Sarah Pinsker, 'Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea' (Daily Reading Notes (440))
This is the second book I've read this year based on a recommendation from Haruna Ikezawa in the Asahi Shimbun's new science fiction novel column (the first was Project Hail Mary). It is 'Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea' by Sarah Pinsker (translated by Izumi Ichida, Takeshobo Bunko). I didn't even know the author's name, and while this is her first book (a short story collection), it seems her novel 'A Song for a New Day' (translated by Miyuki Murayama) was published earlier by the same Takeshobo Bunko.
It contains 13 short stories, and while 'Our Lady of the Open Road' seems to be a sequel-like story to 'A Song for a New Day,' all the other works are independent stories. Each has its own unique setting, and every piece has such fertile ground that it could be expanded into a single long story or a series of linked short stories. They are fertile in the sense of being seeds for stories, but each worldview is usually tinged with a faint premonition of doom, making them quite poignant.
'Two-Lane Highway' is a strange story where a robotic arm, attached to replace an arm lost in an accident, believes it is a highway in Colorado that the protagonist has never even visited, and that thought flows into the protagonist's mind.
'And We Were Left in the Dark' is a fantastical story about a baby born and raised in people's delusions who comes out of the dream and leads people with similar delusions to the California coast.
'The Day It All Ended' is told from the perspective of a family about the one day a year a veteran remembers the tragic memories of the battlefield.
'Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea' depicts a musician who provided music for the wealthy who had abandoned the dying land to sail on ships, who then leaves the ship and encounters something after drifting ashore. It is terrifying, poignant, and powerful.
'Her Low Hum' is the story of a 'new grandmother' who helped a man who was about to become a political prisoner cross the border with his daughter.
'Talking to the Dead' digs into the human drama at a development site for eerie models, where they build elaborate miniature houses, install AI in them, and have the AI read data about incidents that actually occurred in those houses to bring the truth of the incidents to light.
'A Well-Home for Time-Travelers' is a story about lovers who watch the moment time travelers arrive over and over again, dreaming of the moment they might actually meet.
'The Abyssal Plain' is a story of love and misunderstanding between an old couple, and the old wife's love as she decides to recover from the incident that triggered that misunderstanding.
'The Lonely Sailor' is a story like a fable about a siren and an androgyne.
'The Wind Is Wandering' is a story about a giant spaceship aiming for a new world from Earth over many generations, and I read it while thinking of novels by Motoko Arai or Moto Hagio's 'They Were Eleven!'. The isolation from Earth, the efforts of people trying to overcome terrifying blackouts, and the clash of values between generations. The music played by the fiddle. A story world that could be expanded indefinitely.
'Our Lady of the Open Road' is a road novel depicting an analog band that continues to perform at live venues even in a world where people avoid crowds due to a pandemic. Turning their backs on self-driving cars and electronic payments, how far will the protagonist, Luce, go?
'Narwhal' is also a kind of road novel where the protagonist drives a car that has become a whale (actually a narwhal) from Baltimore to Sacramento. What is the purpose of the journey? What becomes visible during the journey?
'And Then There Were (N-1)' is a strange story that is both hard SF and a mystery novel. Many Sarah Pinskers gathered from numerous parallel worlds, and while they all have very similar base characteristics, they have lived different lives as the worlds diverged. They are brought together by the power of the Sarah Pinskers who became quantologists (quantum physicists?), and a Sarah Pinsker who is an insurance investigator searches for the killer of a Sarah Pinsker from somewhere who was murdered at the venue. It's chaotic because almost all the characters are Sarah Pinsker. I recently read a newspaper article about how the number of people named Hirokazu Tanaka who gathered in one place was going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, but the Sarah Pinskers of parallel worlds didn't just have the same name; they had drifted apart little by little as the worlds diverged, but they were originally the same Sarah Pinsker (but if that were made public, the world would be in chaos, so they gathered secretly on a deserted island in the Atlantic, and then a murder case—it's a locked-room mystery). It was a dizzying novel.
Even if I introduce it like this, I think it's hard to tell what's what, but the constructed worldview is unique, poignant, and sometimes beautiful. The cover with the picture of a whale (illustration by Natsumi Kachi) is also beautiful.
However, when reading SF, the unique coined words and the unique ruby (furigana) added by the translator (or the author if it's a Japanese work) are interesting, but when my eyes get tired and my bifocal contact lenses stop focusing, I can't read the small print at all. It's painful. These days, I feel a poignancy completely unrelated to the books, wondering if I'll have to read SF as e-books once I get presbyopia.
#Reading #BookReview #SarahPinsker #SoonerOrLaterEverythingFallsIntoTheSea #IzumiIchida #ASongForANewDay #TakeshoboBunko #SF #NatsumiKachi