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stephenmeansme's review against another edition
4.0
The stories contained in this anthology are much more "Japanese" than "science fiction," I think. A better title might have been "The Best Japanese Wonder Stories" or something, as all of them have some wondrous element, but many fall closer to the magic-realism or fantasy or quasi-folktale side of things - mostly because of their short, almost impressionistic lengths. That said, they were mostly good, and the prose was good too - I don't know what fluent Japanese readers would say if comparing the originals to their translations here, but I did feel that some of the "Japanese-ness" came through fine.
There's additional historical interest here from a purely meta-level perspective, as this collection pre-dates the new "yellow peril" themes of much Eighties Anglo sf, where everyone thought that ultramodern Japanese megacorps would own everything in 199X or 20XX. And yet you can also see certain tendencies that would later crop up in fully-sfnal anime in the Eighties and beyond.
Highlights included "The Savage Mouth," "Standing Woman," and "The Legend of the Paper Spaceship" - not coincidentally, all very sfnal.
There's additional historical interest here from a purely meta-level perspective, as this collection pre-dates the new "yellow peril" themes of much Eighties Anglo sf, where everyone thought that ultramodern Japanese megacorps would own everything in 199X or 20XX. And yet you can also see certain tendencies that would later crop up in fully-sfnal anime in the Eighties and beyond.
Highlights included "The Savage Mouth," "Standing Woman," and "The Legend of the Paper Spaceship" - not coincidentally, all very sfnal.
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