Yasutaka Tsutsui
Translated by Andrew Driver
Vintage 2010
To your average Westerner, Japanese pop culture can seem a little... weird.
To the average Westerner, science fiction can seem weird as well.
Will it blend?
Yes. And what a wonderful smoothie of odd whu't'f it makes.
Salmonella Men is a collection of short stories. I wouldn't necessarily call them all science fiction, but that's the main theme of the collection.
If a person takes a novella, and adds something impossible or exaggerates one notion of reality, that turns it into a SF story, apparently.
Genres are tricky at this level.
I was excited to read this, and it's one of the few books I've read from beginning to end without stopping to read another book for any amount of time. I've always like short story collections because, like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.
I really had no idea what to expect with this, but I'm glad I took the time. It's rewarding to anyone who enjoys science fiction. If you're easily offended by mild misogyny or sexual content, then leave this book alone.
Before judging the author as you would someone from Ohio, remember that Tsutsui is definitely not from Ohio. The world he has lived in is nothing like Ohio, so to judge his works with your Ohio sensibilities (which are probably Puritan by comparison), would be a mistake.
This isn't Calligula, but it's not exactly To The Lighthouse, either.
Quotes and Comments:
"As I opened the bathroom door, white plumes of steam wafted up from the bath tub. I lifeted (my son) and plunged him in up to the waist. To check the temperature, you understand."
Tsutsui isn't advocating child abuse. In this short story he speaks to the insanity of a group of people who have lost control of their minds because they've lost control of their lives (they hate everything about their lives, but they do it anyway without thinking it could be better).
The story ends with mass unintentional suicide. This is probably the heaviest, darkest story of the collection.
"The real name of the great composer Mozart was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Gottlieb Amade Amadeus Mozart.
Mozart was born at the age of three. The reason for this is unknown.
.....
When he was fourteen, Mozart went to Rome. There, he was profoundly moved on hearing a piece called 'Miserere" in a well-known chapel. That same evening, he wrote a composition of his own. But it was exactly the same as the 'Miserere' he'd heard in the afternoon, and was therefore never recognized as his own work."
Tell me that doesn't remind you of Vonnegut.
"By that I don't mean some major species migration, but something like, well, you remember back in the Second Green Revolution on earth, when all those obnoxious hippies were herded onto spaceships and banished beyond our galaxy."
May this be a lesson to us: Never banish hippies into space. They'll colonize a planet and de-evolve into sex-crazed hippos and 4-legged mutant monkeyspiders.
Trust me.
I read it.
In a book.
Overall-
Weird. But in a good way.
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