Catherynne M. Valente has been called the Ray Bradbury of her generation — quite a thing to live up to! So that, plus the fact she got her start as a sci-fi writer while living in Japan, should make many SF fans here curious about her collection of short stories and poems, "The Melancholy of Mechagirl."
The Melancholy of Mechagirl, Catherynne M. Valente, HAIKASORU
Valente writes that "for foreigners, Japan is a Rorschach painting" and the stories collected here were all influenced in some part by her stay here as a lonely Navy wife trying to decypher the inkblot before her. Mixing Japanese folktales with "Neo-Tokyo"-like visions Valente's stories reveal a "mythpunk" world well worth entering.
