Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki is a compelling collection of science fiction stories that offers a fresh and unique perspective on the genre. Suzuki’s writing is both innovative and insightful, blending speculative fiction with profound social commentary.

One of the standout features of this collection is Suzuki’s ability to craft intricate, multi-dimensional characters. Each story delves into the human experience with a blend of empathy and sharp wit, exploring themes of isolation, identity, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. Her characters are deeply relatable, navigating their dystopian or fantastical settings with a genuine sense of struggle and resilience.

Suzuki’s prose is another highlight of the collection. Her writing is precise and evocative, creating vivid imagery and atmospheres that pull readers into her imaginative worlds. The stories are crafted with a keen attention to detail, making each narrative engaging and thought-provoking.

The themes explored in Terminal Boredom are particularly noteworthy. Suzuki addresses contemporary issues through the lens of science fiction, offering readers a chance to reflect on the nature of humanity and the impact of technology on our lives. Her stories often contain a subversive edge, challenging conventional notions and encouraging readers to question their own perspectives.

Overall, Terminal Boredom is a remarkable collection that showcases Izumi Suzuki’s talent for blending science fiction with insightful social commentary. Her stories are both entertaining and thought-provoking, making this book a must-read for fans of the genre and anyone interested in exploring the complexities of the human condition through speculative fiction.

Pre-release blurbs called the book both "deranged' and 'hip'. That's about right for these short stories. If you’re into Kōbō Abe and prefer Ryū Murakami to Haruki you’ll not (as the title of this inaugural translation of Suzuki into English suggests), be bored.

Thank you to Verso & Netgalley for the ARC.

I adored this short story collection by Japanese sci-fi icon Izumi Suzuki. Here's an extract from my upcoming review, which will be published in https://www.full-stop.net/ at the end of June.

"Throughout the collection, the reader is invited into strange and futural worlds, while context slowly unfolds, and it is this, rather than any solid plot, that drives the stories forward. In Suzuki’s landscapes, days are damp, nights are swampy, and time passes like a river, carrying along adrift characters who have little agency. Any semblance of linear time is malleable; shifting between expansive and repressive at the writer’s whim. “My days here are like tissue paper,” says the protagonist of That Old Seaside Club, a story about a holiday world in which nothing is quite as it seems. “I float around, dazed, and any memories of the past are blurred and hard to pin down.” Suzuki conceptualises worlds that time seems to bend around, with writing that is distorted, twisted, and textural. And the characters who inhabit these landscapes almost seem inconsequential, unmoored, and terminally apathetic."

1.71 "that title was blatant foreshadowing" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, Verso books, the author and the translators for an ecopy. This selection of stories was released in English in April 2021.

Ms. Suzuki was an actress, model and writer who took her own life in 1986.

This is a book where I can abstractly understand people awarding it four or five stars. I can see sci fi literati, feminist scholars and completists analyzing and gobbling this up. I would classify this as psychological sci-fi and I was able to appreciate some of it.

There were 7 stories in this collection and two of them were a very good 3.5 stars. The rest were 2 stars or below for me. Overall, I found this repetitive and tiresome despite some very original ideas.
I will list the story, my rating and a word or two.

Women and women (3.5 stars) A very thought provoking tale taking place in a lesbian utopia (or dystopia)...this easily could have been expanded into novella form....the writing was adequate but not exceptional

You may dream (half a star) I don't think I have ever been more irritated by a short story...I know many people will find this brilliant but I experienced the story as contrived, repetitive and incongruous

Night Picnic (1.5 stars) so bloody tedious....were they humans or aliens...in the end I could not have cared less

That Old Seaside Club (3.5 stars) a new psychiatric treatment for anomie and addiction....inconsistent lazy writing but fascinating nonetheless !!

Smoke gets in your eyes (2 stars) an interplanetary soap opera ....long winded and dull

Terminal Boredom (1 star) the title says it all !!

Overall not a great experience but I really liked two of the stories (but not so much the prose)

Included in Washington Post column April 6, 2021 https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/lets-talk-about-the-best--and-newest--science-fiction-and-fantasy-story-collections/2021/04/05/7c7801ac-92fb-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html

Conceptually, this is a solid collection. The use of different speculative elements helps to display the darker themes of sexuality, gender and feminism. Even with these stories being from the '70s and '80s, there is still some potency to their intent. Unfortunately, a lot of my disappointment was with how long and, subsequently, drawn out the narratives felt. I did enjoy the concept and execution of: "You May Dream", "Nigth Picnic", and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes". What may be the biggest downfall, for SFF lovers, is how the speculative elements aren't imperative to the narratives. Neither is there any real worldbuilding. It is very much a literary collection but that should not deter readers from picking this one up.

"The stories collected in Terminal Boredom take up themes that might feel familiar to readers of contemporary Japanese fiction. The characters criticize, challenge, or defy social conventions. Narrators raise questions about identity and agency. But unlike, say, Mieko Kawakami or Sayaka Murata, author Izumi Suzuki died more than three decades ago..."

"...Critics have hailed Terminal Boredom as a long-overdue translation of an important minority voice in a genre dominated by men. And it is. But this collection is worth reading for more than its historical importance. Suzuki’s feminist spirit is as relevant and her stories as piercing today as they were more than thirty years ago."

Complete review at Asian Review of Books

This is a collection of seven short stories, written by Izumi Suzuki in Japan, in the 1970s. So ... a woman science fiction writer in the 70s. That's remarkable already. Other than possessing that mark of prescience, however, the stories have not aged so well. I enjoyed the first and last -- "Women and Women" & "Terminal Boredom." My overall opinion of this collection: The translations seem uneven and awkward in places, perhaps due to different translators for each story. The stories are dialog-heavy, with much of that dialog stilted and weighted with info dumps. Still, Japanese fiction and science fiction are my jams, so this was a must-read for me. 

[Thanks to Verso Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.]

My full review can be found on my blog (link attached).

Don’t let the publication date fool you: Izumi Suzuki committed suicide in 1986, at the age of 36, and her SF dystopian short stories were all written in the period between mid- 1970s and mid-1980s. Her works were both highly controversial and influential, diametrically different from mainstream, and the publication of Terminal Boredom, a collection of seven of her most famous stories, is a good opportunity for the English-speaking readers to get acquainted with Suzuki’s world.

Suzuki creates a very intriguing world, indeed. Deeply dystopian, populated by unhappy people bound in equal measures by the societal norms, their own fantasies and their fears, it features green-skinned aliens, potent drugs, elaborate medical procedures designed to deal with very mundane relationship and psychological problems, and even a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society where men are held in prison-like structures, kept alive only for procreation purposes, like drones in a beehive. No one is truly happy; some have forgotten what happiness even means. The suffocating mood of ennui seems to arise from a number of moods and feelings: social constraints, regrets, inability to feel empathy, bad life choices haunting the present and the future, and the overwhelming boredom all conspire to create a nauseating lack of will to live. The mood, the feeling of these stories is prescient: four decades on, we deal with the very issues so clearly intuited by Suzuki – from the crippling emotional numbness among individuals to the aggressive, grasping behaviour of societies.

While Suzuki introduced many typical SF tropes into her works, from humanlike aliens and interplanetary travel to nearly miraculous technological advancement, she didn’t pay them much attention: they are there as props in the everyday, banal yet tragic drama of the protagonists. Indeed, the main strength of her stories lies in this intimate focus on the characters: their flaws and vices, their dreams and fears, their unhappy relationships marked by lack of understanding. The main theme of her stories is alienation; and while she didn’t say break any new ground in this area, what she did say is still important, and profound – maybe even more so today. Some of her stories seem indeed prescient: the problems already arising in the 70’s, noticed by the sensitive, non-normative few like Suzuki, in our times became widespread societal maladies.

I must say the stories’ mood affected me a little: the pervasive ennui, unhappiness, despair hidden beneath a very thin surface of the bustle of everyday life are depicted in a thoroughly realistic way. There is a disconnect between Suzuki’s characters and their life; there is a feeling of desolation that contradicts John Donne’s optimism: in Suzuki’s world every man is an island, separate and isolated, and hopelessly alone.

[...]

In the case of Suzuki’s anthology the whole becomes something more than sum of its parts; the collection in its entirety gives off a unique vibe, and it doesn’t hurt that it ends on a strong note: the titular story, Terminal Boredom, was for me the best of them all.

That said, however, I must end my review with two caveats: these stories are old, and their age is noticeable. What was unique and ground-breaking in the 70’s now, four decades on, has turned into something more obvious and at times tropey. Secondly, Suzuki’s stories are focused predominantly on creating a certain mood and exploring mostly psychological ideas of alienation, addiction, exhaustion; there is barely any action, worldbuilding, or even character development. In short, they are vignettes, not full histories – psychological portraits frozen in time. I read them with interest and appreciation, if not exactly enjoyment: they do tend to dampen one’s mood.

I have received a copy of this book from the publisher Verso through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

Three and a half stars. For as old as the stories are, they are surprisingly fresh and - as with most good science fiction from the last 30 years or so - are difficult to pin down in terms of age. But the collection was a bit up and down for me - some of the stories were outstanding, some were little more than a curiosity. To be fair, I stayed with the book to the end, so that certainly says something for Suzuki's writing, as well as her cadre of translators.

I hope to check out the late author's other translations. I'm not unhappy I read this collection, I simply feel a little vacant after having done so.

I'd like to express my appreciation to NetGalley and Verso Fiction for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.

I was intrigued by this collecting the second I noticed it was tagged as sci-fi. Most of the stories have to do with dystopian worlds and space, which was great, but there was this other pervasive topics of fusing consciousness and time not being lineal that would confuse me all the time. I feel that if there had been some sort of explanation or context as to why "time doesn't work", I may have found myself inside the stories, but some of them just had me as a (confused) spectator.

"Women and Women" and "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" were my favorite ones, 4 stars for them. The rest were just okay for me (I've seen reviews stating "Terminal Boredom" is the strongest story, but I'm not sure I agree. At least, I myself didn't enjoy it too much).

After a quick Google I realized Izumi Suzuki, the author, committed suicide a long time ago. "Terminal Boredom" (the story) did feel like reading about the depression epidemic in Japan, not sure if she was struggling while she wrote it, but the 'feeling' did transpire. She would've been an author to look after, I have to say, I would've loved to read a full-length novel from her.

I'm usually not a big fan of short story collections, but I love Japanese/Asian fiction so I had to pick this one up and I was positively surprised. The stories were odd, thoughtful and some were unsettling even that left an interesting "aftertaste" for the lack of a better word.
I can't believe that those were written almost 30 years ago, because the stories felt very dystopian and futuristic to me. I do enjoy "what if..." stories.
Some I enjoyed more, some parts I enjoy less, but altogether I can recommend this to fans of Sayaka Murata or even Murakami.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The seven stories of this volume I think of as stories of the mind. Overt science fiction memes are not in evidence. Rather, Suzuki explores the minds of her generally female characters in often quite dystopian worlds. If stories like this appeal, then the collection will appeal.

I was pleased to read a collection where the narrators are by and large female, in stark contrast to much of sci fi. Yet, it is disappointing that although the author is Japanese and is apparently quite well known in Japan, I do not have a sense that there is a particular Japanese quality to these stories. I was hoping that reading a collection in translation would be more challenging given the cultural difference, but I am inclined to see these stories as having little attachment to Japanese culture.

My thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy.

Oh. An absolute no from me 😓 Not going to make some kind of witty remark on the title, but, basically, you know. I don't even know what was going on :(

TW: suicide, GBV, etc.

Sorry.

<I>Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.</I>

This was an utterly fascinating collection of short stories. If I had not already been aware that the author had been dead for more than 30 years before starting this collection, I would have had no problem believing the stories were recently written. Suzuki's speculative sci-fi here uses futuristic, unsettling backgrounds to then focus on the human condition. Using the unfamiliar to emphasize the familiar: everything is different and nothing ever changes.

The focus here is definitely on introspection over action and the best way I could describe most of the stories is a meditation on apathy, nostalgia, and the trap one's place in society sets. These are exactly the kinds of stories you would expect from a young Japanese woman, who lived outside of societal expectations, writing in the 60s and 70s as part of the counterculture of a deeply traditional country like Japan.

Each of these stories I found to be both strange and poignant. At the end of each one I was eager to read the next, but definitely felt that each story required contemplation before starting the next. This is a collection that will stay with you and I am deeply hopeful we will soon be seeing more of Suzuki's work in English.

“Terminal Boredom”, by Izumi Suzuki, is a collection of seven short stories, written in Japan, in the 1970s.. This English translation, around 30 years later, was made possible because of a group of translators, namely Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’Horan. It is also worth mentioning that, despite this being Suzuki’s English debut, she is recognized as a star of science-fiction writing in Japan.

While on the surface it’s clearly a science fiction collection, I personally felt that Suzuki was using science fiction themes and settings to point out deeper societal issues like drug addition, alienation from society, mental health issues, and toxic relationships. The reading experience felt to me like watching a season of “Black Mirror”, where the science fiction aspect is within reach, and the issues explored are very relevant to our world today, which considering these stories were written 30 years ago is very impressive. The writing itself felt very detached, which looking back at, feels like it was used as a great tool to point out the coldness and alienation of the characters in this collection.

My favorite stories from the collection were “Women and Women”, a story set in a dystopian world where due to lack of resources, men are no longer considered “citizens” of the world and are locked in restriction zone camps; “You May Dream”, a story set again in a different dystopian world where due to overpopulation, citizens are randomly chosen to become cryogenically frozen and can chose to appear in another person’s dream so their memory doesn’t fade from the world; “That Old Seaside Club”, a story about a rehab resort from a different planet where people can go recharge when life on Earth is too overwhelming; and the title story, “Terminal Boredom”, a story in which the alienation from society and overuse of screen devices to stimulate the brain have shocking consequences.

I definitely recommend this collection to those who like their fiction a bit on the darker side. Thank you so much to NetGalley and Verso Books for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Watch out for this one coming out in April 2021.

A collection of short stories with a sci-fi slant. I didn't find the premises of most of the stories compelling which made them quite hard to get through. There were some interesting character moments in there but I felt that they were letdown by the world-building.

I’m going to enjoy spending time with this collection when the book is published. The stories have a delightful snap to them and the translation is a lovely vernacular pleasure to read. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a setting for the font and spacing in the e-arc that would allow me to read the book easily and I’ll plan to come back with a more thorough review once I have the book in hand as I trust Verso and can tell that I will enjoy the book more with better formatting. Four stars is my placeholder in situations like this.

I would like to thank the publisher for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love reading short stories, especially from Japan. These stories were an interesting introduction to Japanese science fiction. My favourite were: " Women and Women" and "Night Picnic".
They had plenty of fantastical elements and darkness which unfortunately wasn't enough for me to enjoy them. Some of the themes of this novel were : dystopia, gender, loneliness and drug abuse.
I feel that this collection of stories will be appreciated a lot by lovers of science-fiction literature.

I was really looking forward to this book but as a Kindle reader (I was offered the option of a Kindle download to read it) the formatting issues made this basically impossible to read. It would be unfair to review it. If that could be changed, it would be wonderful. I'll no doubt buy a copy when it's in the shops, but it's a shame not to be able to review it now.