Hal is the founder, publisher and fiction editor of Broken Pencil.
Biogenesis by Tatsuaki Ishiguro is published by New York-based Vertical press, a publishing house exclusively devoted to bringing Japanese fiction and manga to English language readers.
It is strange and affecting from the first page. The text consists of four quasi-scientific reports summarizing research into separate, but clearly related, phenomena including the case of a woman whose body temperature consistently hovers around freezing and the strange, disturbing saga of the Sea Squirt. The title story explores the quest of two obsessed professors to prolong the lives of the last winged mice. Neither fantasy nor science fiction nor conventional short story, the reports chronicle the human compulsion to categorize and control, and the tragic consequences therein.
Eerie, disturbing and, most importantly, gripping.