1974: The Destruction of the Temple (Malzberg, Barry N.)

Malzberg’s reflection on the state of the State in post-Kennedy America (4/5)

Malzberg is one author that defies genre expectations, the result being unknown to the armchair SF reader but a subject of interest to the SF fan, collector, and/or archivist. This is the third Malzberg novel I’ve read and, aside from the occasional indulgent sex scene, nothing feels familiar; Malzberg is a man of many pseudonyms but writes in as many styles as the Ramayana’s Ravana has heads. The Destruction of the Temple is a novel which is difficult to synopsize due to its chronological vagueness and direction of plot. This doesn’t make it a bad novel—not at all—;rather, the odd development of the novel challenges the reader, making it an engaging read where one play on words can change the direction of the novel.

Page-one synopsis (Pocket Books):

“The Director has come to the charred ruins of New York to re-enact a mad dream from the past—the assassination of President Kennedy. As actors, he has the primitive race who inhabit the city. With them and his glamorous, dark-haired lover, he rehearses everything—the motorcade, the shots, the panic.

But at the last moment it all goes wrong. When the flower-filled limousine rounds the bend, the passenger is not Kennedy—but the Director himself.

Shots ring out in a wild explosion of roses…”

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It’s the year 2016. The city has been left for rubble to the simple citizens who cling to existence within while the countryside denizens (the Institute) clutch at their remaining years of freedom and peace. It is in this countryside—outside the ruins of the city—where the soon-to-be Director toils under the patriarchal eye of the Committee. Solitary with only a one-man link to the Committee (there may be many, there may be only one man), he aims to quash the assumption that his research is petty and that he is idle. Fixating on the violence of the twentieth century—specifically the 1960, an era outside his domain of knowledge—the man plans a “re-enactment, a simple run-through for research purposes” (25) of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963; yet, rather than for mere research, he plans for filmed project to capture the social importance of the event for future studies:

[L]et me do it so that I can bring back to you a genuine reconstruction of an important historical event. What we have forgotten, living as we do, is that we are sunk in the trap of forgetfulness. We do not recall the seediness of these tragedies! They did not occur in high places among the cleanly garbed and assembled, but were, in fact, stumbling events which enacted very much as life lived in cities today. (32)

Ignorance is highlighted at the end of his statement because he doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of how life is lived in the city in 2016, only that the common thought of the city is one of despair, poverty, and vermin with the residents, derogatorily named lumpen (thefreedictionary: pertaining to disfranchised and uprooted individuals or groups, esp. those who have lost status). The commonly held belief that cities are the root of many social upheavals is further expounded by the Director:

[E]very single terrible which occurred in the historical period under review, every single terrible event occurred in the cities or around them, occurred as a direct result of the pressures and tensions of urban existence. The riots, the assassinations, the griefs and slaughters, poverty, filth, disease, decay, all of these were urban-centered and therefore we must conclude in any true study of the urban America of that period that the symptoms were indeed the problem, the cure was the disease! (59)

Here is one of Malzeberg’s offered insights into American culture and the basis for the novel: cities are the cancer of our society. Outside the city, people are at their best in terms of humanity; people are rational, sympathetic, and cognitive in the country while the city folk are detached, superficial, and despondent. The people in the city are also devious, adapting changing their tack to meet the circumstances’ most profitable outcome: “in America all faces change, the actors don different masks; in the repertory that is America nothing is quite as it seems but then again everything is exactly as it seems if we can bear the comprehension” (77).

This masked intent, veiled purpose, extends beyond interpersonal communication and touches upon government action; namely, the war effort in Vietnam. The government’s extended and failing campaign in Vietnam (1955-1975) frustrated the common man; the dispirited and weary soldier’s angst was transferred to the shared American psyche:

They’ve turned the war around … they can’t fight the war over there anymore so they’ve brought it back here …. they had to bring the machinery somewhere else when they couldn’t fight the war anymore out there so they’ve brought it back and don’t you see, we are the enemy. (117)

While the Committee doesn’t exactly agree with his philosophy of urban sociology, the project gets the green light. Along with his misconception of urban sociology, the to-be Director also holds a heavy bias toward the dehumanization the city’s lumpen. He sees them as sub-human, as willing victims of abuse because they are the “filthiest, dirtiest, degraded, least advantaged, malevolent and diseased” (35) segments of the human race; they have no purpose in their lives, they don’t communicate with each other, and move about with boredom. Repressed in their cordoned off ghetto, the people the countryside and the people of the city have a pact which is a mutual understanding that “we [the countryside] will not hurt them, that they [the lumpen] will not devour us” (111). Acts by the Institute had been implemented to limit their numbers—an act of war called The Sweep that took place in 1993.

It is in this city—the decrepit remains of New York City—that the Director hopes to shoot the re-enactment of Kennedy’s assassination, yet “New York makes an inconstant Dallas, the landscape itself is inimical to the sense of the production” (12). He makes due with the city’s terrain and organizes his actors—the same lumpen which he hates, yet he takes one as an unequal lover. To entice the heathens into his project, the Director says he’ll try to grant them leave from the city but his words are marred by his ill-intent; he harbors no feelings for them, wants to offer them nothing in return, and only wants his project seen to completion regardless of hurt feelings (if they have any at all). If they feel hurt, surely it can’t be any more grievous than the deaths in the city as death always lurks “within this city beast and its approach as casual as the scatter of shot from a rifle” (105).

The Director expects his film crew to arrive after he has filmed three run-throughs of the staged assassination, but each time the actors botch their parts or the physical parts of the setting come apart. All of this confusion sets the Director’s nerves on end and he lashes out at the pathetic lumpen, lambasting at their incompetence. To their defense, the lumpen claim they don’t know they context of their acting nor had they been told of why they were staging this assassination; regardless, the Director claims they can remain in their ignorance if were to just play their damned parts. But the wedge has already been driven between the actors and the director. As the Director is alone in the city, the lumpen descend upon him with looks of reprisal and justice, thereby spawning a series of hallucinations based on historical assassinations in the same era: “The edge of hostility … jangles me and makes my narrative somewhat less lucid” (62).

In inherent insanity of lynching and assassinating belong to the era is relived by the Director, through both eyes of the victims and perpetrators. Though the victims’ temples are shot and their brains splattered, their suffering is brief; “You think the victims suffered, do you? …. Then you ought to take a look at the perpetrators” (87). These deaths give the Director perspective on the repercussions of the actions, not just immediate results but long-lasting historical significance. With each death, there is a purpose; with each method of death, there is a portrayal of that person: “Death is the meaning of life. Death gives life structure and purpose and the manner of a man’s death defines everything he has been” (86).

The Director experiences the deaths; his lumpen lover and her city-dwelling cohorts force him to understand their repression, and the Committee remains out of contact, rendering him helpless—a perpetrator and a victim.

And here is Malzberg’s last thought on the state of the state post-Kennedy; writing this novel ten years after Kennedy’s death, Malzberg has seen the progress/regress of American social and government affairs and telescopes his vision of things to come through this novel. Starting from November 22, 1963:

[T]he bullets will impact, neck and temple, and in that hit the country will begin to die. From those entrance wounds will boil the blood of the nation and it will run free and ragged through the corpus and then through the room, all the rooms, the buildings, streets, cities and at last the country will sink underneath these rivers of blood … this country is going to blow up, no way that it could be saved then, no way that it should be saved. (135)

And here, in the above quote, is Malzberg’s genius in two plays on words: corpus/corpse and temple (of head)/temple (of reverence).

Gollancz Masterworks Wish List: Post-1980 novels

My precious.

SF fans from all walks—be they greenhorn newbies reading Dune (1965) for the first time (let's not discuss it here) or seasoned archivists hunting down novels by one-off authors—can all agree and appreciate one thing: the Gollancz Masterworks list. While every book may not cater to one reader, it does capture so many milestones through the evolution of SF, it highlights the victories of literature which have sprung from SF’s pulpy origins. The list includes powerhouse novels which every reader should read as a rite of passage—I’m looking at you Dune (1965) and Ringworld (1970)—yet there are other novels that even I haven’t heard of—Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds (1975) and Walter Tevis’s Mockingbird (1980).

If you’re unfamiliar with any of the works, there are excellent reviews—all inclusive—in the fanzine published by Pete Young: Big Sky. Read the third and fourth editions.

The question: Could the list be improved?

The answer: An elite team of trained SF bloggers scheme to produce superlists.

Actually, it wasn’t as diabolical as it sounds. I jest.

Anyway, Joachim Boaz suggested the project months ago and we—the elite team of superfriends—shot off into seclusion to eye and paw at our personal libraries. After the eying and pawing affair was over, we all selected books that should be included in the Gollancz list for one reason of another. Below are my five choices, a selection that focuses on novels between 1980 and 2000. This time period, especially after 1990, is a budding era that will slowly be integrated into the Masterworks library. I understand that one of two of the novel below are still being published, but the others deserved to be lifted from the ashes of those decades.

For reference, here are the other and their themes:

Joachim Boaz: yet-to-featured and female authors prior to 1980

Admiral.Ironbombs: classic novels and authors that have slipped through the crack
Couch to Moon: Truly MASTERworks and the endangered species
Ian Sales: classics from 1950-1994
Jesse: a similar post-1980s selection of modern classics
Tongues of Speculation: translated classics
Martin@Cloggie: female authors through the decades

Phillip Mann’s The Eye of the Queen (1982)

Phillip Mann is a lesser-known author whose works have graced the minds of readers since 1982 with his freshman novel The Eye of the Queen. Regardless of it being his first novel, Mann had followed up the equally as genius novel Wulfsyarn (1990) and much later with The Disestablishment of Paradise (2013). Though his brilliance speckles the latter four decades, it is his first novel, The Eye of the Queen, that lingers on weighs upon my mind with its hypnotic concoction of the evasive extrospective of alienness and the elusive introspection of humanity. Too often in science fiction, aliens never live up to their categorization as being truly alien. Authors throw in a certain quirk which makes them “alien” to the human characters, but when taken objectively, very few alien races created by science fiction authors stun the mind. Phillip Man created such a race in The Eye of the Queen—an alien species that will always remain alien because their nature will forever be elusive to the humans who search for understanding. Spiritual and altruistic, the Pe-Ellia race are enlightened in both media of interpersonal and intrapersonal ways. Compound this with journalistic narrative through the eyes of the contact linguist, Marius Thorndyke—his detached reflections on contact with the aliens and their world gradually liquefy to subjectively taint or purify the understanding of his own nature. Is the symptom of difficulty in integrating a prognosis of his inability to grasp their evasive alienness, or is it his incapacity to relate the experience of their alienness to his own nature? The Eye of the Queen is one of the most powerful portrayals of the difficulty of understanding an alien race and humankind’s reflective struggle to integrate into their understanding of themselves.

More on that: SFPotpourri, Phillip Mann, Death Robots from Mars, and ISFDB

Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka’s War Day (1984)

Apocalyptic stories have become fashionable thanks to the popularity of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). Holocaust by nuclear destruction is often a theme in these stories of human apocalypse, where humanity struggles with radiation, mutation, starvation, and roving bands of those who have chosen to digress. Where War Day differs is in its foci; rather than center on the general decay of humanity and the local dissolution of common ways, Strieber and Kunetka—both as authors and as narrators, uniquely enough—tour the lands of post-nuclear America in order to capture the state of the people, the state of the land, and the state of the future. The book opens with Strieber’s words: “The survivor’s tale is the essential document of our time” (3). And so, the entire novel follows this announcement just as even these first words follow the dedication of the novel: This book is respectfully dedicated to October 27, 1988, the last full day of the old world. Nor is this account of the aftermath merely a snapshot of what ensued after America’s rain of nukes, but it is also a report on what could have happened during the insane icy relationship between the USA and the USSR. It’s important not to forget that embarrassing part of our shared history—nuclear war was always a near-at-hand reality for much the twentieth century and War Day captures that what if? in shared objective and journalistic circumspect and the subjective swath of human experience through the eyes and fingers of Strieber and Kunetka. No other nuclear novel, other than Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), captures the technical and human elements of nuclear war as well as War Day. It’s not only a great novel, but a document of could have happened.

More on that: Apocalypse Books, Amazing Stories, and ISFDB

Iain Banks’ Consider Phlebas (1987)

Algis Budrys once referred to Greg Bear and Gregory Benford as the “Killer Bs” after they each wrote a novel based on Asimov’s Foundation universe (the Second Foundation Trilogy). With Bear and Benford being sympathetic fellows, they included David Brin—who also wrote a Second Foundation novel—into their Killer B brotherhood. Budrys, Bear, Benford, and Brin: that makes four Bs from America, sadly forgetting their cousin across the Atlantic Ocean—Iain M. Banks. While the original Killer Bs are all notable authors of science fiction through the 1980s and 90s, none of them had a style coined after their surname—that accolade is given to Banks, whose Banksian style is infused with far-flung future, galaxy-spanning utopian civilizations. This Banksian science fiction began in 1987 with his first SF novel Consider Phlebas (though his first novel was the non-genre but still fantastic Wasp Factory [1984]). This salvo of a novel was the first shot of many across a quarter of a century (1987-2012) and acted as the impetus for modern British Space Opera. This landmark novel established an expectation for every novel that Banks would ever publish, but frustratingly for some readers, Banks would not always stick to this formula of success. Regardless of whether he wrote a Culture or stand-alone novel, each was infused with a remarkable wit that pushed the boundaries of dark humor. Consider Phlebas is a detailed landscape of universe building (for the then upcoming Culture series), a foray into the darkly humorous mind of Banks, and a thrilling adventure through both—the Culture and of Banks.

More on that: SFF.net, Speculition, Aerin, and ISFDB

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars (1992)

He was not the first or the last to write a novel taking place on Mars, but readers of science fiction can’t talk about Martian stories without mentioning Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s not only a pivotal novel for SF, but it also happens to be a pivot for NASA’s exploration for Mars. In the same month as the book’s release (September), NASA’s Mars Observer was lost; prior to this, the last visit was in 1975… but after Robinson’s novel, fourteen missions have been launched. Everyone who has read the Mars trilogy is familiar with the names John Boone, Frank Chalmers, Hiroko Ai, and Desmond “Coyote” Hawkins. These characters become a part of your life when you read the trilogy; they are of utmost importance to the novels, to the future history, that almost physically manifest themselves to the reader. Even years after reading the novels, you can still feel the tension and hope, the expectations and regrets. As these characters develop into their future selves, one character evolves on a more epochal scale—Mars. The idea of colonizing Mars has been done before and after Red Mars; so has the theme of terraforming Mars, but watching the transformation of Mars through the trilogy is a spectacle in itself. What’s beautiful (yes, beautiful) about it is that Mars isn’t becoming more Earth-like, rather it’s maturing into its own form with a helping hand from the characters mentioned. And like the shift in its once lethal gaseous atmosphere, so too does the Martian constitution evolve from toxic anarchy to fertile progress. I can’t be alone is thinking that I would shorten my own life to see another book in the sequence, something that, as a connoisseur of novels, I loathe to hear anyone saw about any novel I cherish.

More on that: Speculiction, Martian Chronicles, Wertzone, and ISFDB

John Updike’s Toward the End of Time (1997)

When it comes to literary SF, a few names immediately come to mind: J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany, and Gene Wolfe. But… did you know that John Updike wrote a novel in 1997 that takes place in the year 2020? It stands as one of his few SF stories but, golly gee willikers, it captures one aspect of humanity that a few novels have attempted but they haven’t quite created such a picturesque snapshot as Updike has written—the elderly dealing with change. As Updike aged, so did his characters; lecherous yet inflective, the archetypical male were represented as the same character and were never bound by time, be it Harry Angstrom in Rabbit, Run (1960), Joey Robinson in Of the Farm (1965) or Ben Turnbull in Toward the End of Time (1997). Toward the end of Updike’s own era, his characters took on the misery of hopeless nostalgia as a symptom of their inability to cope with changing times. In Updike’s 2020, nuclear war with China has changed the American way of life and, rather than gripe and moan about it all, Ken Turnbull attempts to adapt at the age of sixty-six. His adaptations to the new reality have mixed success, but as circumstances keep altering against his will, he’s unable to adjust. There on, Ken experiences alternate realities where life could have taken him, unreliable echoes of his history that cast an uncertain future. Ken’s not even sure which version of his reality is the here and now. No other SF-esque novel has captured the frail essence of the aging mind in circumstances that would daunt even the soundest of minds. It also happens to have succulently syrupy prose and imagery that stuns the mind.

More on that: SFPotpourri, NY Times, The New Yorker, and ISFDB

2007: Speculative Japan (van Troyer, Gene & Davis, Grania)

Unparalleled collection in quality, variety and depth (5/5)

Contents:

• Komatsu, Sakyo: “Savage Mouth”
• Hirai, Kazumasa: “A Time for Revolution”
• Tensei, Kono: “Hikari”
• Taku, Mayumura: “I’ll Get Rid of Your Discontent”
• Ishikawa, Takashi: “The Road to the Sea”
• Yamano, Koichi: “Where Do the Bird Fly Now”
• Toyota, Aritsune: “Another Prince of Wales”
• Fukushima, Masami: “The Flower’s Life is Short”
• Ohara, Mariko: “Girl”
• Tsutsui, Yasutaka: “Standing Woman”
• Hanmura, Ryo: “Cardboard Box”
• Yano, Shinji: “The Legend of the Paper Spaceship”
• Kaijo, Shinji: “Reiko’s Universe Box”
• Kawakami, Hiromi: “Mogera Wogura”
• Yoshimasu Gozo: “Adrenalin” 

Komatsu, Sakyo: “Savage Mouth” (shortstory, 1968/1978) – 5/5

Synopsis: Sickened by the absurdity of life, one man prepares to turn his own world inside-out. Stocked with pans, knives, slicers, burners, an oven, sauces, vegetables, and relishes, the man sets up the last and most important piece of equipment which he has been procuring for three months. Supine on the table with his legs stretched, the machine cuts and cauterizes, slices and dices. Order up.

Analysis: This is a classic piece of the horror sub-genre known as “body horror” and my favorite piece to-date. Not only is the scenario graphic and horrific, but the underlying allegory plays on a few different levels.

The obvious superficial parallel to the gruesome plot which the reader will first be drawn to is the connection between the consumer and their consumption—here, one in the same. The self-cannibal, an unnamed man as mysterious as his true motives, seeks independence from the vicious cycle of consumption and waste. Slowly, the man is able to work on his grisly task from the ground up—legs, waist, innards, etc. The titled “savage mouth” is the same mouth as the ever-consuming capitalist.

But looking at the man’s original stated motives—“The world we live in is worthless, absurd. Staying alive is an absurdly worthless thing” (43)—the reader can see his desperation for returning to a primitive state where reason is inconsequential and beyond the grasp of the animal-state. Through self-cannibalism and replacing his fleshy body with prosthetics, he becomes less human and more unnatural. His final conscious act of consuming that which makes him conscious is his parting wish, resulting in a animalistic urge to feed without reason—“the blind aggressive compulsion that lies in wait at the heart of all animals” (51).

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Hirai, Kazumasa: “A Time for Revolution” (shortstory, 1963/2007) – 5/5

Synopsis: With the mindset of a common bully and with the ruthlessness of a gang boss that he is, Shin and his band of brother rules his petty piece of turf with an iron fist in 1967. While knocking back a whiskey and waiting to collect his protection fee, Shin’s mind is flooded with poetry he later learns is from Byron. Confused by his newly found gift of poetry and sympathy, Shin heads home, where the artists in his mind hatch their plan.

Analysis: The plot written in the synopsis is framed by the artists in the latter portion of the same synopsis. The story initially opens when a small group of humans emerges from the Pit—the deep underground prison where all humanity is kept, bred to become akin to domestic pigs. The earth, however, is scorched and barren and they are being chased by their captors. Being a world dominated by machines, it is the machines that they fear, hate, and wish destroyed.

In a time when—I guess like any other time in post-war Japan, actually—technology was becoming an increasing part of daily life, there was an obsession with mechanization in all areas of life (even massages—the first massage chair was invented in Japan in 1954). All this mechanization replaced the skill of human hands, thereby devaluing our humanity. If machines can do everything that our hands and minds can do, what is there left to our so-called humanity? In the Pit, the artists carry the torch of the human spirit in their artistic endeavors, but their subterranean prison is merely another prison within the barren earth.

Naturally, with progress there is something left behind. When there is collective progress, very little attention is paid to what’s being left behind, only that forward is the way to go. The naysayers of progress are seen as conservative, but they also act as a telescope to the past, re-evaluating modern ways in terms of the past—a past which is continually being lost. Kazumasa Hirai may be insinuating that artists are our links to the past, but aren’t Luddites more in touch with the past?

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Tensei, Kono: “Hikari” (shortstory, 1976/2007) – 5/5

Synopsis: Along the railway line, another city of lights sends its spectral beacon into the defused sky. As one man wonders of the oddity of its alienness, another man tells his tale of its becoming while others hang on his every word. One day, his family became placid and content—brightness blazed behind their eyes. They were left oblivious to emotion and maintained a clean godliness to the city. When confronted with the errant ways of the flesh, enlightenment came. 15 pages

Analysis: Inspiration strikes some in unseen yet life-changing ways; sometimes, a dream will shift your perspective on reality or a single instance can flip your paradigm. These epiphanies elevate the human experience, embracing individual experience for the better—in essence, these enlightenments help us become better, more positive people. However, this change is purely internal and does not actually change the world around us… unless it’s collective.

In “Hikari”, this enlightenment (if I must use a play on words—the people of light do experience a sort of transcendence) benefits those touched by its simplicity. They are objective in every approach, even to family matters; they see cleanliness and godliness, like the wholeness of white light; and they actually care for the errant humans in their community. The ones not touched by the otherwise shared objectiveness, are the errant ones, the ones attached to vice. Their anger boils over as they feel belittled by the perfect emotionless of the touched. Though the touched cause no direct injury or harm, the errant ones channel their internal anger externally toward the touched—a move which, itself, transcends the boundaries between the two kinds of people. As an individual epiphany can change the world very little, a collective epiphany can radiate the light of righteousness.

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Taku, Mayumura: “I’ll Get Rid of Your Discontent” (shortstory, 1962/2007) – 5/5

Synopsis: A curious shabby item at a curious shabby store draws one man’s attention yet he is unable to read the paper instructions of the object unless her purchases the hand-sized trinket. Inside, he discovers the welcome gift of three wishes that will appease his discontent. Amid an argument with his boss, he uses his first wish; while a train arrives late, he uses his second; the third placates a friendship. Regardless of the “fatal” consequence, he keeps it.

Analysis: Pain is an essential mammalian experience that requires all mammals to learn in order to avoid repeating the same mistake, the same pain. However, pain comes in many varieties: the physical pain of cold, heat and pressure; the mental pain of regret, sadness and anger. Each experience with these pains alters our approach to life—you get burned by a flame, you stay away from flames; you get burned by a blond, you stay away from blonds.

If this learning tool is avoided, the physical and mental scars will build up over time into a eviscerated mess of primality… but if this learning tool is replaced with one that changes the experience, what will the result be? Without the physical sense of pain, a man would become a human bulldozer, without emotional pain, a man would become, yet again, a human bulldozer. Therefore, pain is essential as a learning tool because it aligns our trust on painlessness as a pleasant experience.

Now, compare: a) to be without pain because of invulnerability and b) to be without pain because of contentment. Respectively, one is a Caterpillar bulldozer and the other is a Woomba vacuum; one is a wrecking ball and the other is an aggie marble. If a bulldozer had emotion, how would it feel if it suddenly became a vacuum? If a wrecking ball had emotion, how would it feel if it suddenly became a marble?

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Ishikawa, Takashi: “The Road to the Sea” (shortstory, 1970/1981) – 5/5

Synopsis: Having seen the sea in picture-books alone, a boy sets off to see the sea with his own two eyes. On the way, the boy meets an old man at the end of town who locates the sea in the sky alone. Unperturbed by his ill logic, the boy continues on foot over mountains and plains to chase his imagination, filled with whales, sharks, mermaids, octopi, kelp, coral, and pirates.

Analysis: Starry-eyed from the fictitious tales in his storybooks, a boy lives a fantasy in his head of all things oceanic. Seemingly without supervision, he sets out on his own to witness the great expanse of the sea not knowing the distance of location of the same sea. His youthful innocence and inquisitiveness are admirable, yet the old man who stops him is the hurdle in his quest: heed his advice and turn back or push through and seek out.

Though erratic in his words and actions, the old man—a fork in the road of the boy’s journey—is wise with age and his peculiarities may have a grain of truth. Too young to appreciate his elder’s advice, the boy pushes on. Did his culture not engrain in him the importance of heeding advice from his elders? Even if he had accepted this tacit custom, should he allow the subjective truth from one man to smother his dream.

Like the many pinches of salt in the ocean, the boy takes the old man’s words with a grain of salt and pushes forth, directionless, toward the ocean which surely must be over the horizon. He sleeps and walks, repeats these actions, and eventually stops to look at the stars in the desert night, longing for home to which he can never return.

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Yamano, Koichi: “Where Do the Bird Fly Now” (novelette, 1971/2007) – 4/5

Synopsis: The sight and flight of birds are often taken for granted, but one man’s interest is piqued when he experiences birds swooping in front of his face, but no one else shares his vision. Further, it seems that they are a figment of his mind but not his imagination. With each swoop, the man’s reality is altered along parallel universes. Deep in the forest, he meets a self-described “bird watcher” who knows of the trans-dimensional birds.

Analysis: The man in the story had always had birds flying “in front of his face” but they were actually trans-dimensional birds affecting his mind. Each time one of the birds swoops, the man’s reality is altered slightly to that of an alternate timeline; one bird is a small timeline change while a flock of the birds shifts his timeline drastically. However, the man hadn’t learned of this seemingly idiosyncratic phenomenon until late in his life even though the birds had always swooped. So, unknowingly to this man, his reality shifted time and time again yet he didn’t know that the reality he was experiencing wasn’t the same reality from where he originated.

That’s a pretty heavy statement: He never knew his reality was changing; He unknowingly lived each day in a different parallel universe; He could never be the same man as he had begun. This shows in the man’s resultant complacency when he learns the truth from the so-called bird watcher. The simple sparrows of trans-dimensional flight, which alter the man’s reality, swoop and flock with cause. The bird watcher knows: What happens to the bygone realities? To and from, where do the birds fly? What is their mode of existence?

The man’s experience seems to be unique, aside from the bird watcher’s inclusion. Why are they the only two to discover their altering perceptions of reality by cause of the birds? It’s not as if his old reality is forgotten about; he can pick up a newspaper and see minor differences from his old reality: “Janis Joplin releases third album → Janis Joplin dies suddenly” (107). Unfortunately, he cannot control this changes, he cannot generate a more idealistic reality to counter instances of past regret.

One major event that changes his perspective, and the onset for the story, is one of death and fire. Viewing the mayhem with Noriko, a bird swoops; the following day, his companion, Noriko, couldn’t recall the event of death and fire. Eventually, Noriko disappears from his reality. Barring Noriko’s inability to recall the event, some events in our lives seem to have no catalyst for change, no impetus for a shift in our daily lives, no cause for the result, no why for the altered now. How many times has someone just dropped from your life without a word, never to be heard from again? Two words, two proper nouns, one name: Alison Mayfield. It happened to me when I was only 15 years old. I must have been living in a bubble universe because no one else knew her—her and I existed on one plane of reality then she suddenly shifted from my timeline; gone forever; no causation.

Tracking down causation for change is an ancient human endeavor and is more often than not granted to the power of the gods. Here in “Where Do the Birds Fly Now”, this agent of change isn’t a supernatural god, but trans-dimensional birds whose plan/flight/flocking is just as mysterious as the causation for so many of our daily struggles with change.

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Toyota, Aritsune: “Another Prince of Wales” (shortstory, 1970/2007) – 3/5

Synopsis: In the twenty-first century, England and Japan have mutually declared war on each other and the United Nations approves of the formal hostilities. People around the world rejoice and are eager for the climactic battle limited to war machines of 1941. Keith is on the War Supervision Commission for the UN, who travels to Japan to await the start of the battle, surrounded by eager recruits and anxious spectators.

Analysis: Keith is mixed-blood man—the two halves from English and Japanese lineage. He is in a unique position to with the War Supervision Commission to assess the motivations of the two war instigators. Whereas the Europeans see war as a game where prisoners are held, traded or even cared for, war for the Japanese is a serious affair of art and dignity; rather than capturing prisoners, soldiers are executed. Times have changed, however, and war has been formalized into an absurd game.

The War Commission exists so that war is ensured to entertain the population of the world and that that war is exciting, going so far as to even have a favoring hand in the battle so that the brief clash satisfies the masses. These occasional and very brief wars are valves of stress that countries use to release tension and that people watch to ease their own tension. If this reflects our reality, does America, then, have too much pent up stress? Do they feel the need to bloodlet because of their stressful way of life? I guess being the self-imposed world police would be kind of a stressful job especially when that police force is so ignorant of the same world. To quote George Orwell: “"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

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Fukushima, Masami: “The Flower’s Life is Short” (shortstory, 1967/2007) – 3/5

Synopsis: With an electronic synthesizer, Rina creates luminescent flower arrangements in vivid and three-dimensional works of art. In her eighth decade of life, she is dedicated to her art and remains unattached to any partner. Her friend Yuri offers her a teaching position, but when contemplating the career move, Rina’s lover from fifty years ago manifests in her studio, making her long for a move in relationship, too. 10 pages

Analysis: Through the course of a flower’s life, it will bloom untold times, each time as beautiful and similar as the last. People, too, blossom throughout their lives in terms of their career, sexuality, education, etc. While each of these is a subjectively unique experience to the person, the objective view is one much like that of the blooming rose: one blossom is just like the rest all over the world. Subjectively, when we anticipate a fresh blooming—the pinnacle of an achievement or ceremony of accomplishment—some residual scent of past accomplishment (blooming) always lingers on the mind; this success and reminder of success is a familiar friend.

As Rina contemplates her next professional blooming as a teacher, her mind recalls the blossoming of love she had earlier in her life. Though she loved and lost, her finding a man whom she can love enduringly when apart is a big part of her artistic soul. Her reverie of fantasizing about teaching is shattered by the recall of her love life; however, just as their time together was brief long ago, this illusion is far too short. Her mixed sentimentality of success (blooming) catches her off guard, thereby dampening the excitement she held for the teaching position. Awash in regret, her tired heart flutters like autumn leaves.

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Ohara, Mariko: “Girl” (shortstory, 1985/1991) – 3/5

Synopsis: An avian-like man with mammalian breasts sips cups of nectar at a bar and receives unwelcome stares and free drinks from admirers around. Calling himself Gil, yet unrecognizable from his original form as Jill Abel, he leaves the bar and falls in love with a woman in ill repute; unfortunately, they make separate ways, leaving Gil heart-broken. Dancing an obscene dance on stage, Gil catches sight of the woman again.

Analysis: This is one of the most bizarre stories in the collection, so it’s not surprising that it’s difficult to pin down an analysis which fits most nuances of the story. Jill Abel seems to be a personality of some repute, regardless of this repute being ill or distinguished, Jill has some cause for celebrity which they have cast off in order to assume a lesser yet more flamboyant appearance. Assumingly and psychologically, Jill was a male but has since resorted to a female named Gil, though their physical being exists in the grey area between the sexes.

With Jill’s transformation to Gil, internal emotional luggage is carried along regardless of the exterior façade of sexuality. Their choice to assume a more ostentatious plumage, a more ridiculous exterior, does not quell the internal struggle that they had experienced prior to the change. Once proud of Jill’s fame, now Gil survives with being a dancer as gaudy as their chosen attire; but depression follows them in spite of any change. When this girl shakes their world, their life is momentarily changed and they’re unable to focus… possibly a symptom of their indecision or indecisiveness to choose a path for life, sex, or sexuality (IMHO, not that there are actually two separate, individual sexes, but rather a smeared grey between the two popular notions of male and female).

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Tsutsui, Yasutaka: “Standing Woman” (shortstory, 1974/1981) – 4/5

Synopsis: For lack of greenery and for want of stiffer punishments, a city turns the unruly into arborous sculptures. A postman and mail clerk complain of their wages only to get their feet planted into the ground to become a manpillar and, one day, a mantree—complete with foliage and bark. The same treatment goes to embittered housewives and students who line the streets, while dogpillars and catpillars occupy gardens to be fed and loved or forgotten to become derelict bonepillars.

Analysis: In a megapolis, dogs and cat—though only a few years old—can be seen pointless additions to the city’s strained resources; further, those even mildly embittered by daily inconveniences are seen as a superfluous part of the population. When a city is pressed to buy and place foliage within its constrained city limits, the excessive parts of the same city are snipped from their functions and placed in public areas.

Because it takes a while for a cat, dog or human to eventually grow into a tree, their initial planting is a reminder to the other urban dwellers to conform. Later, these same catpillars, dogpillars, and manpillars offer the city its greenery in their original form, be it with bark and leaves.

In “Standing Woman”, the reader sees this all through the eyes of a writer who see himself on the border of being rebellious and even superfluous to the city. His old dog Buff was once planted as a dogpillar only to be forgotten about by the city to become a bonepillar. Now, his wife has been planted just outside a hardware store. Though she’s still able to talk and retain some sensation, he fights an internal battle to show her his love by visiting or by respecting her wishes and staying away from her and her eventual pulpy entombment.

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Hanmura, Ryo: “Cardboard Box” (shortstory, 1975/1980) – 5/5

Synopsis: Boxes in a factory become self-aware when their bottoms are taped shut. At the prospect of being filled, they are overjoyed. Once filled with tangerines and brimming with rapture, the boxes meet “a box for pencil boxes” in the loading truck who spins a story of abuse and abandonment which all boxes must face. The protagonist box, however, desires to be filled until no space remains, yet witnesses the death of his cuboid comrades.

Analysis: Kobo Abe’s shortstory “The Flood” was an allegory about the depression of the blue-collared working force and their struggle to find power when oppressed. This short story—one of only two published in English, which is also included in the same collection—is an allegory about the enthusiasm of university students in their diligent move to improve themselves for entering the work force. But the story goes further into their disillusionment when actually entering the work force, a hostile environment when its own perils. And little did they all know, life for them is just a conveyor belt.

After graduating high school, students are given their diplomas; they are deemed educated with the knowledge given them (they are “taped up” yet ubiquitous and numerous). Entering university, they are eager to fill their mental vessels with further knowledge; thus, being overjoyed. After being filled with tangerines (the live-giving fruit of knowledge), the university students meet a jaded professor (“a box for pencil boxes”) who warns them of the drudgery of blue-collar work and its ultimate fate—destruction (breaking down the box). Ever disillusioned, the last enthusiastic student of life endeavors to learn more and more, to be promoted higher and higher even while witnessing the burnout of their peers.

When the result of an education is only to end up as a salaryman, where does the enthusiasm die? How has youthful exuberance been quashed? What lays beyond retirement, what use is a person after their working age?

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Yano, Shinji: “The Legend of the Paper Spaceship” (novelette, 1975/1984) – 4/5

Synopsis: An isolated mountain village in Japan is home to Osen, a woman swathed in rumor and mystery—said to be the remaining heir to a family fortune and sole survivor to a family massacre. The reality is that she’s the willing town harlot and folds and flies a paper airplane while naked. The town’s men take advantage of her youthful beauty while many of the women scoff at her indecency; regardless, her sexual existence inspires a minority of the town. When she becomes pregnant, the villagers are astonished to hear her speak as she demands that she keeps the baby, which the villagers reluctantly allow. One soldier visiting from outside hears her lyrical songs which he believes may represent corrupted versions of historical lullabies and point an interstellar finger at her true origin.

Publication: This is one of the most famous translated Japanese SF stories, having been published in seven different anthologies. That doesn’t surprise me because it has the beautiful aura of Japanese-esque with its imagery of bamboo enshrouded in mist. One thing is strange though: Tetsu Yano is considered “the Dean of Japanese SF” yet doesn’t have any other stories translated into English. Aside from the three publication stated above, this story can also be found in The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (Penguin, 1986), Tales from the Planet Earth (St. Martin’s Press, 1986), and The Road to Science Fiction 6: Around the World (White Wolf Publishing, 1998).

Analysis: Though it may be the most famous and most published of the all the stories, it’s also one of the most straightforward stories in a collection where allegories abound. There’s a theme of identity lurking among the pages of this hauntingly beautiful story, but there is the added treat of linguistics which captures the mind of many readers.

Though a human in all physical regards, Osen is treated as an outsider because of her obscene behavior. Rather than being cared for and sheltered as their own kind, the villagers treat her an ostracized shame and the men also treat her as a pleasure palace. Her mind is an alien territory of insanity and ambiguity, but little do the villagers know that she may actually be from an actual alien territory.

Her son is better adjusted to the life of the village, though he too is ostracized for being the shameful spawn of Osen. Obviously able to speak and comprehend matters, he seems intelligent—only, they don’t know of his secret telepathic ability which he keeps to himself for his own means. The boy, Emon, slowly understands the common emotions of the people and even dips into the neurosis of many of them, including guilt and jealousy. He also senses that his mother, while disconnected from reality, also has the same telepathy but doesn’t employ it as he does.

The linguist part of the story is a slippery one; it may in fact directly relate to Osen’s heredity or it may simply be the observer’s fancy to explain the situation; regardless, the reader is left to draw their own conclusion. The soldier hears snippets of songs and thinks “with only a shift in syllabic division” or “single change of consonants” (209-210), the children’s song could explain to much more:

Original Song	Construed Version
Hitotsuki-tai “First month—red snapper!”	Hitotsu-kitai “One: ship’s hull”
Futatsuki-kai “Second month—then it’s shells!”	Futatsu-kikai “Two: machines”
Mittsu-enryōde “Third—we have reserve, and”	Mittsu-nenryōde “Three: fuel”

From misunderstanding Osen and misunderstanding her song, the village had built Osen’s narrative for her: one with a scrambles mind who sings childish songs. The soldier, however, gets closer to her true narrative: the descendant of a star faring race who recants checklists for their return to space. Whether she’s an insane shame of the village or the insane child of the stars, he place on Earth is hopeless.

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Kaijo, Shinji: “Reiko’s Universe Box” (shortstory, 1981/2007) – 4/5

Synopsis: Upon Ikutaro and Reiko’s wedding, they receive an anonymous gift of a “universe box” which actually contains a miniature universe within. As Ikutaro spends more time entertaining customers than with his subservient wife, Reiko’s attention shifts to the stellar mysteries of the box. Inside, a white star blazes, which she names Ikunosuke, and planets orbit. While these bodies have motion, the marriage quickly stagnates without emotions and one temper flares.

Analysis: The most intricate of gifts, the most detailed of items are often kept away, unappreciated, in closets or shelves so as to keep them from harm; fragile Bone Chine plates are stacked with liners in the dining room hutch while the plethora of visual and audio art on vinyl records are slotted away in the stereo cabinet. Another remarkably detailed gift is that of a human relationship; however, unlike plates and records, which can be rediscovered and brought back out, the stowing of emotion is irrevocable.

The husband invests his time at work, perhaps securing a future for the young couple, but while he’s thinking merely of the future, he has forgotten the single-most important focus of the now—his emotion. His wife had to find a way to cope with the emotionless state of her husband, the simple and placid state of their lives, so she turns her attention to the wonder held within the glassed box; there, she finds remarkable detail of which her marriage has been without. The husband finds this turn of attention to be adulterous. Rather than share in the wonder of detail from the box or in their emotion, the chasm of misunderstanding divides them, a chasm like that of the blackhole which has spawned inside the box.

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Kawakami, Hiromi: “Mogera Wogura” (shortstory, 2002/2005) – 5/5

Synopsis: A clawed, miniature-man-sized mole lives as most moles do in Tokyo—underground with his wife and with a roomful of humans sleeping on futons. Most of his human captives are the kidnapped people from the same city where the mole works and are despondent or downtrodden on life, so his subterranean refuge is a type of convalescence, he says to himself. An office worker by day, a magical kidnapper by night—he stalks prey.

Analysis: Mogera wogura is the binomial name for the Japanese mole. By nature, it’s a solitary creature that lives day in and day out beneath the turmoil of the surface—by day, it toils about yet by night it slumbers in the same abode. The exact same could be said for down-trodden salarymen—their eyes hidden from the sun for most of their waking day, a salaryman toils in caves of concrete and glass, only to return home to abodes of wood, concrete and glass, all the while ensconced by the walls that surround them.

The protagonist mole in “Mogera Wogura” is the enlightened sort that you’ve never come across. He has a good life working in the city, but he just happens to have the habit of collecting the dispirited among the city dwellers. His intentions are not nefarious; rather, he would just like to kindle the spark in each of the dispirited. Most of his compatriot moles forever toil underground, living out their miserable lives; but he is an example, one of which has risen above the doldrums of the commonplace. He collects the downhearted humans for hope that they too do not have to be complacent with their city-ways of life. Eventually, some awaken to their purposes and are granted leave while others are stubborn to change and die miserably.

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Yoshimasu Gozo: “Adrenalin” (poem, 1976/1980) – 4/5

Synopsis and Analysis: A mythical forested land of birth and renewal is ethereally juxtaposed with modern day Tokyo: now what humans call a river that runs through the city was once simply Birth Road; paths to shrines are now rivers of electricity. Each day in this place holds a place in the undying Spirit Diary, where the heavenly narrator dabbles with hell while urging the humans, her children, to naively seize the day.