(Quick link to the book on Amazon)

Early this year, I published my first ebook: a translated collection of works by the Japanese science fiction author Juza Unno （海野十三). That book contained five short stories that I thought were worthy of English translation, selected from the author’s ~200 works.

After publishing this book, I immediately began work on the second volume, which I actually had planned from several months ago.

Volume 2 of Science: Hopes & Fears contains a single novella (“Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath”) which is considered one of Juza Unno’s most famous works. It is set in a dystopian society where technology is used to control the populace, taking away some freedoms while granting others. As a big fan of dystopian literature, I was really happy to discover this story and be the first to publish an English translation of it. (To be fair, I should not say I “discovered” it because this story has been referenced at least as long back as 1996, for example in this book).

Besides the dystopian angle, the author has packed many technological ideas into this story: androids, using music as a means of mind control, video phones, “electric makeup” via hormone manipulation, and more. It really amazed me to see these things in a story from 1937.

I recommend this book for anyone who is a fan of dystopian literature, in particular classics like 1984 (George Orwell) and Brave New World (Aldous Huxley).

You can get the book here on Amazon.

I’d like to thank my wife as well as Yeti (from Shosetsu Ninja) and Sherayuki for all their help doing proofreading and translation check for this book.

You can find a little more information about the book here.

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