Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. It is authentic and careful and was ahead of its time-even down to the media references that thoughtfully situate readers in the futures of the past.ĭark and slightly absurdist, this collection is a poignant rumination on the despair and isolation of modern society.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. She plays with interesting questions about gender and sex, and this is not a dry philosophical exercise. 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 stories