The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories edited by Apostolou, Greenberg, Merril, & Davis

[james_davis_nicoll]

A (mainly) Disco-era foray by an assortment of Canadians and Americans into the mysterious world of Japanese speculative fiction.

The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories edited by John L. Apostolou, Martin H. Greenberg, Judith Merril & Grania Davis

Comments

[jessie_c]

Nice racist font in the title there :(
I hope this was published back in the before times when people thought that sort of thing was acceptable.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Yeah, the other year I was looking at the map on the flyleaves of a teen book set in not-India and telling the head of Youth Services that I was trying to decide if the font (with faux matras, like Devanagari) was racist or not.

[james_davis_nicoll]

You don't want to know what anime was called back then.

[(Anonymous)]

Heh

[mmcirvin]

I think it was already kinda questionable at this point.

[jessie_c]

...and that just makes it worse :(

[(Anonymous)]

Weird synesthesia effect from that font - I hear a certain melody whenever I see it (I suspect you know the one I mean)

[jreynolds197]

Judith Merrill spoke Japanese? I did not know that.

[patrick_morris_miller]

"Standing Woman"

So that's the story I've been trying to remember. I read it (in the supermarket (remember when supermarkets carried decent books and mags?)) in Omni and wondered a) why someone would write a story like that and b) why anyone would publish it.

(Mind you, I was like 11 at the time. And I still wonder both.)

[chrysostom]

I JUST read that this past week in the First Book of Omni SF.

[patrick_morris_miller]

It's misanthropist enough that, if it had been written by a white person, I'm sure that I would have been forced to read it for English class at some point.

(In the unlikely event that I ever encounter any of my English teachers again, I will ask them why they tried so hard to make me hate reading. Times ten for any teacher who assigned Dickens.)

[mmcirvin]

I'm pretty sure I read this anthology and I remember noticing that it included *multiple* stories with the same "what does the mysterious passage/action/disposal do? Surprise: it dumps consequences back on us" twist in the plot.