Translating Genre from Japan (Haikasoru Week addendum)

Haikasoru Week is over, but as an addendum, why not check out beatrice.com, who have just run an interview with two of Haikasoru's translators, Jim Hubbert and Cathy Hirano: To give just one example, the word miya, which is used in both books, means “palace” according to the Japanese-English dictionary. That seems simple enough—but what image does the...

Haikasoru Week: And the winners are…

And we have winners! I’d like to thank everyone who entered the competition this week, and everyone who’s visited the blog to check out our Haikasoru Week. I'm very pleased with the turnout, and hope we can feature another publisher highlight soon. In the meantime, the next Author Week is just around the corner! As before,...

Editorial: On Japanese SF, by Nick Mamatas (Haikasoru Week)

On Japanese SF By Nick Mamatas In Issui Ogawa’s The Next Continent, the “war on terror” is a political afterthought thanks to an American retreat from the Middle East; Japanese businesspeople see themselves as a counterweight to Western globalization; and engineers can do anything from building undersea vacation spots to constructing a wedding chapel on...

Review: Housuke Nojiri’s Rocket Girls, and The Last Planet (Haikasoru Week)

Housuke Nojiri: Rocket Girls (tr. Joseph Reeder) Housuke Nojiri: The Last Planet (tr. Alexander O. Smith) Review by Anil Menon   Given Japanese pop culture’s fascination with schoolgirls and science fiction’s fascination with outer space, it is all but inevitable that Japanese SF would try to merge the two subgenres into one: schoolgirls in space....

Tuesday Fiction: “Mardock: Two Hundred Below” by Tow Ubukata (Haikasoru Week)

Today on the World SF Blog we have an exclusive novelette from Japanese author Tow Ubukata, part of our Haikasoru Week! A best-selling series and a hot anime in Japan, Tow Ubukata's MARDOCK SCRAMBLE was recently released as one huge English-language volume epic adventure. This week's feature novelette "Two Hundred Below" is a Mardock City showcases all...

Haikasoru Week: Interview with Nick Mamatas

An Interview with Nick Mamatas by Charles Tan Hi Nick! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. This is Haikasoru's third year. What are your plans for 2011? We're pushing ahead with a lot of fun books. I'm very excited about Ten Billion Days And One Hundred Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse, for example—as far...

Haikasoru Week!

Following our first Author Week - featuring Ekaterina Sedia - which was both a success and a lot of fun (with more forthcoming), we've decided to do, in addition, a series of weeks focusing on genre publishers of international fiction, starting with the most exciting imprint to come around in a long time - Haikasoru,...