Friday, June 4, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Anthology Review: Terminal Boredom by Izui Suzuki (Translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O'Horan)




Terminal Boredom is an anthology of translated short fiction by the late Izumi Suzuki, an apparent legend of Japanese SciFi (and described in both some reviews and the book blurb as a "countercultural icon").  Suzuki died (by suicide) in 1986 and I believe these stories were written in the 1970s, as the first of apparently two collections being released by this publisher this year.  Each story in this collection is translated by a different translator, and the collection is entirely barebones, with no introduction or post-script to analyze or explain why these stories were selected or their significance, leaving their enjoyment wholly to the reader to figure out.  

And the stories included in this collection are really interesting, dealing with issues of empathy, gender, imperialism, dreams, memory and more.  Despite the different translators for each story, familiar themes and character archetypes show-up throughout the anthology, making it very much feel as if some of the stories are connected despite taking place in some very different settings and times.  The stories are incredibly contemplative - each featuring protagonists going on long internal monologues about their thoughts about life and the situation, and emotionally abusive relationships are common throughout, so fair warning, this collection may not be for everyone, but Suzuki does some interesting things with them throughout.  

Trigger Warning: Emotional and Physically Abusive Relationships, one story features a possible Rape (maybe?), Suicide (multiple stories), Depression, Drug Use. 

Note: I read this in audiobook and while the reader is good, I don't recommend it in that format - you really need to read this to truly go over the passages and monologues, which is something you can't do in audio format.   This collection features the following stories:

Women and Women: In a future world where only women in live free and men are kept in captivity and treated as dangerous animals, a teenage girl sees a young boy at night through her window and works up the nerve to approach him, to see what she's missing.  

You May Dream:  In a future in which people are frozen for population control reasons, and can be transferred into the dreams of another, a friendless selfish woman consents to have the curious talkative idealistic "friend" come into her dreams.  

Night Picnic:  A family - Mom, Dad, Sis, and Junior - in an empty city attempt to act out their idealized family roles for their genders/ages, despite being really something other than human.  

That Old Seaside Club: A young woman on a trip to a pleasing planet where she can forget her shy life beforehand sees a young hot man who she can't help wanting to approach...but who she also feels like she knows from somewhere before this.  (Also there's a talking chair).

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes:  A Young woman addicted to dangerous drugs to maintain a state of euphoria finds them turning her so old looking that she isn't recognized by her old boyfriend.  

Forgotten:  A woman in an abusive possibly loveless relationship with an alien man from an idealized but conservative planet believes her lover to be a potential spy, as he tries to find a way to avert Earth starting a war to conquer his planet, with her being forced to come along for the ride.

Terminal Boredom:  In an overpopulated future with no work for everyone, an unemployed disaffected girl who watches TV all day talks with the boy she has a sorta relationship with, as he gets an implant that makes watching TV even more euphoric, such that its impossible to tell the difference between real life and media.  

The stories have a lot of common elements.  Depressed characters show up in four or five of the stories as the protagonists, and futures in which people have no hope or things to do are fairly common.  Gender roles are heavily discussed, especially in stories like Women and Women, where in the absence of men some women turn to male traits (and men are ascribed as having all the negative traits in the propaganda, even some traits that we wouldn't today traditionally associate with men) or in Night Picnic, where the alien family attempts to act out what they think from their readings are traditional gender roles.  A character, often the protagonist, who has no real driving force of their own and instead just sort of floats through life, saying whatever others want to hear without actually caring about anyone else, shows up repeatedly as well.

It's not a happy collection, and characters are frequently depressed and in abusive or bad relationships, as this collection does not paint a happy picture of the world's future for young people.  Nearly every relationship shown involved is abusive or loveless, with the most idealized relationship being in a story that turns out to be in a virtual world dedicated to allowing couples to reset their lives and to try and work things out from their starting points all over again (and which doesn't really work long term).  Mistakes of the past, such as war, abuse and destruction are monologued about as being inevitable to repeat due to the human condition on multiple occasions.  And Characters finding themselves in utter despair, with nothing to live for and thus suicide as a potential option, show up on multiple occasions, with one alien species in one story ("Forgotten") being able to live forever biologically but having a tradition of really only living until they, being unable supposedly to forget anything, find the emotion of despair which forces them to commit suicide since they will never forget that dismal feeling afterwards.  

There's a lot here, and it's deep, and well I probably should've read this in print instead of audiobook to properly consider it.  But its' worth your time, if the above issues aren't too triggering.

 

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