ATOMCrystal Silence
It is 2071, and Mars is being slowly terraformed by many nations often cooperating in an uneasy truce that reflects tensions back on Earth. The water of the polar ice cap, the most important resource for all the Mars colonies, is jointly controlled by the US, China, Japan and Russia, and doled out to the second-tier colonizing groups (Europe, Canada, Australia, India) only grudgingly. A military build-up is under way as different groups jockey for control of this all-important resource, and then the bodies of what appear to be intelligent aliens are found under the Martian ice.
Saya Askai is dispatched from Earth in realtime, separating herself from the virtual reality network that encompasses civilization, to investigate... and finds herself in a battleground of cyborgs, virtual reality plagues, and Schwarzchild traps that she may only be able to navigate through safely with the help of people who probably don't exist...
Originally published in 1999, Crystal Silence (クリスタルサイレンス) was promptly voted the best Japanese SF novel of the year in the annual poll run by Hayakawa SF Magazine. The book remains popular, both for its own qualities and more recent science fiction masterpieces by the author, and a revised edition was recently released as a two-volume paperback.
The author has published multiple novels and short stories and is rapidly being recognized as a leading writer of hard SF in Japan.
The Hayakawa bunko edition that we are using for the translation, a two-volume set, has cover art by Seto Hakata and WONDER WORKZ.
Details:
- xx pages
- Trade paperback
- ISBN 4-902075-05-9
- Kurodahan Press Book No. FG-J0004-L13
- List Price: Pending
- Cover: Katō Naoyuki
- Publication date: Scheduled for fall 2010
A third-generation Japanese American, Kathleen Taji hails from Los Angeles, California. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles with a major in East Asian Studies, she went to Japan to further her education, got married, and ended up living there for well over two decades. Although she is a technical translator, translating fiction is rapidly becoming a passion as well as a compulsion, especially in the science fiction, horror, and mystery genres. She currently resides in the suburbs of Los Angeles with her zebra finch and her beloved desert tortoise, Miz Pamie.