Legend of Japanese science fiction Izumi Suzuki’s dystopian short stories, in first English translation, play on gender relations and overpopulation
- The characters in Terminal Boredom inhabit a range of worlds, often overpopulated and with dystopian policies to address the problem of too many people
- Science fiction is often said to reflect the time in which it is written, and Suzuki’s covers population concerns, youth ennui and gender relations
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki (translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O’Horan). Verso
Izumi Suzuki was a “model and actor” in so-called pink films (soft pornography), a “counterculture icon” and legend of Japanese science fiction, whose life was intense and death tragic. Terminal Boredom is intended to be the first of a series of her books to be translated and published in English, with a second collection already in the works.
Of course, one should not judge a book by its cover or an e-book by its filename, but why – if you wanted a new readership to discover these works – would you name the collection Terminal Boredom (after the final story of the seven)? With this first appearance of the tragi-iconic Japanese author in English, the collection title might have highlighted other, non-boring aspects of Suzuki’s concerns: “Women and Women” or “You May Dream”.
As one character in the title story comments, “No s***, Sherlock.”
To be fair, even in “You May Dream”, the second story in this collection, endless ennui would describe the petulant and moodily impatient narrator. The story establishes a crowded world where the Population Department administers a Population Control Act coercing people into cryosleep. Dowdy, overweight Yoshiko (the narrator’s frenemy) says it straight: “They can call it cryosleep all they want, but it’s death – they’re putting these people to death.”
Whereafter, the cryosleeping appear in the dreams of a chosen friend – imagine a 1970s hybrid of the films Inception (2010) and Being John Malkovich (1999).
Yoshiko receives the unwelcome slip from the Population Department, and together she and the narrator wander the subconscious:
