SF Online Interview with Hagio (Part II-4)

(Continued)

Sakai:

Who decided which stories to adapt?

Hagio:

I did.

Sakai:

You picked your favorites?

Hagio:

Yes, but I also considered the target audience of Weekly Margaret—I picked my favorites as well as what I thought would be suitable for the readers. In truth, I thought "The Fog Horn" might not be very accessible, but that was my most favorite from Bradbury back then.

Mizutama:

But how about the story about finding a buried woman?

Hagio:

That's "The Screaming Woman."

Mizutama:

I feel that was less accessible to the readers of Weekly Margaret than "The Fog Horn."

Hagio:

Well, but there is definitely a girl in the story. While "The Fog Horn" has only a middle-aged man and a monster.

Mizutama:

Oh, is that how it goes? (laugh) But it's a masterpiece, "The Fog Horn."

Hagio:

It's a masterpiece indeed.

Sakai:

Then, the SciFiers who encountered and were won over by Hagio-san in "They Were Eleven" got blown away when they read the sequel "The Horizon in the East—The Eternity in the West."

Mizutama:

And then we got "Silver Triangle," and "Ten Billion Days and Hundred Billon Nights," then "Marginal." I also liked "Heiresses in the Cabbage Fields," [Note 1] which reminded me of Lafferty. Oh, by the way, while "Marginal" was serialized I recall being really excited, with a strong gut feeling that you surely must also love "The Left Hand of Darkness."

[Note 1] "Heiresses in the Cabbage Fields" (1973)—the apartment where the Year 24 Group gathered was also in the middle of the cabbage fields. The manic mood in the piece perhaps conveys the reminiscence of the life there.

Sakai:

What an opinionated fan! (laugh)

Hagio:

Ah, I did read "The Left Hand of Darkness." It was so good that I chased down everything by Le Guin. "Marginal" was about a world where only men were born. Incidentally, you've probably heard the news stories about a recent survey of shellfish along the coast of Japan. The study indicates that these shellfish have all been feminized because of endocrine disruptors in our environment. When my manager heard this news, she said, "That story in 'Marginal'—that was really about shellfish, wasn't it!?" I replied to her, "That's right, actually." (laugh)

(Continues)

SF Online Interview with Hagio (Part I-4)

(Continued)

Mizutama:

Was it then that you also encountered Bradbury?

Hagio:

Ah, Bradbury, he was good! I was knocked out. It was a bit later, but I was still in Kyushu. One day I went to a bookstore to look for something to read, and there were two anthologies by a certain Ray Bradbury. One was "R is for Rocket" and the other was "The October Country." I had never heard of the author, but I thought he must be good if he had two books out, so I compared the cover art and got the one with the red roof, because it was cuter. Then, after finishing the book overnight, I rushed back to the bookstore, praying that no one had bought it before me, and purchased the other. (laugh)

Mizutama:

Ah, I totally understand how you must have felt.

Hagio:

As you know, in the provinces the total available amount of SciFi was basically low, so I encountered many more SciFi books after I moved to Tokyo. When I started living in Tokyo, there was a bookstore near Shogakukan, and I happened to have a few extra minutes before my appointment with my editor, and by coincidence I laid my hands on what turned out to be "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (by Philip K. Dick). Oh, I was so completely hooked.

Mizutani:

You got the calling from Dick, oh dear.

Hagio:

I was completely floored. At any rate, the futures depicted by people like Asimov, Clark, and Heinlein are positive. Of course they do episodes like the machine civilization going too far and causing some adverse effect, but they all have a fundamental trust in humanity, in that humans can probably get over those problems somehow. However, in Dick's stories, the future is annihilation, with only bleak prospects, and you have no choice but to live under its shadow. I found bottomless despair in his books. I had read about an underground elite class and the post-WWIII worlds, but I was completely blown away by Dick's darkness.

Sakai:

Isn't the ending like the one from "Electric Sheep" ironically much scarier than [those stories where] the despair finally hits you at the end?

Hagio:

Ve-e-ry scary.

Sakai:

A lot of things happen, but there is nothing you can do but go home and sleep.

(Continues)