Perfect Blue: Awaken from a Dream (2018)

Perfect Blue: Awaken from a Dream (2018)

Author: Yoshikazu Takeuchi | Translator: Nathan A. Collins | Page Count: 196

'The screen glowed in monochrome static, the snow-like pattern punctuated by pulsing flashes in the signal, each flash accompanied by an abrasive noise like a cicada's call.'

The blurb on the back cover describes it as a 'sequel' to Yoshikazu Takeuchi's Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis (2018), but it isn't that at all. And unlike CM, it's not a novel, but rather three separate short stories, similarly set in the pop-idol world.

I didn't enjoy the previous novel, but I'd foolishly bought Awaken from a Dream before reading the other, so I read it too, but with much lower expectations than I had for CM. I won't go into detail about each one because it would require giving the collection more time than I feel it warrants.

Takeuchi's basic template for a story is as follows:

Let the Old Dreams Die (2005)

Let the Old Dreams Die (2005)

Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist | Translator: Marlaine Delargy | Page Count: 518

'[E]verything is kind of temporary, somehow. As if things never really get started. Or that it's already over, and I haven't noticed.'

A collection of eleven short stories from author John Ajvide Lindqvist, most of which were originally published in his homeland as Paper Walls (2005). The translated English language edition added the titular Let the Old Dreams Die, which takes place after his most celebrated full-length novel, Let the Right One In (2004).

Similarly, the closing story in the book, The Final Processing, is a sequel to his full-length Handling the Undead (2005) novel. The remainder of the shorts are standalone works, but some could be called spiritual successors in other ways. (See NOTE at end of post.)

Some of the works will appeal to horror fans with a twisted and grisly imagination, but some will probably only really make sense to individuals who've felt isolated, distanced or uncomfortable in their own skin, or even in familiar surroundings.

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Author: Ray Bradbury | Page Count: 305 [1]

'The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye...'

TMP is Bradbury's account of mankind's attempts at colonising and taming the mysterious red planet. Like some of his other books, it's a 'fix-up novel', a collection of individual short stories that were penned over a number of years and later collected together with a newly written bridge narrative, a kind of literary glue.

He revised a few of the shorts and added intercalary chapters to help it better fit a novel's structure, but some discordance remains - none of which, it must be said, is enough to belittle the concept, in general.

Bradbury's Mars isn't the dusty, desolate, and craggy landscape that we've come to accept as the norm in modern sci-fi stories. It's ornate, delicate, an organic but equally stylistic extension of the planet's mystery and its peoples' imagination, which manifests as the kind of harmony that seems to exist perpetually out of mankind's reach.

The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories (2017)

The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories (2017)

Authors: Toh Enjoe / Gakuto Mikumo / Kafka Asagiri / Yoshinobu Akita / Tow Ubukata | Translation: Unknown | Page Count: 187

'Her cyborg form was an established item and not all that uncommon, but there was something special about the figure she cut. Something divine, divorced from this ugly world.'

The blurb on the back cover claiming that Five New Short Stories is a 'standalone collection' that 'requires no familiarity with the franchise to be enjoyed' is what's known outside of the publishing world as a falsehood, a fib, a damned lie, bullshit, because prior knowledge of GitS is needed.

Even ignoring the fact that someone new to the franchise will have no clue who the characters are, or any knowledge of their particular levels of cyberization, right from the very first story, a first-person narrative named Shadow.net by Toh Enjoe, prior knowledge is needed (specifically, Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society).

The Complete Future Shocks: Volume 01 (2018)

The Complete Future Shocks: Vol 01 (2018)

Authors + Illustrators: Various - see end of post for full list | Page Count: 320

'The 'Shocks' are the sudden twist endings that up-end the narrative, that can unnerve even as they excite and astonish.'

The first volume, in what I suspect will be a fairly long-running series, collects all of Tharg's Future Shocks from the weekly 2000 AD magazine.

Some of the stories included have been reprinted previously, in various collections over the years, but for many of the others it's the first time they've received such an honour. Crucially, the works are presented in the same order in which they appeared in the weekly magazine. Volume 01, therefore, opens with the very first self-contained Shock from August 1977, and goes all the way up to July 1981.

We'll Always Have Paris (2009)

We'll Always Have Paris (2009)

Author: Ray Bradbury |  Page Count: 210

'There was a sense of loss, a vacuum, an emptiness, a vast silence. The walls ached.'

If you're new to Ray Bradbury's work, it'd be advisable to start with one of his more famous collections, such as the sublime Dandelion Wine (1957) or, if you prefer a novel, the darker in tone Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) because I'm confident that most folks will have a more rewarding time with either of those books than with We'll Always Have Paris, a collection of twenty-two previously unpublished works that showcase the author at his less than stellar best.

Culled from a lifetime of writing (he was aged 88 at time of publication) the included stories range from familiar to surprising, frustrating to satisfying, but there's nothing offered herein that equals his earlier successes. Some of the works are little more than vignettes, borderless musings that in their brevity remind us how brief and fleeting a life can be. Most noteworthy is a Green Town story and one about Mars that may please long-time fans.

The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Illustrated Man (1951)

Author: Ray Bradbury  |  Page Count: 294

'...[P]erhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, in a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.'

Perhaps because of the 1969 filmed version of the same name — or perhaps in spite of it, if like me you don't consider it to be a very good adaptation — the book is one of Ray Bradbury's more well-known anthologies.

The sixteen stories that are included weren't written specifically for the collection, but were gathered together with a newly penned bridge narrative that explains how each individual tale is represented as an inking on the human canvas that is the illustrated man.*

While they take place across many different times and locales, thematically most of them have a connecting cynical edge, something that the master fantasist is more proficient at than people often give him credit for. It's a theme that complements the temperament of the titular man, a drifter who feels that the pictures on his skin have a weight that burdens his soul.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Light Novels (2004-06)

The Lost Memory (2004)

Author: Junichi Fujisaku | Page Count: 212 Pages 

"We still don’t know what their purpose is but I sense they have an aim of some kind, something different from that of the Laughing Man phenomenon."

In the first of a trilogy of GitS: Stand Alone Complex tie-in novels a group of revolutionaries calling themselves the Good Morning Terrorists are hacking cyberbrains and forcing the hapless victim to carry out acts of terrorism against the State. Major Motoko Kusanagi and her team of experts in Public Security Section 9 intervene to find the perpetrators.

Junichi Fujisaku had previously penned a number of episodes of the TV series, so was a good choice to carry the series into a different medium. There's a list of characters on page one with a brief description of their role, but the text offers little in the way of characterisation, so it helps if you're already familiar with the series. Readers new to the franchise may well be left scratching themselves, however.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005)

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005)

Author: Yiyun Li | Page Count: 205

'They were put into satin dresses […] and were each fed a cup of mercury. The mercury killed them instantly, so their peachy complexions were preserved when they were paraded in sedan chairs before the coffin.'

If it hadn't been at sale price and I wasn't desperate for something to fill a long train journey, I'd not have given A Thousand Years a second glance. There were a number of titles I could've chosen that day, but something made me purchase Yiyun Li's début. I can't explain why, because the blurb made it sound like a troubled romance novel and that's not my idea of a good read.

It mixes existing socio-political Chinese history with observations and personal insight in order to explore how cultural identity and familial upbringing influence our decisions and affect our lives. Li strives to highlight the consequences to the individual in a State where weakness is to be avoided and individuality can be seen as a silent precursor to insurrection.

The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892)

The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892)

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman  |  Page Count: 55

"It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions."

If you hear the name Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoken outside of critical circles, then it'll more than likely be in reference to The Yellow Wall-Paper. Her most famous work, it constantly overshadows all the others.

It's a short but deeply engaging first person narrative from a woman who, in the eyes of her physician husband, has fulfilled her main role as wife. Being of the weaker sex means she should quietly do as she's told for her own well-being. Confined to an attic room, with nothing to occupy her sharp intellect, her state of mind slowly deteriorates.

Her husband's cure for her sickness, one that he believes is of her own making, does more harm than good. Left alone she reads, writes and draws comparisons that wouldn't have existed had she been allowed to walk free. The patterned wallpaper is ever-present; its malignant influence is inescapable.