Category: Sci-Fi / Fantasy

Feminism, Fiction, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Translation, Women In Translation

Hybrid Child: A Work of Wide-Screen Baroque Science Fiction by Mariko Ōhara

A question that came up during this year’s Best Translated Book Award was how much attention should be given to supplementary material? Or, put another way, how important is the context in determining how you feel about a book? An author’s or translator’s note, a forward or afterward by a famous fan, a podcast analyzing the text chapter by chapter or an interview with the … Continue reading Hybrid Child: A Work of Wide-Screen Baroque Science Fiction by Mariko Ōhara

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Feminism, Fiction, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Speculative

The Water Cure – A Feminist Dystopia

Title:  The Water Cure Author: Sophie Mackintosh Publisher: Doubleday (January 2019) ISBN:  978 0385543873   Just when it seems dystopian horror has had its moment, a new iteration emerges. The Water Cure, the Man Booker-nominated, debut novel of Welsh writer Sophie Mackintosh, depicts a distinctly female dystopia and arrives amidst the cyclical tides of the #MeToo movement. So, what fresh hell this? Three sisters are … Continue reading The Water Cure – A Feminist Dystopia

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Fiction, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Translation

The Sacred Era by Yoshio Aramaki, translated by Baryon Tensor Posadas

  Born April 12, 1933, Yoshio Aramaki’s writing comes to us from a different time. His novel The Sacred Era, originally published in Japanese in 1978, has more in common with classic American sci-fi short story writers like Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury—sharing their preoccupation with wonky metaphysics, biblical allegories, and performative misogyny—than with speculative fiction writers working in the present day. He leads … Continue reading The Sacred Era by Yoshio Aramaki, translated by Baryon Tensor Posadas

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Advance Review Copy, Fiction, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Science, Translation

The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi, translated from the Chinese by Darryl Sterk

Wu Ming-Yi, the Taiwanese author of The Man With The Compound Eyes, sets out to prove that these days the truth is stranger than fiction.  He pulls from his background as an environmental activist to describes a world facing environmental disaster. A disaster that resembles current events so closely that readers don’t need to expend their imagination to buy into the premise.  The events of Ming-Yi’s novel … Continue reading The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi, translated from the Chinese by Darryl Sterk

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Fiction, Review Copy, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Translation

The Swimmers by Joaquín Pérez Azaústre, translated by Lucas Lyndes

The Swimmers is a short novel published this past September by Frisch & Co. – an e-book only publisher focusing on translated fiction. Ostensibly about the end of the world, it features no natural disasters, barren landscapes or bands of survivors fighting savagely over the few resources that remain. Azaústre’s vision is much more surreal, one could argue that it is meant to function as … Continue reading The Swimmers by Joaquín Pérez Azaústre, translated by Lucas Lyndes

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