Fast Forward Japan: Stories by the Founding Father of Japanese Science Fiction by Juza Unno
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 194 KB
Overview: For many decades now, Japan has been known for its contribution to cutting-edge technologies, and even now Japan is ranked high in fields such as robotics research. Much of Japan’s advanced technologies has been inspired by ideas in comic books (authors like Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy) and literature (authors like Sakyo Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and Shin’ichi Hoshi).

Beginning his writing career in 1928, Juza Unno took inspiration from Western authors like Jules Verne as well as his own knowledge of electric engineering to write fiction that integrated a broad spectrum of creative innovative ideas. His stories touch upon everything from facial reconstruction and gender reassignment surgery to video phones, cryogenics, multi-dimensional beings, and celestial body orbit adjustment (and, of course, robots). Because of this, Unno is sometimes referred to as the father of Japanese science fiction.

This collection contains some of Unno’s best short- and medium-length fiction. The highlight is the novella “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath,” one of Unno’s most well-known stories about an underground dystopian world where the citizens are brainwashed daily by specially constructed music. Not only is this Japan’s first work in the dystopian genre, but it also touches upon many of Unno’s innovative ideas (not to mention the notable appearance of a tantalizingly beautiful robot). Like many of Unno’s other works, “Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” is a cautionary tale about how misuse of technology can have disastrous consequences.

“Fast Forward Japan” contains a total of nine stories, including “The Living Intestine”, an unusual tale of a doctor’s medical experiment gone awry; “Adventures of the Dinosaur-Craft”, a story where two boys use technology and creativity to have the adventure of a lifetime; “The Last Broadcast”, a story about a scientist whose breakthrough allows him to eavesdrop on a alien civilization on the brink of destruction; and “The World in One Thousand Years”, a tale about a man who wakes up in the future from a long cryogenic sleep.

These stories are sure to delight and inform those interested in Japanese science fiction, and might even help to kickstart your own innovations.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy


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The Court War by Violette Malan (The Godstone Book 2)
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 2.5 MB
Overview: The second book in this epic fantasy saga spins a tale of magic and danger, as a healer finds herself pulled deeper into a web of secrets and world-ending magic.

With innovative worldbuilding, witty banter, and world-ending magic, The Court War is epic fantasy at its best and most compelling.

Fenra Lowens, with her partner Elvanyn Karamisk, has already faced the Godstone. Now she has a different, simpler problem: getting the stick-in-the-mud practitioners of the White Court to return to the old ways of practice, the ways that keep the World healthy.

But before she has a chance to present her case, the uneasy balance of power between the practitioners of the White Court and the mundanes of the Red Court—in existence since the World itself began—suddenly erupts into open warfare.

Fenra is torn between helping her friends and fellow practitioners and moving ahead with the demands of an increasingly impatient World. Though she has help from unexpected allies, Fenra begins to suspect that this conflict isn't just about politics. The hand of an old enemy may be at work here....
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy


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A Game of Gods by Scarlett St. Clair (Hades Saga #3)
Requirements: .ePUB Reader, 4.6 MB
Overview: Told in multiple POVs, A Game of Gods is the final installment in the Hades Saga by USA Today Bestselling author Scarlett St. Clair.

Hades, God of the Dead, has finally made Persephone his in every way possible. With their wedding on the horizon, the couple should be ecstatic. But Demeter is wreaking havoc on their bliss by battering the whole of New Greece with erratic and dangerous weather. At the same time, Theseus continues with his agenda against the Gods, allying with the hate-group Triad in an effort to bring down all of Olympus.

Hades refuses to allow anything to stop him from securing Persephone as his bride, but he must play a deep strategic game with the Gods of Olympus to safeguard their future. And it is not entirely clear which Gods are truly on his side.
Genre: Fantasy


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The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase, Translated by Haydn Trowell
Requirements: .ePUB readers, 970 KB | Retail
Overview: A woman turns herself into a forest after long being co-opted to serve as the subject of her husband’s novels—this surrealist fable challenges traditional gender attitudes and exploitation in the literary world

Nowatari Rui has long been the subject of her husband’s novels, depicted as a pure woman who takes great pleasure in sex. With her privacy and identity continually stripped away, she has come to be seen by society first and foremost as the inspiration for her husband’s art. When a decade’s worth of frustrations reaches its boiling point, Rui consumes a bowl of seeds, and buds and roots begin to sprout all over her body. Instead of taking her to a hospital, her husband keeps her in an aquaterrarium, set to compose a new novel based on this unsettling experience. But Rui breaks away from her husband by growing into a forest—and in time, she takes over the entire city.

As fantasy and reality bleed together, The Forest Brims Over challenges unconscious gender biases and explores the boundaries between art and exploitation—muse abuse—in the literary world.
Genre: Fiction > Fantasy


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