In the recent past, men were free members of society, but the narrator is too young to have known that world. In “Women And Women,” a matriarchal society holds men in concentration camps, retaining these surplus people solely for reproduction. Women are front and center in the collection, with female friendship of particular importance. Her worldview can best be described as progressive. Suzuki passed away in 1986, but wrote with a foresight that keeps her relevant even today. Terminal Boredom is the first book by Suzuki to be translated into English, although another collection, Love < Death, will follow next year.
Six translators have translated from the Japanese the seven stories in the collection. Even though sometimes they are “out of this world” aliens or living in reimagined societies of the future, these are people struggling in the same ways we struggle today. The translated stories collected in Terminal Boredomdepend on science fiction dystopias, but focus on characters who are broken and seeking their own personal redemption, rather than the expected grand narratives about society as a whole. Science fiction dystopias are often deployed as a means of examining politics, ideology, or technology, but for Izumi Suzuki, the medium serves an intimate exploration of anxiety, pain, and sadness.
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