A small, high-speed shuttle on the surface of the Moon. The Messengers had been traveling back and forth between Earth’s bases scattered throughout Sol System as far as Mars.

“The launch platform’s not available? What’s the story?” Orville called on his internal comm circuit. The voice of the human transport chief at Moon Polar Base North came back in a flat monotone. “Orders from headquarters. If you have a complaint, direct it to them.”
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SF with a strong female character? You WILL believe!

Alasdair Stuart, in his review of The Lord of the Sands of Time highlights one of my favorite aspects of the novel, the character of Miyo. He writes, in part:

She’s a quietly rebellious character, a woman of tremendous intellect and strength who manages to side step the stereotypes those character traits so often lead to. Miyo is fully aware not only of her responsibilities but of exactly how far she can push her luck. …In the hands of a lesser author, Miyo would be conflicted by the arrival of Orville, the other figure on the cover, worried about how her life would change or delighted to see that change made manifest. In Ogawa’s hands though, she becomes one of the most nuanced, grounded female protagonists of recent years, a woman who is tested to the limits by the horrific new world she’s plunged into but is up to the task and more. Miyo is a leader and her journey to that realisation is presented as subtly as it is realistically.

SF isn’t just a boy’s club. Check out The Lord of the Sands of Time and see what you’re missing.

 

The dial on the hype machine goes up to eleven!

Here’s a neat interview with me about Haikasoru’s launch and some future plans, plus the differences between Japanese and English-language SF! Check it out.

The British magazine SFX is running reviews this month of All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time in their print edition. Andrew Osmond writes in part:

Kill “is tremendously enjoyable, evoking not only Groundhog Day but also Ken Grimwood’s classic book, Replay, and the classic anime The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Lord has a “fabulous, borderline batty concept, with some wonderful wrinkles along the way” including references to the poet Robert Burns. “Now that’s something we never expected to see in a Japanese SF novel.”

 

Two Great Lord reviews

Luke of Luke Reviews checks out The Lord of the Sands of Time and writes, in part:

…Ogawa picks interesting times to jump back to, from the dawn of mankind to World War II. Orville and Miyo become very human characters that are easy to relate to, and when they are in danger’s way, suspense fills you over their well-being.

It does, you know.

Also, over at SF Signal, JP Frantz also raves, saying:

After seeing humanity effectively wiped out in stream after stream, O is full of despair, but continues to try to save mankind. This determination, this self-sacrifice is one of the best part of the books. Despite O being a kind of cyborg, he is fully human in his emotions. And he’s willing to do just about anything to save even one timeline for humanity. He’s a terrific character to hang the story on and is the driving force behind the main story line in feudal Japan.

Both reviews gave The Lord of the Sands of Time four stars!  Well, what are you waiting for, functional time travel so you can have read the book already? Get to buying now before everyone else has already checked out our first Haikasoru offering! Your friends will make fun of you if you’re the last on your block…

 

Like Henry V???

Our pals at io9.com have reviewed our launch titles to great glee and joy here at HQ.

All You Need Is KILL: Sakurazaka consciously constructed All You Need Is Kill like a great video game. In this he is mostly successful. The reader will feel immersed into Kiriya’s dilemma, not just through the all the action but also through his internal struggle to keep from giving up, to puzzle out what the hell is happening.

The Lord of the Sands of Time: ...there’s a great deal of passion to be found in The Lords of the Sands of Time. More of a tease than a spoiler— there’s a stirring speech to the troops in the penultimate act that has the same punch as Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day Speech. Yeah that’s right, I just referenced The Forever War and Henry V …

Aw yeah!

 

The Countdown continues or, Old Man’s War

When people here at work started asking me about the audience for Haikasoru books, I learned very quickly that shrugging and saying, “People who like science fiction, and adventure, and Japan” was not a satisfactory answer. Marketing people like demographic information. Well, they like demographic hunches at least. Nobody was outfitting me with the means to engage in large-scale consumer preference studies, after all. I mean, we’re talking about books here, not video games or movies. It’s the difference between selling to the tens of thousands instead of the tens of millions.

My hunch was that our primary audience would be those people in their late teens and early twenties I started calling “manga graduates.” That had a sort of buzzy, hip appeal. It made salespeople, even vice presidents, nod and point their chins in glee. “Yes, yes, manga graduates. That’s right. That sounds good.” But my secret hunch, indeed my secret dream, was that the old guard of fandom would like Japanese SF too. It’s more optimistic and fun than the sometimes dour stuff coming from the West. But it is also organically fun and wild and high-concept, instead of being so in a self-conscious retrograde opposition to the New Bleak.

Looks like I’m a genius! To wit, The Crotchety Old Fan (self-proclaimed) writes that All You Need Is KILL:

is destined to become a classic, at least in its English language translation. …

This story will find a place amongst the seminal military science fiction works pantheon - Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Ender’s Game (the latter I’ve only read in original magazine form; I don’t believe it belongs in the pantheon, but that’s probably colored by my distaste for the (fairly recent) political screeds of its author - many others do include it); it even manages to draw in elements of Gerrold’s War with the Chtorr series (which is itself somewhat of an homage to RAH’s Starship Troopers).

Seriously, he likes the book better than I do! Read the balance of Crotchety’s comments here at his recent blogpost.

Aside: I almost typed “Crotchy” rather than “Crotchety” up there. Looks like this post will earn a coveted “it was a monkey!” tag.

Anyhow, I’m excited and in less than a week you too will have the chance to see what got some Old Fan to drop his cane and dance around the room. This calls for an enormous number six!