder who secretly tries witchcraft in order to achieve a relationship; there are also crying children who wake up and find themselves in a fairy school that makes people forget time and sadness; and there are frustrated young people who work hard in Tokyo, pick up a mobile phone, thinking that life has turned around... But did the miracle really happen to them? When we believe wishfully, the harsh spell of reality unfolds. In the book, the beauty and darkness of human nature are intertwined. The novel is full of whimsy, and it is a masterpiece of short reasoning with a bitter and long aftertaste.
Crystal Silence
(Sun) Written by Shingo Fujisaki, Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing Co., Ltd. September 2018 edition, 60.00 yuan.
The story tells that in 2071, the higher creature "Sagan Biota" was excavated on the north crown of Mars. This creature has a brightly colored shell like an exoskeleton, but the inside is clean and hollow, reminiscent of the relics of the Japanese Jomon period - shell tomb. In order to find non-existent peoples, life archaeologist Asuka Inori was commissioned to go to Mars to investigate. There, the atmosphere between the Martian developing countries is tense and tense; on the Internet, "ghosts" haunt and attack human nerves; in reality, enigmatic epidemics begin to spread; around the settlements, crystal flowers that seem to have life bloom one after another... Shingo Fujisaki's works are imaginative and suspenseful.
"Star Shinichi Shonen Science Fiction" (5 volumes)
Xingxinyi, translated by Li Chongmin, Anhui Children's Publishing House, January 2019 edition, 110.00 yuan.
Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997) was a Japanese science fiction veteran who, along with Komatsu Sakyo and Yasutaka Tsutsui, was known as the "Mizoya" of Japanese science fiction. In 1957, Hoshi shinichi co-founded Japan's first science fiction magazine,"Cosmic Dust", which made great contributions to the development of Japanese science fiction literature. "Hoshi Shinichi Shonen Science Fiction" is a classic selected from 1001 works by Hoshi Shinichi, among which the works have been shortlisted for the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award, the Naoki Award, the Special Award of the Nebula Award of Japan, and the Special Award of the SF Award of Japan. It is suitable for students as extracurricular reading materials, inspiring the imagination and stimulating interest in reading. The fascicles are "Emotional Television", "City of Dreams", "Delusional Bank", "Naughty Robot", "Hello, Earthlings".