Let’s Keep it Short: You May Dream by Izumi Suzuki
“My eyes met hers through the glass. She was sitting against the wall, gaze fixed on the front window for who knows how long, waiting.” (You May Dream, Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki)
Summary: The government, as a means of populations control, is sending out drafts for cryosleep. When her friend gets drafted, a young woman agrees to have her friend’s conscience to be transferred to her dreams.
Given the nature of my job (reviewing and general writing about speculative fiction) I’ve had to find ways to enjoy other forms and genres of fiction under the speculative umbrella. One of those forms is collections/anthologies. The first of the year was Burning Girls by Veronica Schanoes — mentioned in My 2021 Q1 Top SFF Reads. The next being this collection, Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki. I should mention a few things about this collection:
- This is a collection of Suzuki’s work ~40 years after being released and 35 years after she committed suicide in 1986.
- I would consider this light speculative fiction as the speculative elements do not truly affect the stories but are rather settings to study and observe the characters.
Excerpt from a blog post: Dreams, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll: Translating the Science Fiction Worlds of Izumi Suzuki by David Boyd
In “You May Dream,” two young women have a complicated relationship — and one that is further complicated by the fact that one of them has just been “randomly selected” to be cryofrozen. In the world of this story, the Population Department runs a lottery to put people to sleep for a hundred years. It doesn’t sound great, but there is a silver lining: Before going under, you can have your consciousness transferred into the mental world of another person (as long as they’re willing to have you).
Typically, we’re told, transfers occur between family members and lovers. Apparently short on options, the narrator’s friend asks the narrator, who says yes without giving it much thought. As soon as her friend arrives in her consciousness, her dream world descends into chaos, eventually transforming into a nightmare. The fusion of their mental universes — their opposite personalities — has apparently triggered some sort of cataclysmic event.
(David Boyd is one of the six translators for this collection and goes into detail for each story with each translators’ mindset for their approach).
Outside of the quick summaries (and evident in almost every review of this collection) is the mention that the theme of Suzuki’s collection is the commentary, critique and dissection of gender, sexuality, womanhood and how invasive the government and technology is. You may dream is no exception.
Excerpt from a review: Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom (2021) by Ola G
I must say the stories’ mood affected me a little: the pervasive ennui, unhappiness, despair hidden beneath a very thin surface of the bustle of everyday life are depicted in a thoroughly realistic way.
This is what I mean when I say that the speculative elements are merely settings, almost tertiary. The mood of these stories is a device unto itself creating a bleak, pessimistic version of a truth that isn’t unique to the Japanese experience. Being from ~40 years ago, there is something disquietingly accurate about these depictions. One thing I thought about when revisiting this story was that if I swap mind-transfers for social media, I’d almost feel the same thing. Like the main character, technology and the internet sometimes feels performative even in our own minds, most times for people we don’t know or truly like.
Excerpt from a review: “Terminal Boredom” by Izumi Suzuki by Alison Fincher
Gender is never comfortable or stable in Suzuki’s stories.
Excerpt from a review: A Female Vision of Sci-Fi — Izumi Suzuki introduced a different vision of femininity, one that departed from the stereotypes so abundant in the work of male writers. by Ren Scateni
…in “You May Dream,” the narrator questions gender roles and their own identity through repeated conversations with a friend in a dream, until, eventually, they break the binary:
(from text)“What was it about her that was turning me into a man? Got to be all that femininity. She’s acting like such a woman (as society defines the role, anyway) that I have to play the man just to keep the balance.”
The aphorisms in her work are best exemplified by this statement. A throwaway comment (as are many due to the prevalence of ennui in multiple characters and stories) that still speaks to Suzuki’s ideas on gender norms and how they penetrate the psyche.
Excerpt from You May Dream (Terminal Boredom) by Izumi Suzuki
“Syzygy? Androgyny? I’m no man and I’m no woman. Who needs gender anyway? I just want to get out of this place, to be on my own.”
There are many instances like these where our narrator/protagonist has no regard for the concept of gender itself. The inclusion of this hypophora — clear and plain — shows elements of the descent into the nightmare she has signed up for.
I’ll confess here. As much as this collection got my creative juices flowing in regards to my own short fiction, it wasn’t necessarily as enticing as I’d hope. There was a moment when I realized some of my disinterest was due to the monotony. Admittedly, as I was writing this, other stories kept popping into my head but fortunately/unfortunately, the analyses and critics did not differ.
Excerpt from a review: Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom (2021) by Ola G
That said, however, I must end my review with two caveats: these stories are old, and their age is noticeable. What was unique and ground-breaking in the 70’s now, four decades on, has turned into something more obvious and at times tropey. Secondly, Suzuki’s stories are focused predominantly on creating a certain mood and exploring mostly psychological ideas of alienation, addiction, exhaustion; there is barely any action, worldbuilding, or even character development.
I share the sentiment. These stories and their themes are undoubtedly relevant and somewhat prophetic given when they were written. The downside for me was the length, and subsequently prolonged narratives that seemed to eventually lose their punch. Nevertheless, You May Dream proved the prowess of Izumi’s mind for concepts.
Details about the Author:
Izumi Suzuki was born in 1949. After dropping out of high school she worked in a factory before finding success and infamy as a model and actress. Her acting credits include both pink films and classics of 1970s Japanese cinema. When the father of her children, the jazz musician Kaoru Abe, died of an overdose, Suzuki’s creative output went into hyperdrive and she began producing the irreverent and punky short fiction, novels and essays that ensured her reputation would outstrip and outlast that of the men she had been associated with in her early career. She took her own life in 1986, leaving behind a decade’s worth of groundbreaking and influential writing.
Details about the collection:
The first English-language publication of the work of Izumi Suzuki, a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon. Nonchalantly hip and full of deranged prescience, Suzuki’s singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Neuromancer to The Handmaid’s Tale. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always grounded in the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.
