Sessions

EnJoe Toh (b. 1972) is a remarkable figure in contemporary Japanese literature. He holds a 2007 Ph.D. in Physics from Tokyo University, and he won the Akutagawa Prize for the latter half of 2011. Although his work is often categorized as sci-fi, it is more aptly classified, to borrow a term from the author’s himself, as “scientific fiction.” That is, fiction that reads as the result of contemplating unique nexuses between literature and science.
In EnJoe’s May 2015 work “Shuffle Drive” (「シャッフル航法」), the author imagines a method of interstellar propulsion based on the well-established mathematics of shuffling cards, combinatrics. The work, which initially appeared in the May 2015 “Modern Poetry Notebook” (『現代詩手帳』), is a hybrid of prose and poetry, and, one could argue, a hybrid of science and fiction…but not really sci-fi. He forces a collaboration between the literary and the scientific, and the result is a curious blend of the arbitrary and the absolute.

Speakers

Michael Tangeman