Terminal Boredom

February 15, 2021
This eagerly awaited short story collection by Japanese writer Suzuki (1949-1986)--her first book to be translated into English--showcases her fluency in the bizarre and surreal. Each story, set in a dark and punky future, depicts the lives of young people submerged in apathy. "Women and Women," set in a matriarchal utopia where men exist only in prison or in secret, tells the story of a young girl whose curiosity is squashed after her brief encounter with a boy who escapes isolation. "You May Dream" explores government-sanctioned population control in a society plagued by "a lack of self-confidence tangled up in fatalistic resignation." "That Old Seaside Club" turns rehab into a bizarre hypnotic sleep detached from the physical world. "Forgotten" examines the pitfalls of an overly stimulated and "dissolute lifestyle" through the semiromantic relationship between a woman named Emma and an alien named Sol. And in the title story, a TV-obsessed population indulges further with plans to enforce eternal screen time onto everyone in society. Though some people oppose the imposition, the story is much more concerned with the young protagonist's descent into idleness and indifference. Not much happens in these stories, and yet they transport readers to worlds both familiar and unfamiliar, indulging our fantasies and fears of the future. Suzuki writes with wonderful despair, showing humanity as resistant to change even as our societies and technologies fail us. She plays with interesting questions about gender and sex, and this is not a dry philosophical exercise. It is authentic and careful and was ahead of its time--even down to the media references that thoughtfully situate readers in the futures of the past. Dark and slightly absurdist, this collection is a poignant rumination on the despair and isolation of modern society. (N/A)

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March 1, 2021
This new collection is the first translated selection of work by sf writer, model, actress, and '70s counter-cultural figure Suzuki. Despite her fame in Japan and her influence on later artists, her work has until now been unavailable to English-language readers. The stories chosen for this collection showcase an author whose interest in alienation and despair as well as playful literary exploration parallels the work of other '70s sf titans such as Joanna Russ or Thomas Disch. Standouts among these seven excellent stories include ""You May Dream,"" a story that matches a world where people enter cryogenic suspension and live in their loved ones' dreams with a young girl whose bleak outlook sears even her dreams; the titular ""Terminal Boredom,"" where a young couple become intoxicated by the possibility of real violence in the midst of a media-soaked landscape; and the comparatively brighter ""Night Picnic,"" about a bizarre and anarchic family of ""Earthlings"" who try to embody the imagined values of a disappeared humanity. All of the stories collected here are essential reading not only for those interested in Japanese sf, but for anyone interested in spiky, beautiful, and bleak literature.

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