#izumi-suzuki — Public Fediverse posts

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Short Story Review: Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the sixth installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s ruminative “Wanderers and Travellers” in International Science Fiction, ed. Frederik Pohl (November 1967).

Please note that Rachel and I are interested in learning about a large range of authors and works vs. only tracking down the best. That means we’ll encounter some stinkers. Thankfully, not this time! We got a powerful one.

Unfortunately, Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021) does not exist online. Thankfully, a large range of her SF stories were translated and published in two volumes by Verso books with various translators. You can acquire Terminal Boredom (2021) and Hit Parade of Tears (2023) at relatively inexpensive prices online. Recommended.

“Terminal Boredom” dose double-duty as the 35th installment of my review series on media landscapes of the future.

Previously:  George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966).

Up Next: TBD

Enjoy!

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review

In an article on the “iconoclast” Japanese sf writer Izumi Suzuki, Andrew Ridker distills her stories down to three words: “Ambivalence, disappointment, resignation: Suzuki’s stories speak so eloquently to our burnt-out moment that it’s easy to forget the importance of her cultural context” (LitHub, 5/7/21). We are indeed burnt out, more burnt out even than when Ridker was writing just four years ago. It’s now 2025 and time to face the fact that Facebook and YouTube have been around for over twenty years. The iPhone has been around for nearly that long, and for an entire year, the world was turned upside down during a pandemic, during which time we were even more closely connected to our devices. We’re burnt out by phones, by the rapidly-developing world of AI, by the streaming services that offer us so many choices that it’s nearly impossible to pick something to watch.

It’s almost as if Suzuki foresaw this moment, for her story “Terminal Boredom” is about this addiction to technology, though since her piece was written in the 1980s, it’s television—not the smartphone—that has snared everyone. The protagonist/narrator, a nameless young woman (everyone is nameless in this story) leads a dreary life, with very few job prospects and only television to keep her company. In fact, everyone is very connected to their tvs—so connected, that they’ve started having devices wired into their brains to make the watching experience more immersive. As the narrator’s mother explains, “When the monitor is turned on, it begins to stimulate the brain. The subject no longer has to flip the switch each time; instead, a weak electrical current is transmitted automatically at appropriate intervals” (204).

Despite the ubiquity of tv, real conversations do happen. Three of these conversations make up the bulk of “Terminal Boredom”–two are with the narrator’s sometime “boyfriend,” while the other is the aforementioned talk with her mother. Only referred to as “HE” and “HIM,” the boyfriend talks to the narrator about another girlfriend he has who actually wants to have a baby the “old fashioned way.” The narrator marvels at this and both think about how the people of their parents’ generation seem to have so much energy and drive, while their generation has none of that—the tv has taken over everything. Now, with these devices connected to their brains, people can feel as if they are participating in the story they’re watching, which is more interesting than their boring, real lives.

During this conversation, the two witness a man beat a woman to death on the street. Capturing it on film, the boyfriend later tells the narrator that he finds it thrilling and plays it over and over again in his room. As he explains “I end up putting a frame around everything I see…It makes it seem fresh, helps me relax as a viewer” (200). This eruption of violence into a tv-addicted, tightly-constrained society, where one isn’t allowed to linger in a public place for more than twenty minutes, is what makes this story so unnerving. The narrator finds herself thinking about her parents’ divorce and her father’s remarriage, only to then find out from that second wife that her father committed suicide. At the end of the story, her boyfriend asks her to help him kill his pregnant girlfriend because he doesn’t want the responsibility—he just wants to “slip quietly into oblivion, all by myself.” He tries to convince the narrator with “[t]hink of it as a TV show. Pretend you’re an actor” (216). Only violence ultimately gets a reaction out of the narrator, since she winds up crying for the first time in her life.

The constant stimulation from the TV has wound up dulling the narrator’s mind (as it has everyone else’s), such that the tendency toward a sedentary lifestyle has made them all weak and tired. And yet, the fact that the narrator has extended conversations with the two main people in her life (despite her brief, dull answers), offers a spark of hope—that she, as someone who hasn’t yet adopted the brain device, might still be able to think for herself and do something—anything—that might make life have meaning again. One gets the sense that what has happened to the larger society wasn’t an accident—the brief glimpses of an oppressive police state suggest that a passive society is an easily-patrolled one. Breaking out of her boredom would require the narrator to rebel against more than just her tendency to sit and watch tv.

Suzuki’s story is part of a larger collection that offers us a window into unusual worlds. Her work fits into the larger, complex, and wonderfully varied universe of Japanese science fiction, which blossomed after World War II, energized by the American sf that flooded it during the US occupation. Some of the best translated science/speculative fiction to come to American readers over the past 60 years, in my opinion, has been Japanese, including that by Yoshiki Tanaka, Yoko Ogawa, Mariko Ohara, Hoshi Shinichi, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Kobo Abe, Koji Suzuki, Taiyo Fujii, and so many more. Here one can find everything from space opera and body horror to har science fiction and surrealism. For Anglophone readers, Izumi Suzuki can take her place alongside these writers, with two collections now out in English.

A work of simmering horror and technological dystopia, “Terminal Boredom” will make you want to read more Izumi Suzuki and explore her grim, dark worlds.

• Cover photo by Nobuyoshi Araki for the 1st edition of Terminal Boredom (2021)

Joachim Boaz’s Review

4.5/5 (Very Good)

A Preliminary Note about the Verso edition that I wish I didn’t have to make: It’s a shame that the editors of Terminal Boredom (2021) did not commission an introduction about Izumi Suzuki and her place in the larger Japanese literary/SF world or even include the original Japanese publication dates for seven stories included. I identified the date for “Terminal Boredom” (1984) and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (1979) from a Japanese-language website and “Women and Women” (1977, rev. 1978) from SF Encyclopedia. It’s embarrassing/lazy that this information isn’t included in the edition. If you know of the rest of the publication dates for “You May Dream”, “Night Picnic”, “That Old Seaside Club”, and “Forgotten” in the collection let me know. As the organization appears to be chronological, I assume they were published between 1977-1984.

I imagine you’ve heard of the Japanese hikikomori, reclusive individuals withdrawn from social life, seeking “extreme degrees of isolation and confinement” often due to the pressures of modern Japanese society. Izumi Suzuki, more than a decade before psychiatrist Tamaki Saitō researched and popularized the term, imagines a similar phenomenon facilitated by new patterns of media consumption on an epic, and destructive, scale. There are a lot of angles to approach “Terminal Boredom” (1984), and its place within Suzuki’s work (both fiction and film). I imagine someone far more immersed in Japanese society and culture could tackle her take on gender and society in a more adept manner than myself! With that in mind, I will, as always, engage with an element that particular spoke to me: Sukuzi’s rendering of the media landscape of the future.

First a few words about the basic plot. A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions with “HE,” her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room (“or something”) in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him (193). She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the “aboveground” (191). Both youth find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

One of the recurrent patterns illustrating societal change Suzuki deploys is the TV frame (“ultravision”) as the new way of engagement with the world. Elections, if you can call them that, seem to be conducted via TV celebrities–people vote for a celebrity who then somehow chooses from a slate of candidates (195). Restaurants brag about their TV programs instead of their food. She confesses “it’s hard to relax without something to look at” (193). HE mixes up the real and the unreal. In one instance he watches a woman being beaten: he poses, in front of the bloody woman, as if an actor in a scene from a TV show (199). He purchases an illegal copy of the beating, recorded by an observer, to relive the experience. And, as the horrifying finality of the tale sets in the appearance of a futuristic tech to connect with a program, ultravision becomes the only way seeing and feeling.

It’s punchy yet quiet. And like a Michael Haneke film, I found it possessed an unnerving ability to get under the skin.1 Suzuki has an adept ability to render the conversation, mentalities, and actions of the disaffected and deeply depressed: “Come on, how often do you think I can do something like that? It’s exhausting” (192) (a conversation about sex). Highly recommended.

Notes

1. I’m thinking The Lost Continent (1989) and Benny’s Video (1992). Both rank amongst my most disquieting filmic experiences. ↩︎

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

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A Japanese book club in India has drawn thousands of eager readers and built a bridge between cultures along the way. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2025/04/26/our-lives/mazumdar-dokusha-book-club/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #community #ourlives #japaneseliterature #india #indiancommunity #indiajapanrelations #delhi #newdelhi #izumisuzuki #sayakamurata #ginnytapleytakemori #saouichikawa #michikoaoyama

The cult writer’s autobiographical novel of hedonistic rockers is firmly grounded in a grim reality. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/11/12/books/set-my-heart-on-fire-izumi-suzuki/ #culture #books #izumisuzuki #helenohoran #showa #yokohama #kanagawa

2024: book sixty-seven (audiobook fifteen). #bookstodon #audiobooks #books #books2024 #2024books #izumisuzuki

Pause on walk home for coffee and cake in the Clock Cafe, started reading Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, translated by Helen O'Horan, coming from Verso in November.

Some descriptions sounded very old fashioned, but then I realised this was her first novel, from early 1990s, and set in late 70s music & clubland. Bit different from all the magical cafe & talking cat Japanese novels of late!

#books #livres #AmReading #bookstodon #IzumiSuzuki #JapaneseLiterature #cake #gateau

I really liked the first collection of Izumi Suzuki's short stories that came out in English a couple of years ago (Terminal Boredom). Hit Parade of Tears, the second collection, is just as good.

Suzuki, who died in 1986 at the age of just 37, was a pioneer of Japanese "punky" science fiction. Most of these stories are simultaneously quite sad and very funny, and despite being steeped in Seventies Japanese counterculture, somehow still feel very fresh today.

I absolutely loved the last few sentences of the story this collection is named after (and the final story in the book).

#IzumiSuzuki #鈴木いづみ #HitParadeOfTears

The cult literary figure's new collection of 11 stories unveil the chaos, conflict and pain of women rebelling against the desires of men and seeking messy self-actualization. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/05/07/books/book-reviews/hit-parade-of-tears/?utm_content=buffer7bbb2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=bffmstdn #culture #reviews #davidboyd #izumisuzuki #sambett #danieljoseph #helenohoran