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anadnarruc's review
5.0
Any book that starts with the creation of the earth, and ends with a lazer gunfight between SPOILER and SPOILER has my vote.
nwhyte's review against another edition
3.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2293205.html[return][return]I was a little baffled at first, as we moved from Plato to Buddha to Jesus as incarnations of non-human entities; was this a Shaggy God story? Though I'll admit that it was very interesting to see a non-Christian writer's take on the New Testament, and in the end the Buddha and sf do seem to find a harmonious coexistence after exciting and occasionally confusing conflicts. I finished it rather puzzled; the book seemed to owe a lot to Childhood's End, and a little to the New Wave, but not much to more recent genre developments.[return][return]The mystery was resolved when I realised that ~vQn0
transficthonnomushi's review
5.0
How did the translators translate this book!? It is so rich with information and detail. Well done to both the author and the translators. I loved this book, seemed so random but all came together and massively poked and challenged my brain. Got me thinking outside the universe, God and so on which I really enjoyed. Thank you!
funcharge's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
boomcomplains's review
2.0
(This review can be read properly formatted here at my sci-fi blog, Loving the Alien)
It’s touted as the greatest Japanese Science fiction novel of all time on the awesomely glow-in-the dark cover, and I’d like to agree or disagree, but my knowledge of Japanese science fiction tends to be limited to anime, and I don’t think that’s a fair thing to judge SF books by. So what I’m going to say is that I can’t have opinion on whether or not it was the greatest, I’m not entirely sure it’s science fiction, but I know that it is Japanese… so… at least I can definitively take a stand there.
So, let’s start out with the reasons why someone would want to read this:
1. Jesus is a super-cyborg assassin with a characterization that is only tentatively linked to what the New Testament is about.
And 2. …
Right. I’m a bit at a loss of what to say, and I think it’s because I’m just genuinely not used to my science fiction using historical characters and making them live weird double/triple/quadruple lives in different time periods. I’m also ill-equipped to deal with epic death battles between people like Siddhartha and Plato against Jesus, and have the Asura (generally thought of a group dieties) personified by a little girl who is actually fighting for humanity rather than destroying it...
...which even if you have just a very basic grasp of Hinduism, this ought to strike you as a bit odd. Kind of cool, but odd.
So, here’s the deal. When you buy this book, the description is about as enlightening as the ending is:
Ten billion days--that is how long it will take the philosopher Plato to determine the true systems of the world. One hundred billion nights--that is how far into the future he and Christ and Siddhartha will travel to witness the end of the world and also its fiery birth.
If you’re baffled at the plot described above, then you and I are on about equal footing and I’ve actually read the book.
Here is the actual plot: Something called Shi (for non-Japanese speakers who don’t get the significance of this word, that means “death” in Japanese) is trying to destroy all life on the planet via a whispering war against a benevolent “god” who only shows up last few pages in order to say how sorry it was that it didn’t.. I don't know… whisper hard enough or something.Shi sews the seeds of destruction in mankind via war, plague, and civil strife… and apparently Christianity.
…And the person against all of this is really Asura, who is the main character despite not being introduced until halfway through the novel.
Which brings me to my chief complaint, which is that this book is organized in a very bizarre way. It’s completely impossible to tell what’s important, what’s just random description (which is more often than not the case), and what is allegory. It’s also more than a little difficult to keep hold of a timeline as each character’s plot jumps around each other in haphazard directions and only converge in the final free-for-all that is the slow decay of society.
Strangely, as I describe this book, I find myself liking it… which I find slightly disconcerting seeing as I felt almost angry when I finished it.
Then I remind myself how hard it was to read, and how unsatisfactory it was to labor through. Problem solved.
So, let me just spell out how I really feel and stop describing what almost sounds like an awesome plot.
You need to appreciate the Japanese way of thinking in order to really find pleasure in this book. The lack of resolution is so poignant in this novel that it may leave the western reader feeling out of sorts and more than a little befuddled. Western readers, I feel, are used to feeling satisfied at the end of a story. The Japanese are not, and in a way, I find that it is beautiful concept if not a very Japanese one, and I enjoy it in most stories (particularly with Ryu Murakami).
I must concede, then, that I’ve steeped myself too deeply in western sci-fi culture, because my dislike for a book I find interesting at a conceptual level lies solely in the structure of the novel, and what I perceive to be gross misunderstandings of Greek philosophy, and the new testaments teachings.
On the other hand, it has a somewhat M. Night Shyamalan twist to moral concepts and philosophies that we deem peaceful (meaning that they lead to our ultimate destruction by the powers that be), so there is that… if only it wasn’t based in a somewhat skewed (read: Japanese) understanding of these ideas.
Thus, my suggestion must be this:
Read it, but be prepared to struggle.
It’s touted as the greatest Japanese Science fiction novel of all time on the awesomely glow-in-the dark cover, and I’d like to agree or disagree, but my knowledge of Japanese science fiction tends to be limited to anime, and I don’t think that’s a fair thing to judge SF books by. So what I’m going to say is that I can’t have opinion on whether or not it was the greatest, I’m not entirely sure it’s science fiction, but I know that it is Japanese… so… at least I can definitively take a stand there.
So, let’s start out with the reasons why someone would want to read this:
1. Jesus is a super-cyborg assassin with a characterization that is only tentatively linked to what the New Testament is about.
And 2. …
Right. I’m a bit at a loss of what to say, and I think it’s because I’m just genuinely not used to my science fiction using historical characters and making them live weird double/triple/quadruple lives in different time periods. I’m also ill-equipped to deal with epic death battles between people like Siddhartha and Plato against Jesus, and have the Asura (generally thought of a group dieties) personified by a little girl who is actually fighting for humanity rather than destroying it...
...which even if you have just a very basic grasp of Hinduism, this ought to strike you as a bit odd. Kind of cool, but odd.
So, here’s the deal. When you buy this book, the description is about as enlightening as the ending is:
Ten billion days--that is how long it will take the philosopher Plato to determine the true systems of the world. One hundred billion nights--that is how far into the future he and Christ and Siddhartha will travel to witness the end of the world and also its fiery birth.
If you’re baffled at the plot described above, then you and I are on about equal footing and I’ve actually read the book.
Here is the actual plot: Something called Shi (for non-Japanese speakers who don’t get the significance of this word, that means “death” in Japanese) is trying to destroy all life on the planet via a whispering war against a benevolent “god” who only shows up last few pages in order to say how sorry it was that it didn’t.. I don't know… whisper hard enough or something.Shi sews the seeds of destruction in mankind via war, plague, and civil strife… and apparently Christianity.
…And the person against all of this is really Asura, who is the main character despite not being introduced until halfway through the novel.
Which brings me to my chief complaint, which is that this book is organized in a very bizarre way. It’s completely impossible to tell what’s important, what’s just random description (which is more often than not the case), and what is allegory. It’s also more than a little difficult to keep hold of a timeline as each character’s plot jumps around each other in haphazard directions and only converge in the final free-for-all that is the slow decay of society.
Strangely, as I describe this book, I find myself liking it… which I find slightly disconcerting seeing as I felt almost angry when I finished it.
Then I remind myself how hard it was to read, and how unsatisfactory it was to labor through. Problem solved.
So, let me just spell out how I really feel and stop describing what almost sounds like an awesome plot.
You need to appreciate the Japanese way of thinking in order to really find pleasure in this book. The lack of resolution is so poignant in this novel that it may leave the western reader feeling out of sorts and more than a little befuddled. Western readers, I feel, are used to feeling satisfied at the end of a story. The Japanese are not, and in a way, I find that it is beautiful concept if not a very Japanese one, and I enjoy it in most stories (particularly with Ryu Murakami).
I must concede, then, that I’ve steeped myself too deeply in western sci-fi culture, because my dislike for a book I find interesting at a conceptual level lies solely in the structure of the novel, and what I perceive to be gross misunderstandings of Greek philosophy, and the new testaments teachings.
On the other hand, it has a somewhat M. Night Shyamalan twist to moral concepts and philosophies that we deem peaceful (meaning that they lead to our ultimate destruction by the powers that be), so there is that… if only it wasn’t based in a somewhat skewed (read: Japanese) understanding of these ideas.
Thus, my suggestion must be this:
Read it, but be prepared to struggle.
formtruthregret's review
5.0
10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a piece of late 1960s Japanese sci-fi that the Internet tells me is kind of a big deal. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. I first encountered in on Strange Horizons, where it was the topic of one of their book review roundtables.
The elevator pitch of "Christ Versus Mecha-Buddha. In Space!" is what immediately drew my attention, but I was also drawn by the description of it as blending science-fiction and religious/mythical/historical fiction. I soon learned that the elevator pitch was both completely accurate and completely false.
Make no mistake: 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a bleak, bleak book. And yet its bleakness and terror strike at me in a way I feel moved to visit and revisit, much as I regularly rewatch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I generally try to avoid reread reviews on this blog, but I have a lot of things to talk about, so I shall.
10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights has an core cast of larger-than-life figures: Prince Siddartha (yes, that Prince Siddartha), Jesus Christ, Plato. They are rendered in this novel as deeply human, united in their yearning to understand the world around them -- not just its material essence, but its true meaning and nature. In a world that seems full of cruelty and devoid of reason, their desire is understandable. The tragedy is that the gods they turn to for answers are remote and angry; not just indifferent, but full of malice. Plato may seem like an odd addition to this case of religious figures, but I think Plato is meant to represent a secular yearning for knowledge. His Allegory of the Cave isn't mentioned explicitly, but it's a core part of his philosophy and strongly associated with him. I can't believe that that wasn't lurking in the background of how and why Mitsuse chose him as part of his cast.
And then there's Asura. She is, by far, the most tragic of the characters, the ruthless driving heart. Her desperation and need to know and fight the forces that had destroyed her world. Her position as the adversary, locked in endless battle. In some ways her characterization matches recent pop culture depictions of Lucifer as not that bad after all, the reframing of the divine enemy as a hero by reframing the divine as villainous.
The choice to render Asura a teenage girl is a strange one now; I can't imagine how strange it would have been in the 1960s. She is the keen one, the intelligent one, the terrifying and ferocious warrior. She's also the oldest and most seasoned, the one with the greatest sense of what has been lost and what there is left to lose. I don't think Mitsuse's intent was the simple visual irony, but I think this juxtaposition of visual and narrative makes Asura a timeless figure within the narrative. Jesus and Siddartha and Plato were all grounded in the material and mortal world. Not so with Asura. She is timeless and ageless; where Siddartha, Jesus, and Orionae are worn out, she is full of vigor and drive. Asura has a vitality -- no wonder she outlives the others.
But oh, is she a tragedy. The ending is truly sad. It's ambivalence, the emptiness, the knowledge that the foe she'd sought has already won. The sheer prospect of her quest's continuation and knowing she'll have to continue it alone. What does she have left to fight for? How can she do anything other than fight?
Let me touch on the SF-nal bits now. Nominally, this book falls under the heading of science-fiction, and Mitsuse makes use of genre tropes to mine the terror of deep time, the vast misery of grinding destruction that spans millennia. The sublime horror of thousands of years of hibernation. The existence of cyborgs and advanced tech seem like a cruel joke: no matter how fancy our toys, we cannot escape our essential nature. And for humans, that essential nature is a yearning for understanding that is easily manipulated, what seems to be a endless march toward self-annihilation. The fact that the main cast becomes cyborgs in their quest is a sign of the cost of their struggle. These enhancements, made mostly for destruction, were imposed by a greater power out of their control; in becoming more than human, they become closer to their adversaries' equals, and in so doing leave the humans and mortals they fight for further behind.
This is not a happy book.
It is also, I think, a particularly timely one. Asura, Siddartha, and Orionae struggle against a world that is guided by a seemingly unstoppable force of mind-numbing malice. Their ally is as high-handed as their enemy, while also being far less effective. And yet, the three of them fight on. They push themselves to the brink, fight, scream, and risk everything in their need to assert their right to exist in freedom and safety. I don't think you have to look far in the US to see how this might feel analogous to the current political situation, where every right and protection is under government assault.
Asura closes out the novel alone, yearning for happier times, knowing that there is nothing left for her but to keep moving in a universe that seems hopelessly empty and cruel. She's already rejected collaborating with the enemy. What other option does she have?
What indeed.
Contrasting all this is Mitsuse's lush and beautiful descriptions of the natural and material world, of sensations seen and felt. Every description is beautiful. Every sky, ever disintegrating remnant of a long-dead civilization. The immediacy and groundedness of his prose contrasts the incomprehensible and abstract notions of time, space, and technology that form the more sf-nal elements, a reminder that -- even though all these characters constantly look outward for truth and understanding -- there is much in the real world that deserves our attention and respect as well.
10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a bleak book with a terrible despair at its heart. But it's also a beautiful book, many small stories woven together in lovely vignettes that ground its grand, philosophical struggles. It is a question that lingers, in hope of an answer.
*
Seeing as this book is difficult to grapple with, I'm linking the roundtable that inspired me to pick it up in the first place. There is entirely too much hand-wringing over what genre it fits in, but the various takes and insights are interesting and helpful as a starting place for grappling with the novel. It's pretty milquetoast on the topic of religion, which, that seems strange considering three of four main characters are explicitly religious figures.
I can't speak to Mitsuse's beliefs, but it seems pretty clear to me that the novel is, at the very least, deeply skeptical about religion. The Atlanteans' fictional religion is explicitly described as a means created by the powerful for manipulating and controlling the populace. Why should Christianity and/or Buddhism be any different? Religion in this book is an ideological tool. It preys upon an earnest yearning to make sense of a capricious, opaque world in order to manipulate and control. Religion (and secular philosophy, as embodied by Plato/Orionae) can offer answers -- but, Mitsuse seems to ask, where are those answers coming from? What do the providers of these answers have to gain? Can they be trusted?
The answer, in 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights, is terribly, sorrowfully, "no."
The elevator pitch of "Christ Versus Mecha-Buddha. In Space!" is what immediately drew my attention, but I was also drawn by the description of it as blending science-fiction and religious/mythical/historical fiction. I soon learned that the elevator pitch was both completely accurate and completely false.
Make no mistake: 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a bleak, bleak book. And yet its bleakness and terror strike at me in a way I feel moved to visit and revisit, much as I regularly rewatch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I generally try to avoid reread reviews on this blog, but I have a lot of things to talk about, so I shall.
10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights has an core cast of larger-than-life figures: Prince Siddartha (yes, that Prince Siddartha), Jesus Christ, Plato. They are rendered in this novel as deeply human, united in their yearning to understand the world around them -- not just its material essence, but its true meaning and nature. In a world that seems full of cruelty and devoid of reason, their desire is understandable. The tragedy is that the gods they turn to for answers are remote and angry; not just indifferent, but full of malice. Plato may seem like an odd addition to this case of religious figures, but I think Plato is meant to represent a secular yearning for knowledge. His Allegory of the Cave isn't mentioned explicitly, but it's a core part of his philosophy and strongly associated with him. I can't believe that that wasn't lurking in the background of how and why Mitsuse chose him as part of his cast.
And then there's Asura. She is, by far, the most tragic of the characters, the ruthless driving heart. Her desperation and need to know and fight the forces that had destroyed her world. Her position as the adversary, locked in endless battle. In some ways her characterization matches recent pop culture depictions of Lucifer as not that bad after all, the reframing of the divine enemy as a hero by reframing the divine as villainous.
The choice to render Asura a teenage girl is a strange one now; I can't imagine how strange it would have been in the 1960s. She is the keen one, the intelligent one, the terrifying and ferocious warrior. She's also the oldest and most seasoned, the one with the greatest sense of what has been lost and what there is left to lose. I don't think Mitsuse's intent was the simple visual irony, but I think this juxtaposition of visual and narrative makes Asura a timeless figure within the narrative. Jesus and Siddartha and Plato were all grounded in the material and mortal world. Not so with Asura. She is timeless and ageless; where Siddartha, Jesus, and Orionae are worn out, she is full of vigor and drive. Asura has a vitality -- no wonder she outlives the others.
But oh, is she a tragedy. The ending is truly sad. It's ambivalence, the emptiness, the knowledge that the foe she'd sought has already won. The sheer prospect of her quest's continuation and knowing she'll have to continue it alone. What does she have left to fight for? How can she do anything other than fight?
Let me touch on the SF-nal bits now. Nominally, this book falls under the heading of science-fiction, and Mitsuse makes use of genre tropes to mine the terror of deep time, the vast misery of grinding destruction that spans millennia. The sublime horror of thousands of years of hibernation. The existence of cyborgs and advanced tech seem like a cruel joke: no matter how fancy our toys, we cannot escape our essential nature. And for humans, that essential nature is a yearning for understanding that is easily manipulated, what seems to be a endless march toward self-annihilation. The fact that the main cast becomes cyborgs in their quest is a sign of the cost of their struggle. These enhancements, made mostly for destruction, were imposed by a greater power out of their control; in becoming more than human, they become closer to their adversaries' equals, and in so doing leave the humans and mortals they fight for further behind.
This is not a happy book.
It is also, I think, a particularly timely one. Asura, Siddartha, and Orionae struggle against a world that is guided by a seemingly unstoppable force of mind-numbing malice. Their ally is as high-handed as their enemy, while also being far less effective. And yet, the three of them fight on. They push themselves to the brink, fight, scream, and risk everything in their need to assert their right to exist in freedom and safety. I don't think you have to look far in the US to see how this might feel analogous to the current political situation, where every right and protection is under government assault.
Asura closes out the novel alone, yearning for happier times, knowing that there is nothing left for her but to keep moving in a universe that seems hopelessly empty and cruel. She's already rejected collaborating with the enemy. What other option does she have?
What indeed.
Contrasting all this is Mitsuse's lush and beautiful descriptions of the natural and material world, of sensations seen and felt. Every description is beautiful. Every sky, ever disintegrating remnant of a long-dead civilization. The immediacy and groundedness of his prose contrasts the incomprehensible and abstract notions of time, space, and technology that form the more sf-nal elements, a reminder that -- even though all these characters constantly look outward for truth and understanding -- there is much in the real world that deserves our attention and respect as well.
10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights is a bleak book with a terrible despair at its heart. But it's also a beautiful book, many small stories woven together in lovely vignettes that ground its grand, philosophical struggles. It is a question that lingers, in hope of an answer.
*
Seeing as this book is difficult to grapple with, I'm linking the roundtable that inspired me to pick it up in the first place. There is entirely too much hand-wringing over what genre it fits in, but the various takes and insights are interesting and helpful as a starting place for grappling with the novel. It's pretty milquetoast on the topic of religion, which, that seems strange considering three of four main characters are explicitly religious figures.
I can't speak to Mitsuse's beliefs, but it seems pretty clear to me that the novel is, at the very least, deeply skeptical about religion. The Atlanteans' fictional religion is explicitly described as a means created by the powerful for manipulating and controlling the populace. Why should Christianity and/or Buddhism be any different? Religion in this book is an ideological tool. It preys upon an earnest yearning to make sense of a capricious, opaque world in order to manipulate and control. Religion (and secular philosophy, as embodied by Plato/Orionae) can offer answers -- but, Mitsuse seems to ask, where are those answers coming from? What do the providers of these answers have to gain? Can they be trusted?
The answer, in 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights, is terribly, sorrowfully, "no."
cuppa_curiositea's review against another edition
3.0
The actual content of this book is exactly the type of thing I enjoy reading, but the writing of parts of the book just didn't sit well with me. Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, so I can't compare the original text with the translation. However, while reading this version of the book, there were parts when it just felt like I was reading words on a page that just didn't want to take on a comprehensible form. The parts that I could grasp were absolutely gorgeous, but even the settings seemed to change abruptly and without much movement. But I don't want to talk too much about that because, again, I don't know how much of that was due to imperfect translation.
As for the content, I felt like the author handled all of his themes perfectly. Rather than just slapping philosophy and religion into a sci-fi novel, they were always present in the undertones of the entire book. I loved how he used a science fiction approach to show familiar ideas from a totally different angle than they are typically thought of in our world--such as evolution/creation, eternity and infinity, free will versus destiny, the concept of gods or deities and their roles, etc. The opening chapters and closing chapters both blew me away! Though I was never uninterested, some of the middle chapters seemed a little choppy, but it always picked back up. I was constantly curious about what would happen to the quirky, confused characters next, even though sometimes I felt just as confused and out of place as they did! Rather than getting to know their hearts like we usually do in books, Mitsuse shows you the depths of these character's souls. Instead of feeling their reactions to their story, you start to sense how every step they take brings them closer to understanding their place in the universe, even if you don't quite understand it yourself.
Though my first time reading it may not have been a complete success, this is one that I will definitely give another try and recommend to others.
As for the content, I felt like the author handled all of his themes perfectly. Rather than just slapping philosophy and religion into a sci-fi novel, they were always present in the undertones of the entire book. I loved how he used a science fiction approach to show familiar ideas from a totally different angle than they are typically thought of in our world--such as evolution/creation, eternity and infinity, free will versus destiny, the concept of gods or deities and their roles, etc. The opening chapters and closing chapters both blew me away! Though I was never uninterested, some of the middle chapters seemed a little choppy, but it always picked back up. I was constantly curious about what would happen to the quirky, confused characters next, even though sometimes I felt just as confused and out of place as they did! Rather than getting to know their hearts like we usually do in books, Mitsuse shows you the depths of these character's souls. Instead of feeling their reactions to their story, you start to sense how every step they take brings them closer to understanding their place in the universe, even if you don't quite understand it yourself.
Though my first time reading it may not have been a complete success, this is one that I will definitely give another try and recommend to others.
kevinhanes's review against another edition
4.0
A delightfully complex and gratuitously Japanese take on "there's always a bigger fish." With Sci-Fi.