Suzuki writes with wonderful despair, showing humanity as resistant to change even as our societies and technologies fail us.

Not much happens in these stories, and yet they transport readers to worlds both familiar and unfamiliar, indulging our fantasies and fears of the future. Though some people oppose the imposition, the story is much more concerned with the young protagonist's descent into idleness and indifference.

And in the title story, a TV–obsessed population indulges further with plans to enforce eternal screen time onto everyone in society. “Forgotten” examines the pitfalls of an overly stimulated and 'dissolute lifestyle' through the semiromantic relationship between a woman named Emma and an alien named Sol. “You May Dream” explores government-sanctioned population control in a society plagued by “a lack of self-confidence tangled up in fatalistic resignation.” “That Old Seaside Club” turns rehab into a bizarre hypnotic sleep detached from the physical world. “Women and Women,” set in a matriarchal utopia where men exist only in prison or in secret, tells the story of a young girl whose curiosity is squashed after her brief encounter with a boy who escapes isolation. This eagerly awaited short story collection by Japanese writer Suzuki (1949-1986)-her first book to be translated into English-showcases her fluency in the bizarre and surreal.Įach story, set in a dark and punky future, depicts the lives of young people submerged in apathy.

Terminal boredom by izumi suzuki