Haikasoru, an imprint of VIZ media, has recently been translating a number of Japanese science fiction and horror novels for the English-speaking audience. I recently had the opportunity to read two of the most recent releases, Zoo and Usurper of the Sun.
Now, before I start in on either book, let me throw out a disclaimer here: I have a general distaste for reading translations. Unless they’re done really, really well – the greek classics, for example, are usually translated pretty carefully – translations have a tendency to sound a little bit off. Which isn’t to say there’s anything overtly wrong here. The grammar’s all correct, and there’s not a fragment to be found. It’s just a matter of… I don’t know, a lack of life. It’s like reading, say, a Dan Brown or a Stephenie Meyer: they know how to use the English language to make sentences. They know how to string sentences together to form a plot. They just don’t know how to make it sound pretty, or really to raise it above the level of a bunch of sentences strung together. That’s how translations often turn out, and it’s especially sad because it’s no fault of the author’s. This could be the most beautiful prose in the world in the original Japanese. But once it makes the jump to English, nuances are lost. Some words translate in terms of strict definition, but lose their subtle connotations. Sentence structures become childlike, repetitive.
The point is, there’s some of that in both of these translations, which bars some of my own enjoyment. I’ve done my best to see past that for the purposes of these reviews, but I felt it’s an important thing to mention, since it could certainly affect your reading experience as well. Anyway, onto the books.
Zoo
By Otsuichi
Translated by Terry Gallagher
257 pages
$13.99
I know I said “novel” before, but that’s not entirely correct when it comes to Zoo. Rather, it is a collection of short, haunting stories that fall somewhere in between horror and science fiction. Occasionally, a fantasy or supernatural element creeps into the picture, but more often the horror is of an emotional, psychological nature. It’s the kind of horror fiction that falls close, or at least closer, to the fears feel in real life. In this way, the stories are pretty cool. Especially in prose form, the kind of cold, growing, pit-of-your-stomach dread we feel here is way more effective than mosters, gore, and other cheap thrills.
The concepts are often fascinating, as well. It’s the execution of these concepts that often falls flat. Many of them feel like an idea worthy of The Twilight Zone, laid out the way it might have been on NBC’s recent failure, Fear Itself. Take the book’s eponymous first story, for example. A man’s girlfriend disappears, and he gets a picture each day of her body as it slowly decomposes. The twist? He’s the one who murdered her, and in his grief, he’s convinced himself that he’s searching for her killer. Each day, he follows the clues to the cabin in the woods where he left her. It all comes flooding back, he takes a picture, leaves it in his own mailbox, and repeats it the next day. Oh, sorry, did I ruin it for you? Here’s the thing: no, I didn’t. The “twist” is revealed on the story’s fourth page.
Another cool concept forms the core of the very next story, In A Falling Airplane. A jilted lover, on the way to confront her ex, is on a flight that’s taken over by a hijacker who means to kill himself and take the rest of the passengers down with him. A salesman sitting next to the woman offers her a proposition: a syringe filled with a drug that will give her a quick and painless death. He wants to make one last sale before he dies – but will she take the chance, or will she hope that the plane is saved somehow? As it turns out, this interesting dilemma only forms the background to a bunch of passengers, and the hijacker, whining about why they’re homicidal and/or suicidal. Meanwhile, everyone who moves to stop the hijacker mysteriously slips on the same soda can and dies. Yes, you read that right, and no, it doesn’t make sense.
This continues through the entire book: concepts that should make for great stories, but don’t. Instead, they feel like the inverted, inside-out versions of the great stories they could have been.
Usurper of the Sun
By Housuke Nojiri
Translated by John Wunderley
276 pages
$15.99
This is a fun little sci-fi novel that offers an unfamiliar take on the tried-and-true “first contact” story. It follows a girl named Aki Shiraishi, who is meeting with her high school astronomy club when she becomes the first one in the world to witness a unique and bizarre event: the appearance of a massive tower on Mercury’s surface. Aki quickly becomes one of the most-interviewed people in the country, and questions rage about the purpose of the structure. Soon enough, it becomes clear that the tower is actually siphoning the materials that make up the little red planet, and using them to build a massive ring around the sun.
Eight years later, Aki is a brilliant scientist and the world’s foremost expert on “ringology” – the not-altogether-creative name given to the study of the bizarre and ever-growing ring that is already blocking much of the Earth’s sunlight. She travels to Houston to train for the Vulcan mission, which makes her the very first human to travel to the ring, and discover its purpose. It becomes clear, at this point, that the ring has been constructed by an alien race called the “Builders,” who humans will soon come into contact with. But how do we solve the problem of the Ring? Well – I’m not going to tell you that; that’s what reading the book is for.
The coolest part about Nojiri’s novel, to me, is the emphasis he places on a problem that’s rarely addressed in these kind of stories. Specifically, that’s the problem of how we would communicate with an alien species that’s evolved in a completely different environment. Obviously, they don’t speak any Earthly languages. What if they don’t speak with any verbal “language” whatsoever, but with thoughts or gestures or light pulses? Or not at all?
This problem – and, in a way, the absurdity of trying to solve it – is addressed and even emphasized here. It was my favorite part of what is through and through a fun ride and a very enjoyable science fiction read. The only thing that threw me off, at times, is how light it all seems. The narrative is simple, unconcerned, even whimsical. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – it just seems incongruous in a science fiction story that goes so heavily into the science aspect. It’s heavy subject matter, really, but it’s not told in a heavy way. This could be just because of the nature of translation, as I said before – things can sound a little simpler, a little more childish, when pulled out of their native language. In any case, it’s not a huge concern, and it didn’t keep me from enjoying it.
Recent Comments