Abstract

This is a short story collection by the up-and-coming science fiction writer Satoshi Ogawa, first published in 2020. It contains six stories with motifs of time and history and a wide variety of styles that combine genres such as science fiction and mystery. Science fiction tropes such as time travel and alternative histories are meticulously planned and concretely depicted (as magic tricks, experiments with electron accelerators, etc.), creating uniquely detailed worlds that capture the reader’s interest. At the same time, such science fiction settings serve as backdrops for personal stories—be they at the scale of family conflicts or battles against the state—which draw the reader into even deeper human dramas. Some of these works are clearly conscious of their predecessors (drawing comparisons with Ted Chiang and Yasutaka Tsutsui), and whether they be parodies or homages, part of Ogawa’s charm is the ambiguity of how seriously he expects you to take his stories. All six works are easily approachable, but their detailed settings and descriptions are brilliant enough to give you the urge for an immediate reread. This is a collection of masterpieces that crosses over multiple genres of fiction, including fantasy, historical fiction, and speculative fiction.

Author’s Information

Born in 1986 in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture. He currently lives in Tokyo. He partially completed doctoral coursework at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he researched the mathematician and logician Alan Turing. In 2015, he won the Grand Prize in the 3rd Hayakawa SF Contest for his novel This Side of Eutronica. After that, he won the Nihon SF Taisho Award and the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for his second full-length novel, Kingdom of Games. His short-story collection Lies and Canon was nominated for the 162nd Naoki Sanjugo Prize, and his story “The Magician,” which is included in that book, won the Silver Medal of the Galaxy Award, China’s most prestigious award for science fiction. His latest work, Maps and Fists, is set in Manchuria.