tl;dr

 World building at its most imaginative, perplexing and immersive.  This is science fiction.

opening remarks

With the aim of expanding my genre horizons, I thought I’d read a recent Japanese genre novel published by Haikasoru namely, Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima (and translated by Daniel Huddleston).  Based on the cover it looks like quite the mind-fuck.

knee-jerk observations

In the first story, “Sisyphean (or, Perfect Attendants)”, the weirdness starts almost immediately with the birth of a worker, ejected from a pod, followed by this meeting with Mr President.

Workers are allowed one meal a day.  Their nourishment comes via the appetising sounding slimecake.  This “food” is so awful that workers are forced to take anti-vomit medication just to swallow it down.
I feel sorry for the worker.  He gets no respect from his boss, is nearly overcome by flesh-eating lice and is now being manhandled by a canvasser.  They’re crustacean-like creatures, known for severing the heads of poor workers like our protagonist.
Things are becoming clearer.  In this world of oozing malleable flesh and muscle, the worker is tasked to make internal organs and bones for “clients”, essentially formless blobs of matter.  Once properly outfitted with the relevant bits and pieces, tissue and nerves, the blob transitions into a bipedal Director, one of the corporation’s ruling class.
That feeling when you realise you’re pregnant and therefore must be a woman.
This is the way science fiction should be written.  Drop the reader in the deep end, overwhelm them with the stench and neologisms of a new world (or a vaguely recognisable future Earth) and then gradually and with great care weave in tidbits of exposition.  In the case of Sisyphean, it becomes evident that workers give birth to themselves, that their uterus is modified into a sleepsac (a pod that envelops the worker during rest time) and what remains of the corpse is thrown on a midden heap. Our worker, or what’s left of him (they were a she but now they’re back to identifying as male) is saved by a disassembler (another category of worker).  He is given a new body, of sorts, and memories that aren’t entirely his own.  It’s complicated and strange and unlike anything I’ve read.
The second section of the novel – entitled, “Cavumville (or, The City in the Hollow)” – deals with Hanishibe, a 16-year old attending school where every student has been genetically modified in wild and beautiful ways.
Hanishibe is a resident of Cavumville which happens to be located on a moon (although what these people refer to as a moon might be the aft end of a generation ship or an underground cave on a distant world.  It’s never made entirely clear).
It’s raining cats and petauristas (mutated animals).  This is, apparently, the initial stage of a weather phenomenon the residents call The Descent.

Dempow Torishima’s illustrations are scattered through the novel. They’re messy, and strange and beautiful. A bit like the novel.

What’s fascinating is the theology that underpins Cavumille.  Found in the dissected corpses of the momonjis that fall during The Descent are returnees, people who have died and have come back, unable to remember their names.  Hanishibe’s job is to question them, to tease out their memories of a past life.
As much as I’ve enjoyed this second story of this shared Universe, I am finding the metaphysics and theology confusing.  In one sense people are reborn by coming back in the uterus of momonjis, and in another sense, a person can be reborn as a child, their memories stored in a crystal (a Magatama).  It’s not clear whether this is all part of the same process of resurrection or whether they’re separate.  It’s also possible I’ve missed a critical scene or moment that explains this.

The third story (or novella), “Castellum Natatorius (or, The Castle in the Mudsea)”,  is set in a world (is is the same world of the previous stories?) where castles (castellae) mate with other castles and have little castle babies.

The people who live near and around these castles, including our first-person narrator, are a variety of insect, each a member of a tribe.  Our hero insect has broken into a pharmaceutical company to steal documentation about the ingredients for a new painkiller.  As he’s about to get away with the evidence, he is accosted by a female insect from another tribe who is quite keen on sharing her eggs with our hero.
Our narrator is a dodgejobber, a cross between a private investigator and a spy.  He would be a mix of James Bond and Philip Marlowe if they happened to be insects.  After barely surviving his encounter with the promiscuous female he wants out of the organisation that hires him.  However, his boss, ignoring our heroes protests assigns him another dodgejob to figure out whether the death of a proxy, acting on behalf of a senior official, was accidental or murder.  Our narrator views this as his final job. Why do I get the feeling that won’t be the case?

In between getting hooked on narcotics (that happen to be sentient) beaten by the members of other tribes and having his brain violated on numerous occasions our hero, who I now imagine as insect Bruce Willis, gets dragged into a conspiracy involving the discovery of a new species.  Radoh, Bruce’s actual name, is shown an image of this new creature, a humanoid with two arms and two legs.

What’s so controversial about this discovery – the mummified body is named Pancestor by Archlearner Meimeiru – is how its existence puts in doubt current theories on insect evolution – or more precisely human evolution, Radoh and his species identify as human.  What constitutes humanity is a key and consistent theme throughout the novel.

Sisyphean’s final story, “Peregrinating Anima (or, Momonji Caravan)”, begins with Hisauchi accosted by a conglomeration of tumours.

After the weirdness, genetic mutations, formless blobs and addicted insects of the first three stories, this fourth piece is far more straightforward.  The whereabouts of the story are unknown, but it appears to be sometime in the future where depending on how well you know someone will determine what they reveal of themselves.  And even if they show you their features, it’s unlikely this will be their actual baseform face, but rather a carefully designed image.
The second chapter of this novella isn’t a continuation of Hisauchi’s story but instead shifts focus to the Vastsea, traversed by thousands of caravans made up of momonjis.  Here we are introduced to Umari, a young girl who tends to the momonjis. There is a brief reference to the Great Dust Plague, an event that’s been mentioned in the previous sections.  I’d like to explain how this story slots in with what’s come before but the book’s chronology is a bit of a blur.
Ick.
Hanishibe, our main character from the second story Cavumville, has returned, seemingly alive and well, that is until metal starts sprouting from his body.

The Gist Of It

I’ve discovered that you don’t need to fully understand a story to appreciate, engage or love it.  The four novellas that make-up Dempow Torishima’s mosaic novel Sisyphean aren’t, by any stretch, incomprehensible but if you quizzed me on how they all fit together, I’d struggle to provide any clarity.

My uncertainty is a direct result of the lack of exposition.  As dense and detailed as the prose is, there’s a distinct lack of explanation of why any one thing, any one revelation is important.  For example, at the end of the first story “Sisyphean (or, Perfect Attendants)” there’s a reference to “many parishes” continuing to exist inside the “departed interstellar spaceships.”  Do we take from that that the next three stories are all set on these departing spaceships and that the moon described in “Cavumvillle” or the Vastsea that features in “Peregrinating Anima” are, in fact, locations on board these spaceships?  And if that’s the case are the insects and their sentient castles in the third story – “Castellum Natatorious” – also one of these many parishes?  The interludes set between each novella imply a much larger story about a virus or parasite or corruption infecting these “departed interstellar” spaceships, and the final story suggests that the infection is, eventually, removed, but hand on my heart I can’t say that I’m sure this is the case or even if I’m on the right track.

And do you know what, it doesn’t matter the slightest.  What Torishima does so cleverly is overwhelm you in the sights, sounds and smells of his world.  It might not be clear what links one novella to the next, but the environment of each story and the day to day challenges faced by the characters is well rendered.

Torishima loves a bit of body horror, he revels in the ripping and tearing of flesh, the wash of blood and other bodily fluids, and this focus on the body, not just its frailties but its many and varied varieties, is a clear theme of the novel.  This is a book about life, how it adapts and evolves and mutates across different environments and circumstances.  Everyone identifies as human throughout the individual stories, but very few of them look like you and me.

So, no, I didn’t entirely slot all the puzzle pieces together, but I was utterly engrossed in Torishima’s wild, dangerous, brutal, fleshy world.  This is science fiction that doesn’t spoon-feed or wait for the reader to catch up, at the same time it’s also science fiction that immerses you in the unique imagination of the author.  There’s nothing staid or familiar about Sisyphean.  From the first page to the last it’s unrelenting in its originality.

Oh, and a massive pat on the back and well done to the translator Daniel Huddleston.  While I’m sure translating is never easy, Sisyphean, with its neologisms and dense prose must have been a unique challenge.

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