Interview with Nick Mamatas, Editor, Haikasoru

Nick Mamatas – also known as the Nihilistic Kid in his Livejournal incarnation – is one of those contemporary renaissance men you hear about but rarely meet; editor, writer, subverter of higher education, multiple award nominee (in multiple genres), multiple translatee and champion of the Creative Commons.

Nick has several well-received novels under his belt (Northern Gothic, Move Underground – online version, Under My Roof) a couple of short story collections and several anthologies, including the forthcoming Haunted Legends, which he is editing with Ellen Datlow.

Nick did a stint as co-editor of Clarkesworld magazine and, late last year, he left that position to sign on with Viz Media’s new Japanese-in-Translation book line – Haikasoru.

He also blogs regularly – both on the Haikasoru blog and his own LiveJournal account entitled – Nihilistic Kid – (giving you some small idea of where Nick is coming from) which is where I first contacted him when I learned of this new line of books that would be translating the cream of the Japanese crop of SF/F/H offerings.

I’m pretty keen on things Japanese; anyone who studies military history ends up taking at least a peek at the Samurai culture, anyone who likes film has some familiarity with The Seven Samurai, Ran, etc., and anyone who is into genre is at least passingly familiar with the huge amount of Anime, Manga, toys & etc. – not to mention earlier imports such as the Godzilla flicks and really, really cool model kits.

I’ve also studied Japanese Karate, enjoy Shitake mushrooms, Kobe beef and looooooove Sushi and Sashimi (though I’ve never gone so far as to eat live baby octopus – but eel – I’ll pig out on eel!).  I’m familiar with Netsuke, prints, a few artists from classical periods and

am familiar, through my (uber gushing fanboyitis) interest in A. Bertram Chandler’s works that Japan has had a thriving and long-term interest in SF imported from the US, Britian and Australia.  (One very well-received Japanese novel/anime/manga series – The Dirty Pair by Haruka Takachiho - was inspired by Chandler), so I was very eager to be given the chance to read some original Japanese SF that did not require spending several years learning the language.

Nick promised me that my interest would be rewarded and I promptly requested – and received – the first two novels for review from the lovely Evelyn Dubocq who handles all such promotional things for Viz.

I believe very strongly that many Americans – even those deeply steeped in genre – are largely ignorant of the fact that the rest of the world is not ‘America Lite’; I’m also aware that our educational system does little, if nothing, to help correct this point of view.  I’m therefore very happy to see the broadening of exposure that our new electronic global village is engendering, and very, very happy to see companies like Haikasoru serving as the sharp tip of the spear in giving all of us the opportunity to look at our genre through different eyes and voices.

To briefly finish up the intro – I’ve read both initial Haikasoru offerings – All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
(my brief review here) and The Lord Of The Sands Of Time by Issui Ogawa
(positive review forthcoming) – and they are wonderful, fresh, interesting and well worth obtaining.

Both are eligible for the 2010 Hugo Awards for Best Novel as Nick is eligible for the Best Editor, Long Form.

An Interview With Nick Mamatas of Haikasoru:

COF: You’ve had some personal success with your own works being translated (German, Italian).  What did you learn through that process that informs what you’re doing now?

NICK:  Not too much, actually. Often, a US writer who is translated into another language has no real interaction with the foreign publisher or the translator. Here at VIZ Media though, we keep authors and even the original Japanese publisher in the loop. As it turns out writers are actually great resources for understanding their own material in another language. I know that is one of those things that doesn’t sound like it should be a surprise, but after a decade on the other end of publishing, it was!

COF: Both of the novels on the market so far (Kill, Sands) and some of your own blog posts regarding the new line have mentioned a harkening back to an older sensibility as a way of describing the kind of science fiction your Japanese authors are producing.  I’ve found that to be so as well – but for the benefit of others, can you describe what that ‘feel’/’sensibility’ is/are?

NICK: Well, I suppose that we could say that Japanese SF never experienced the New Wave or cyberpunk in the same way English-language SF did. By the same token, they never experienced the reactionary backlash against those two movements. So often Japanese SF has that sort of high-concept action stuff of the old days, but without the feeling that it is coming from the compulsory joy of an aging writer who is Very Very Upset that Michael Moorcock and William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin ruined everything.

COF: Are the works and authors you’ve chosen for the roll-out “mainstream” Japanese SF or the most ‘anglo-centric’ branch of it?

NICK: Definitely the mainstream, which also tends to be somewhat Anglo centric. The English-speaking world is something that thematically must be tangled with, both given the cultural impact of Japan’s encounter with the west, the roots of Japanese SF (which are found in US/UK SF, which was translated in inexpensive editions at the dawn of the Japanese SF era), and speculation about the future.
So, for example, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL was published in Japan as a “light novel” – essentially a sort of young adult fiction. In it, the Japanese and US militaries team up, which is by definition somewhat anglo centric. THE LORD OF THE SANDS OF TIME was nominated for the Seiun award and USURPER OF THE SUN, which we will be releasing in September, won the award in 2002. The Seiuns are analogous to the Hugo awards in that they are chosen by the fans. That’s as mainstream as it gets. And in that mainstream, there is significant variation: USURPER OF THE SUN is hard SF, THE LORD OF THE SANDS OF TIME plays loosey-goosey with science but has plenty of adventure and weirdness.
Then there is ZOO, short stories with dark themes. Neither horror nor short stories sell very well in the US, but in Japan both are popular. (Horror is actually summertime reading in Japan; the idea is that chills and goosebumps make for relief from the otherwise unbearable weather.) I suppose this is the launch title that is the least mainstream, SF-wise, but at the same time for the general reader—the people who love King and Bradbury—will go for it.

COF: Another way of getting at the same question would be – When you are looking for a novel for consideration as a Haikasoru book – what do you  look for?

NICK: As editors, we look for — a neat idea and some awareness that SF is both fun and something that could be meaningful to a reader’s life. So we’re not interested in publishing shelf filler–bland entertainment that is read for no other reason than I like spaceships and the book is about a spaceship–but rather the stuff where the author is taking the tools and tropes of the genre and trying to make something interesting out of them. Of course, we acquire the books before commissioning the translation (we work from sample chapters) so the idea has to carry the day. Then it’s my job to hammer the translation in to shape. It’s very hardcore line editing.

COF:  Some folks who I’ve described the HAIKASORU line to have said “Well, is it just American SF regurgitated”? and I usually respond that while it shares the same tropes and examines the same themes (so far), and covers the same ground (in some sense) that English language works have,  it is filtered through an entirely different culture and presented with  a POV that’s different (not better or worse) from what Canadian/Australian/British/Irish/South African/American writers use.
Do you have a handle on what informs that different POV?

NICK: A few things. Precision of language–Japanese SF uses a few broad strokes to describe entire universes. So both of our launch titles are under 60,0000 words. I think there is more of an emphasis on international or species-wide unity rather than competition between nations or peoples as well, thematically—one of the themes of THE LORDS OF THE SANDS OF TIME is the use of time travel to create and distribute a universal set of laws in the ancient past. Quite far gone from the typical Anglo trope of “hands-off” time travel.
Japanese SF often has humorous asides, even in otherwise serious books, for kicks.  There’s also a cultural preoccupation with guessing what one’s opponents are thinking; perhaps (and I am an utterly awful amateur sociologist) this is because of a tendency toward cultivating group harmony in Japan. This drives a lot of our book hit novel BATTLE ROYALE, in which junior high school kids are given weapons and compelled to kill one another or be killed. So social trespass and other antagonistic actions need to be predicted and stopped. And, of course, some of the books make fun of Americans! Keep an eye out for one of those next year.

COF:  Both works I’ve read so far are (not meant in a negative way) ‘choppier’ than most English language works.  They border on the episodic and/or have a film-quality to them.  Both authors are relatively young and are growing up in a society that is even more steeped in multi-media than the US is.  First – do you agree that the works are somewhat episodic and second – do you think this is an artifact of the culture the authors reside in, happenstance, or something else at work?

NICK: I would say that you picked up on more of a manga/comic book quality to them than a filmic quality. There is a lot of simultaneity in Japanese pop fiction– we see people acting and thinking, often at cross purposes, in one instant in the way we would in a panel when Spider-Man is saying something, thinking something else, doing something, and so too is the Green Goblin saying thinking and doing. The use of flashbacks and short paragraphs to establish a new scene — in the way a comic book artist may draw a single panel to establish a new scene — is also more mangaesque than filmic. I see film’s influence more often in American SF, actually, given the tendency for a floating third-person POV.

COF: It seems to me that your translators have to be pretty darned good writers themselves.  How difficult is it to match translator to the work – and how much of the translator’s voice are we seeing – rather than the original author’s?

NICK: Oh, that’s about 80% of an editors job at VIZ Media. Translators will often triple-translate something: what it says, what it means, and what it might be better to have it say for a US audience. We often run into Japanese co-workers with a print out of a single Japanese character and saying to them, “Don’t think! Just say the first English word that comes to mind when you see this character!” We do a lot of cultural digging too. Then there are technical terms – the translator of USURPER OF THE SUN asked me if I thought it odd that a spacecraft would have kerosene fuel. Of course, RP-1 USURPER OF THE SUN is a hard SF planetary adventure story and uses more-or-less current propulsion systems—is very very very high-grade kerosene but the author didn’t use a term like RP-1 (and the translator wasn’t a space nerd like me.)

COF: Were plans for Haikasoru helped or hindered by the recent Worldcon in Japan?

NICK: Helped, certainly. Japanese fans are following HAIKASORU developments closely and as they get more involved with Worldcon and the Hugos. We’re getting a lot of feedback from Japanese fans, which is great.

COF:   Haikasoru is very much in the vanguard of a cultural invasion of the US (North America); until very recently, the expression ‘if you can make it in Hollywood, you can make it anywhere’ summed up a very American-centric view of the world – which, though conceited, remained mostly true: good actors, singers, writers, artists, etc., have, for the past couple of centuries, made their way to the US, seeking acceptance and approval from a market that was considered to be the top tier.  This of course has resulted in American ignorance of many great works – film, books, philosophies, etc. – mostly due to the language barrier (after all, everyone should learn English – right?); reflecting this is the fact that, until very recently, most of the translation went from English to another language.  Do you think Haikasoru is part of a trend, an opening up of ‘literary dialogue’ – or is it just a good marketing move, given the acceptance of Japanese animation and comics?

NICK: If Haikasoru proves the concept we (meaning SF readers, not VIZ Media or me personally) can get SF from China, from Central Europe, from Africa and Latin America. Knock down every border, that’s my motto.

COF:  How has acceptance been so far?

NICK: It’s been only a month since the first two titles rolled out, but we’re hot!  We have announced our November and January titles, including another great military SF title YUKIKAZE, and THE BOOK OF HEROES by Miyuki Miyabe. That’s an especially interesting one, as the villain is The King in Yellow from the Robert W. Chambers classic. (There’s another example of Anglo-influence on Japanese fantasy.)

Thanks Nick.

~~~

Barring something I’m not yet aware of being released later this year, I plan on nominating both of the initial releases from Haikasoru for Best Novel in 2010. Of course there are two more releases coming from Haikasory in September – Zoo and Usurper of the Sun – so it may be that four of my five best novel slots are already spoken for.

And I think there’s a good chance that this line of books will do pretty well come September of 2010, since Australia ain’t nearly as far away from Japan as the US/Canada or Europe are and I expect that a good pecentage of the attendees will be familiar with these works in their original versions.

Regardless of the awards, Nick (and Haikasoru) is so far doing an excellent job of opening up new SF horizons, at least for me.  I’m really looking forward to the upcoming releases and have place Haikasoru on my ‘must buy’ list.

I’m hoping to do some follow-up with Nick, oh, probably around the October, November timeframe, so if you all have questions or comments, please feel free.

Haikasoru

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