The first volume in English of this avant-garde feminist figure's work shows her approach to SF and fantasy as personal cultural commentary
No comments
There always seemed a massive gap between the things science fiction and fantasy promised they could do, and the things they actually did for the most part. I was weaned on some of SF's most maverick and outré minds -- Philip K. Dick, Stanisław Lem, "James Tiptree Jr." (Alice Sheldon), Doris Lessing, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney -- and if they set such a high bar, it was only because all of us would be better off for it. When I found out too much of the rest of SF didn't come anywhere near that level, I lost interest in the genre for a long time. Call it a prejudice on my part, but there it was.
If Izumi Suzuki's work had been published in English in my youth, I would have added her name to that short list. Terminal Boredom is the first volume of her work to appear in English, and I can only hope it isn't the last, because Suzuki's legacy as a person and a writer is too fascinating to be lost in the language gap. Her work will have little to offer for those who are interested in SF from what I guess could be called the "mechanical" perspective, where the author comes up with some gizmo or discovery, and either tries to spin a plot around it or investigate its social impact. Suzuki was more interested in the personal side.
Continue reading
