I'm not much for the now-"obligatory" award eligibility posts, despite the claims that they help level the playing field for fans that are spoiled for choice in their reading material. A decade in the Horror Writers Association showed me that few people actually expand their reading; instead they just identify their own interests, aesthetic or otherwise, with this or that writer and uncritically support whatever work is eligible that year. This same dynamic is behind the identity-based campaigning of the past few years, whether it involves concerns about privilege or tradition or political conservatism or particular fandoms.
I also don't like it when editors publicly support a particular work or works they acquired as it smacks of playing favorites, and yet, here I am. Partially I'm writing this because Project Itoh is the ultimate marginalized writer—he is deceased. The other writers whose work appeared in Phantasm Japan can campaign on their own if they wish. (There's nearly enough Japanese members of most Worldcons to get something on the ballot.) There is plenty of excellent work in Phantasm Japan, such as Sayuri Ueda's "The Street of Fruiting Bodies", Tim Pratt's "Those Who Hunt Monster Hunters", Yusaku Kitano's "Scissors or Claws, and Holes," and Dempow Torishima's illustrated novella "Sisyphean", which has split critics down the middle.
Project Itoh's novelette, "From the Nothing, With Love" is an engaging SF/fantasy take on the James Bond mythos, and I do mean mythos. It's also been the favorite of several reviewers and bloggers, and already has some recommendations.
For example, the Skiffy and Fanty Show writes:
“From the Nothing, With Love,” written by the late Project Itoh and translated by Jim Hubbert, is a fantastic, chilling little genre-bender that brings science fiction and metafiction to the espionage thriller; it grips from the opening and never lets go
Writer Aliette De Bodard has it on her list of stories for award consideration, writing -Project Itoh, “From the Nothing, With Love” (in Haikasoru’s Phantasm Japan). James Bond and ontological considerations–yeah, I know, doesn’t sound like they’d go well together, but they do. (ETA: moved to novelette following a correction).
Then there's this blogger, an Anglophone writer to lives in Japan, who is very enthusiastic:
From the Nothing, With Love, meanwhile, sees the late Project Itoh [trans. Jim Hubbert] not so much take the fan theory that ‘James Bond’ is really just a code name for a series of different agents and run with it as bundle a sack over its head, kidnap it, then drag it in a headlong sprint down the backalleys of technothriller and psychological horror whooping maniacally as he goes. It’s a gloriously baroque piece exploring similar notions of consciousness and free-will to his novel Harmony and is one of those stories that you might consider buying an anthology for all by itself.
"From the Nothing, With Love" is expertly translated by Jim Hubbert, reads so well that it feels like a short story rather than the 10,000-word novelette it is. There are plenty of stories in which Western writers examine some bit of Eastern culture (pop or otherwise), but few stories available in English in which a non-Western writer takes on such a seminal bit of post-war Western pop culture. (Well, except for everything Haruki Murakami writes, but he can take care of himself too.) It's an idea-driven story—remember when SF was the "literature of ideas"? It's a work in translation, a rarity for the Hugo ballot-though not for Itoh, who won a Philip K. Dick Special Citation for Harmony and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson award for his novelette "The Indifference Engine" as well. It even tangles with that thorny fannish question: How do all these James Bond adventures fit together after so many decades?
So, I'm asking you to check the story out by picking up a copy of Phantasm Japan from a bookstore or library, and giving it a thought come Hugo time, which is now, apparently.
And tell your friends. Thanks!
I also don't like it when editors publicly support a particular work or works they acquired as it smacks of playing favorites, and yet, here I am. Partially I'm writing this because Project Itoh is the ultimate marginalized writer—he is deceased. The other writers whose work appeared in Phantasm Japan can campaign on their own if they wish. (There's nearly enough Japanese members of most Worldcons to get something on the ballot.) There is plenty of excellent work in Phantasm Japan, such as Sayuri Ueda's "The Street of Fruiting Bodies", Tim Pratt's "Those Who Hunt Monster Hunters", Yusaku Kitano's "Scissors or Claws, and Holes," and Dempow Torishima's illustrated novella "Sisyphean", which has split critics down the middle.
Project Itoh's novelette, "From the Nothing, With Love" is an engaging SF/fantasy take on the James Bond mythos, and I do mean mythos. It's also been the favorite of several reviewers and bloggers, and already has some recommendations.
For example, the Skiffy and Fanty Show writes:
“From the Nothing, With Love,” written by the late Project Itoh and translated by Jim Hubbert, is a fantastic, chilling little genre-bender that brings science fiction and metafiction to the espionage thriller; it grips from the opening and never lets go
Writer Aliette De Bodard has it on her list of stories for award consideration, writing -Project Itoh, “From the Nothing, With Love” (in Haikasoru’s Phantasm Japan). James Bond and ontological considerations–yeah, I know, doesn’t sound like they’d go well together, but they do. (ETA: moved to novelette following a correction).
Then there's this blogger, an Anglophone writer to lives in Japan, who is very enthusiastic:
From the Nothing, With Love, meanwhile, sees the late Project Itoh [trans. Jim Hubbert] not so much take the fan theory that ‘James Bond’ is really just a code name for a series of different agents and run with it as bundle a sack over its head, kidnap it, then drag it in a headlong sprint down the backalleys of technothriller and psychological horror whooping maniacally as he goes. It’s a gloriously baroque piece exploring similar notions of consciousness and free-will to his novel Harmony and is one of those stories that you might consider buying an anthology for all by itself.
"From the Nothing, With Love" is expertly translated by Jim Hubbert, reads so well that it feels like a short story rather than the 10,000-word novelette it is. There are plenty of stories in which Western writers examine some bit of Eastern culture (pop or otherwise), but few stories available in English in which a non-Western writer takes on such a seminal bit of post-war Western pop culture. (Well, except for everything Haruki Murakami writes, but he can take care of himself too.) It's an idea-driven story—remember when SF was the "literature of ideas"? It's a work in translation, a rarity for the Hugo ballot-though not for Itoh, who won a Philip K. Dick Special Citation for Harmony and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson award for his novelette "The Indifference Engine" as well. It even tangles with that thorny fannish question: How do all these James Bond adventures fit together after so many decades?
So, I'm asking you to check the story out by picking up a copy of Phantasm Japan from a bookstore or library, and giving it a thought come Hugo time, which is now, apparently.
And tell your friends. Thanks!