Novel of the week: Red Girls by Kazuki Sakuraba

Viz Media first appeared on my radar in the late 80s and early 90s with their pioneering work bringing translated Japanese manga to the USA. Trying to strike translated gold twice, in 2009 Viz created its imprint Haikasoru to publish English versions of Japanese science fiction and fantasy novels. 

The results of this work are paying off. Their translation of All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka inspired Hollywood to buy the rights to the novel, which eventually become the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow. (Side note: Haikasoru editor and author Nick Mamatas wrote a synopsis of the book, part of which Hollywood absolutely loved. This resulted in the following bit of Nick's writing becoming the most widely read and quoted words he ever created: "Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers".)

Now Haikasoru has released Red Girls by Kazuki Sakuraba, a novel which, if there's any justice, will be read by even more people than All You Need Is Kill.

The subjects of these two novels couldn't be more different. Described as a "multigenerational saga of matriarchs, manga, and murder," Red Girls fits more comfortably in the genre of magical realism than hard fantasy or SF. The novel follows the lives of three generations of women in the Akakuchiba family in a steel-producing town in rural Japan. Spanning the times from Japan's defeat in World War 2 to the modern day, Red Girls is — to play off Nick's quote above — Forrest Gump meets One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Except that the novel is also far more than that. Red Girls is gripping, beautifully written, and as insightful as any fiction I've read this year. The characters draw you in and keep you moving through life with them. And this is a novel even non-genre fans will love. My wife, who isn't a fan of SF/F stories, loves Red Girls.

With All You Need Is Kill and other translated novels and anthologies, Haikasoru has proved there's a market in the Western world for Japanese genre fiction. They continue their winning streak with Red Girls by Kazuki Sakuraba. I urge people to read this novel, which will be on my shortlists for next year's Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.

Story of the Week: "No Rez" by Jeff Noon

Last week I praised Priya Sharma's short story "Blonde" from Interzone's Sept./Oct. 2015 issue. Well, Interzone must be on a roll because the same issue contains another of the year's best stories, "No Rez" by Jeff Noon.

The rez in the title refers to resolution, as in the number of pixels available for seeing in this futuristic world. Thanks to artificially enhanced eyes humanity can access not only our own limited field of vision but also the countless cameras and devices recording everything in life. This creates an overwhelming range of what you can see, a high-rez view of the world which both overwhelms and subsumes what it means to be human.

The main character in "No Rez" is Aiden, who earns his living bicycling around the city uploading what he sees to the world's ever-flowing net of life. His dream is to actually see in "high rez," a dream impossibly out of reach for poor people like him whose eyes see only low resolution views of reality.

"No Rez" is frakin brilliant. This is what science fiction short stories should be. The closest I can come to describing this story is to say it combines the narrative urgency of Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah..." with the all-encompassing world creation of William Gibson's Neuromancer. But "No Rez" is also totally different than these examples, a story like no other. "No Rez" is a primal scream of a story swallowing the reasoned insanity of today's ever connected world.

Unfortunately, I fear few people will read "No Rez." The story is told in a unique stream of consciousness style which will turn off many readers, not the least among them the editors of the year's best anthologies and some of the people who vote on the various genre awards. If the story is reprinted in any of these anthologies or makes the award shortlists it will be a miracle. But that doesn't change the fact that "No Rez" is a SF story you should immediately seek out and read.

The new issue of Interzone proves that the British magazine remains on the cutting edge of SF/F short fiction. Seek out this issue today. You can purchase it through Amazon for their Kindle or through Weightless for other ebook formats. Print issues are also available in the UK and, in the near future, should be in select US bookstores.

Story of the Week: "Blonde" by Priya Sharma

I dislike fairy tales, which long ago lost any worthwhile cultural resonance. Due, no doubt, to the ceaseless commercialization a la Disney princesses and a million other Hollywood sins, all of which removed the bloody edge of birth and death from what were once tales imparting life lessons across generations. When I see a fairy tale these days I run the other way unless convinced otherwise by someone whose judgement I trust.

And I trust the storytelling judgement of Priya Sharma. Which is why I read her new brilliant new short story "Blonde" in the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue of Interzone.

"Blonde" is a retelling of the traditional Rapunzel fairy tale. Yet instead of being trapped in a mythical tower in a forest, here the titular character is thrown into a dystopian modern world of poverty and criminals and starvation and life among the ruins. In Sharma's retelling — which can be read equally as science fiction or fantasy — Rapunzel's ever-growing locks are valuable solely because they're blonde, an almost mystical hair color which has nearly passed from the human gene pool. But humanity's fixatation on blond hair is in no way healthy, as Rapunzel discovers to her horror.

"Blonde" is a gripping, eerie, well-written tale with the most compelling Rapunzel I've ever read. And unlike any Disney reworking of the fairy tale, this story retains its razor-slice edge as it presents a thought-provoking examination of the stereotypes and beliefs which influence the world around us.

I've long loved Sharma's stories — for my money she's one of the most underappreciated short fiction writers in the SF/F genre. She's also one of the few writers who could convince me to take a chance on a fairy tale retelling. In this case I'm glad I did.

Novel recommendations for September 2015

Last month I named my favorite science fiction and fantasy novels for the first part of 2015. As a continuing effort to highlight novels worth reading, I've updated the list by asking people to recommend their own favorite SF/F novels of 2015.

I've arranged the list starting with those novels which received the highest number of recommendations. The people who made the recommendations are listed at the bottom. While a number of authors recommended novels, none of them were allowed to name their own works.

I plan to update this list on a monthly basis through the end of the year, so if you have SF/F novels to recommend send them my way. Please limit recommendations to two novels per month per person. Yes, this means people who already recommended novels can send more recs each month. And before anyone even tries, it's not hard to figure out when people are trying to game my tally system. So don't ask people to flood me with recs for your novel.

In addition, I'm also compiling lists of recommended 2015 short stories, anthologies & story collections. So send those recs to me.

Novels with multiple recommendations

• Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear (5 recs)
• The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard (4 recs)
• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho (4 recs)
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (4 recs)
• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu (4 recs)
• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (3 recs)
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik (3 recs)
• Updraft by Fran Wilde (3 recs)
• Court of Fives by Kate Elliott (2 recs)
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (2 recs)
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (2 recs)

Novels with one recommendation

• The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak
• Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop
• Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe
• Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
• Tracker by C.J. Cherryh
• Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
• Gemini Cell by Myke Cole
• White City by Seb Doubinsky
• Unseemly Science by Rod Duncan
• Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
• Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton
• Day Shift by Charlaine Harris
• Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley
• Dark Heir by Faith Hunter
• Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos
• Cold Iron by Stina Leicht
• Labyrinthian by Sunny Moraine
• The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam
• Touch by Claire North
• The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
• Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
• Windswept by Adam Rakunas
• Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas by Kazuki Sakuraba
• All That Outer Space Allows by Ian Sales
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
• Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp by Molly Tanzer
• A Headful of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
• Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig
• Weathering by Lucy Wood

Many thanks to everyone who shared with me their favorite SF/F novels of 2015: Aliette de Bodard, Richard Bowes, K Tempest Bradford, Maurice Broaddus, Adam Callaway, Shaun Duke, Andy Hedgecock, S.L. Huang, Aidan Moher, J. Oliver, Jeffrey Petersen, Joe Sherry, John H. Stevens, Charles Tan, Jetse de Vries, Eddi Vulić, Sean Wallace, Paul Weimer, Cynthia Wentworth, AC Wise. There were also a handful of people who asked to remain anonymous.

If anyone sees errors on this list (such as novels which weren't first published in 2015), let me know.

Update: I removed Pivot by L.C. Barlow and Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett because they were published in previous years. I also moved The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson to my pending short story post because it is a novella.

Novels worth reading, August 2015 edition

So far 2015 has been a very good year for genre reading. During my recent trip to Japan I read two novels which I highly recommend:

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
• Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp by Molly Tanzer

Murakami's novel is obviously amazing, being recognized as a modern classic. But it's also an insightful, beautifully written science fiction story which dazzled me all the way to a very disturbing yet perfect ending. Tanzer's novel is one of the best first fantasy novels I've read this year and a fun, captivating story with a main character I loved. I definitely want to read more adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp.

Earlier this year I read Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings, which I also really enjoyed and highly recommend. The novel is a dynamic epic fantasy which avoids the cliches and inanities plaguing most epic fantasies, which are usually far from being at all associated with the word "dynamic." Hell, most epic fantasies wish they had even a little of Liu's ability at dynamic writing.

Let me repeat that word. Dynamic. Always wanted to use the word "dynamic" multiple times in a review.

I also recently read Marko Kloos' Frontlines series (Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure and Angles of Attack) and found it to be a good addition to the space opera genre. I'll definitely read more of the series when new editions are available. This is also a series which improves with progressing novels, with this year's Angles of Attack being my favorite.

I'm also currently reading or about to read the following novels:

• The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
• Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas by Kazuki Sakuraba
• City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

As a side note, I read Okorafor's Lagoon last year and really enjoyed it. I often dislike first-contact novels but Okorafor transcends that subgenre's usual cliches and melodrama by focusing instead on how human interactions would be challenged and changed by aliens. The novel was released last year in Europe but is only now available in the U.S. Highly recommended.

I'm also looking forward to a number of pending releases, including

• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
• Empire Ascendant: Worldbreaker Saga #2 by Kameron Hurley

I'd love other recommendations of 2015 novels to read, or any good novels from previous years which I've missed. If you have any recs, let me know.

Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention Signal to Noise by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. I really enjoyed the lyricism of this novel but had forgotten it came out this year, not in 2014. I also should have included The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi on my list of novels I'm currently reading or about to read.