Hideo Furukawa - Belka, Why Don't You Bark?

They had to get out of Russia.

Out, off the Eurasian continent altogether.

For a moment she thought to point at Japan, but then she reconsidered. Like I’d fucking go back there. She moved the tip of her finger up to Sakhalin, then up over the Sea of Okhotsk to the Kamchatka Peninsula. East. They’d keep heading east, off the continent, beyond. But not as far as North America—too fucking worldly to go to a fucking English-speaking country, she decided. She jabbed her finger down randomly to the east of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

On an archipelago sandwiched between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

The old lady understood.

She got them on a train, which took them to the ocean. They crossed the ocean. The old man’s bank account hadn’t been frozen yet, so funds were not a problem. They flew in an eight-seat charter plane from Sakhalin to the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Three weeks later, they crossed to another island in the Pacific, though they still hadn’t left Russian territory. The crossing took twenty or thirty minutes on a fishing boat that set out from a small coastal village on the southeast edge of the peninsula. They got off the boat, went ashore. The island was unpopulated, but there were a few old wooden buildings. A factory that had all but rotted away. A seafood processing plant run by Japanese capital in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War; it had, apparently, produced canned crab and salmon and had been the base of the North Atlantic fishing industry. You stayed there, preparing, for three months.

You. Three of you. First: Strelka. You watched as the old lady did this and that, working toward the goal. You watched, trusting her. You obtained fake identities, fake pasts, and still you remained there, on the uninhabited island, biding your time. The old lady made trips to the village on the peninsula to buy food and eventually a boat. You and Belka went to the village a few times and learned that sled dogs were kept there, and that there were puppies, four or five months old. The old lady chose seven puppies, bought them.

Little by little, you were getting ready to set sail.

It would happen in secret.

And I ask you: Where will you go? And you answer: We’ll leave the world behind, we’ll go to Dog Heaven. Who are you? I ask. And you answer: I’m me, fucking asshole.

And then there’s you. The other you.

You stand on the beach on the island’s eastern shore, gazing out over the vastness of the ocean, beyond the fog. You hear the other dog talking to you, in Japanese. Asking you, “Belka, why don’t you bark?”

Soon you will cross the ocean together. And you will kill the twentieth century. You will build a heaven for dogs, only dogs, on that island within the fog, and from there you will declare war on the twenty-first century.

With a small, elite list of award-winners, classics, and new work by the hottest young writers, Haikasoruis the first imprint dedicated to bringing Japanese science fiction to America and beyond. Featuring the action of anime and the thoughtfulness of the best speculative fiction, Haikasoru aims to truly be the “high castle”of science fiction and fantasy.

METAL GEAR SOLID: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS

–PROJECT ITOH

From the legendary video game franchise! Solid Snake is a soldier and part of a worldwide nanotechnology network known as the Sons of the Patriots System. Time is running out for Snake as, thanks to the deadly FOXDIE virus, he has been transformed into a walking biological weapon. Not only is the clock ticking for Snake, nearly everyone he encounters becomes infected. Snake turns to the SOP System for help, only to find that it has been hacked by the SOP’s old enemy Liquid Ocelot—and whoever controls the SOP System controls the world.

GENOCIDAL ORGAN

–PROJECT ITOH

The war on terror exploded, literally, the day Sarajevo was destroyed by a homemade nuclear device. The leading democracies transformed into total surveillance states, and the developing world has drowned under a wave of genocides. The mysterious American John Paul seems to be behind the collapse of the world system, and it’s up to intelligence agent Clavis Shepherd to track John Paul across the wreckage of civilizations and to find the true heart of darkness—a genocidal organ.

THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE

–EDITED BY NICK MAMATAS AND MASUMI WASHINGTON

A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up virtual marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese!

VIRUS: THE DAY OF RESURRECTION

–SAKYO KOMATSU

In this classic of Japanese SF, American astronauts on a space mission discover a strange virus and bring it to Earth, where rogue scientists transform it into a fatal version of the flu. After the virulent virus is released, nearly all human life on Earth is wiped out save for fewer than one thousand men and a handful of women living in research stations in Antarctica. Then one of the researchers realizes that a major earthquake in the now-depopulated United States may lead to nuclear Armageddon…

SELF-REFERENCE ENGINE

–TOH ENJOE

Toh EnJoe’s prize-winning fiction crosses the streams—from hardcore science fiction to bizarre surrealism—and has found an audience across the genre divide. Self-Reference ENGINE is a puzzle of a book, where vignette and story and philosophy combine to create a novel designed like a concept album.

THE OUROBOROS WAVE

–JYOUJI HAYASHI

Ninety years from now, a satellite detects a nearby black hole scientists dub Kali for the Hindu goddess of destruction. Humanity embarks on a generations-long project to tap the energy of the black hole and establish colonies on planets across the solar system. Earth and Mars and the moons Europa (Jupiter) and Titania (Uranus) develop radically different societies, with only Kali, that swirling vortex of destruction and creation, and the hated but crucial Artificial Accretion Disk Development association (AADD) in common.

THE NAVIDAD INCIDENT: THE DOWNFALL OF MATÍAS GUILI

–NATSUKI IKEZAWA

In this sweeping magical-realist epic set in the fictional south sea island republic of Navidad, Ikezawa gives his imagination free rein to reinvent the myths of the twentieth-century Japan. The story takes off as a delegation of Japanese war veterans pays an official visit to the ex-World War II colony, only to see the Japanese flag burst into flames. The following day, the tour bus, and its passengers, simply vanish. The locals exchange absurd rumors—the bus was last seen attending Catholic mass, the bus must have skipped across the lagoon—but the president suspects a covert guerrilla organization is trying to undermine his connections with Japan. Can the real answers to the mystery be found, or will the president have to be content with the surreal answers?

HARMONY

–PROJECT ITOH

In the future, Utopia has finally been achieved thanks to medical nanotechnology and a powerful ethic of social welfare and mutual consideration. This perfect world isn’t that perfect though, and three young girls stand up to totalitarian kindness and super-medicine by attempting suicide via starvation. It doesn’t work, but one of the girls—Tuan Kirie—grows up to be a member of the World Health Organization. As a crisis threatens the harmony of the new world, Tuan rediscovers another member of her suicide pact, and together they must help save the planet… from itself.