I was planning to write a bit about Lord of the Sands of Time but as engaging and imaginative as it is, the whole affair is a bit short so I can’t really think of much to say about it. It’s an interesting take on the time travel and alternate history concepts and doesn’t take long to read either, so I recommend you read it. I suspected that it wasn’t the best showcase for Ogawa’s writing though; The Next Continent proved my suspicions right.

The upbeat vs. downbeat divide in SF is quite stark to me: many of the former are warnings that depict us as a species on a path to self-destruction. In our environmentally-conscious and cynical times I guess it’s not surprising that this is currently holding sway over the optimistic ‘inspirational’ type that speculates about how we could make our outlook brighter; I personally prefer a mix of both, but The Next Continent thrives on the latter.

Science fiction doesn’t have to be big or even outwardly clever to be effective. A lot of what I enjoy involves original or elegantly neat ideas that give the “I never thought of that…” reaction but sometimes a simple concept does the job in its own way, although this simplicity turns out to be deceptive. Even when I gave Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need Is Kill a modest three out of five stars rating on Goodreads I wasn’t suggesting that it was a mediore effort, nor was I implying that I didn’t enjoy it.

As a matter of fact it’s a fast-paced, immersive and highly readable account of a futuristic battle waged by humanity against an alien invader, and on that alone I recommend it. The nature of the narrative – that of a soldier trapped in a time loop of his last day on the front line, and his attempts to understand and hopefully escape from that situation – makes it a challenge for the writer to keep the repetitive proceedings engaging, but Sakurazaka succeeds admirably. In that sense it feels a lot like some unholy combination of Groundhog Day and Starship Troopers.

The social science-fiction and futuristic dystopia themes have been covered by some very well-known works of fiction: two that stick out clearest in my mind are those of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. As with other novels in the Haikasoru line I’ve read so far, the novel Harmony borrows a lot from the old SF but is no worse for that.

To his credit, Project Itoh has given these subgenres a thoroughly modern kick up the backside by updating the tech to reflect recent advances and drawing inspiration from contemporary issues that weren’t around back then. Some are of course still relevant but there are other, more recent, ones that are worth addressing and Itoh goes out of his way to bring these new ideas to the table.