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...

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Pulp Librarian

Pulp Librarian Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PulpLibrarian

Feb 9
Today in pulp... a question. Is it better to be maximalist when it comes to interior design? For this I'll need to revisit the ideal homes of the 1970s. Come this way.

Yes, we do take our shoes off in this house... Image
We've grown so used to Swedish-style modernism that we've sort of forgotten that maximalism, rather than minimalism, was once the sign of a cultured abode. Image
The 1970s in many ways reached back to the rich ideas of Victorian decor: heavy, autumnal and cluttered. Home was meant to be a baroque and sensual experience, rather than a 'machine for living in.' Image
Read 10 tweets
Feb 6
Now did I ever tell you why I started this account, some 7 or so years ago?

Well it's not for the reasons you might think...
In 2013 the company I worked for decided all us old folk needed to 'get with it' and learn about social media.

We were sent on a course in London's 'Silicone Roundabout*' where various webheads and marketeers told us what was what.

(*don't ask!)
There were a lot of fixed ideas about what social media was and wasn't, what worked and what didn't. It was part technobabble and part sales talk.

As a veteran of the '90s web I started to smell a bit of 'new paradigm' BS in the air.
Read 31 tweets
Feb 4
Well that's annoying. Twitter for Android has stopped loading any images!
- it's not my settings
- it's not my phone
- it's not my data provider (so they say!)

Can you do me a favour? Hit 'like' if you can see a pic below of a man fighting an octopus. Reply if you can't.
Hmm... looks like I can transmit but I can't receive images on the app. And I can't load the desktop version of Twitter on the laptop. Keeps saying 'something has gone wrong'

Any ideas folks?
OK, a few folk in the south of the UK are reporting the same problem. I'm going to assume technology is ganging up on me and go to bed.

Let's see if this 21st Century Ceefax thingy works tomorrow...
Read 5 tweets
Feb 3
Today in pulp... a few children's and YA novels from Fontana Lions! Image
We loved a post-nuclear YA novel in the '80s. Loved it we did...

Children Of The Dust, by Louise Lawrence. Fontana Lions, 1985. Image
I Am The Cheese, by Robert Cormier. Fontana Lions, 1980. One of those books that seemed to be in every school... Image
Read 18 tweets
Jan 23
Time for another pulp countdown, and today it's my top 10 public relations campaigns! #SundayMotivation
At no 10: nuclear power! It's for nuclear families after all.
At no 9: butter! Don't suffer from a lack of it.
Read 12 tweets
Jan 16
Time for a pulp countdown now, and today it's my top 10 funky flight attendant uniforms!

This thread may involve go-go boots... Image
At #10: Lufthansa! This uniform was styled on the condiment dispensers at Tempelhof Airport. Image
At #9: Caledonian Airlines! This look was later used in the film Heathers. Image
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

:(