Today in pulp I'm looking back at one of #Japan's greatest science fiction magazines: Hayakawa S-F!
Esu-Efu Magajin (S-F Magazine) was first published in February 1960 by Hayakawa Shobō publishing, and has gone on to shape both Japanese SF and champion Japanese authors for many decades.
Science fiction had been reasonably popular in Japan before the war, but it was in the mid-1950s that specialist story magazines, such as Takumi Shibano's subscription fanzine Uchūjin (Cosmic Dust) began to appear.
Hayakawa S-F soon followed. It was a 'prozine' - a professionally produced commercial fanzine - first edited by Masami Fukushima: "The demon of SF".
Initially it specialised in translations of western SF stories, mainly from The Magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction. However upcoming Japanese fan writers featured in Uchūjin were published in S-F Magazine, helping to create a career path for budding SF authors in Japan.
SF Magazine also coincided with the New Wave of speculative fiction happening in Britain and America. As a result Japanese SF of the 1960s is an amazing mix of speculative fiction, hard SF, monster fiction and scientific romance, all peacefully coexisting together.
In 1962 S-F Magazine launched its Esuefu Kontesuto, a literary contest for new science fiction short stories and novellas written in Japanese. It helped pioneer the 'First Generation' of Japanese SF writers such as Sakyo Komatsu and Ryū Mitsuse.
In the 1970s Japanese SF took a more speculative turn, exploring inner space as much as outer space. It also began to question whether the First Generation had been too influenced by American SF ideas.
Kôichi Yamano led the charge with a 1969 essay arguing that SF had the capacity to be avant garde, rather than simply copying the themes of Golden Age American stories. He launched his own magazine NW-SF to champion his ideas.
With the rise of Japanese technology in the 1970s western writers began looking to Japan for SF inspiration. Cyberpunk embraced the hi-tec/low-life aesthetic, and along with growing western interest in Manga it was now Japan's turn to shape the SF novel.
S-F Magazine is still going strong, as is the influence of the New Wave. In 2006 S-F Magazine readers voted 10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse as their all-time favourite Japanese SF novel. It includes an awesome cyborg deathmatch between Buddha and Jesus.
Many excellent artists have produced covers for S-F Magazine. Katsuya Terada provided this wonderful cover for the June 2013 edition.
If you're interested in Japanese SF a good place to start is with the Speculative Japan anthologies from Kurodahan Press. They cover a range of authors and the translations are very well done.
So here's to S-F Magazine, the kickstarter for an amazing range of science fiction books and authors from Japan. Twitter salutes you!
More stories another time...
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Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.