By Yukinobu Hoshino, translated by Fred Burke & Matt Thorn (Viz Spectrum Editions) ISBN: 0-929279-62-X ISBN-13: 978-0-929279-62-6
Yukinobu Hoshino is probably the most respected “hard science†science fiction manga creator in Japan with the phenomenal 2001 Nights saga of exploration and survival as his best known and regarded work, although ‘Steel Queen’ and the Tezuka award-winning ‘Morning Faraway’ are also seminal classics.
After finishing the reincarnation thriller ‘The Legends of a Witch’ in 1980 he began working on the shared theme short stories that became Saber Tiger.
The two stories presented in this book explore his signature fascination with expansion and colonisation, and are underpinned with dour philosophical musings about Man’s place in the universe. In the title story time-travellers from 2479 arrive in the midst of the Ice Age with the sole intention of protecting their distant ancestors from extinction, but the Sabre Tooth Tiger, undisputed master of the frozen wastes has his own ideas…
This bleak, savage examination of evolutionary principles is drawn with captivating skill and guile, as is the second tale ‘the Planet of the Unicorn’ wherein a human colony vessel lands on a perfect world but soon finds that their inexplicable unease was fully justified as both animals and humans suffer behavioural problems and even radical mutations…
Chilling, moving and eerily pensive in the manner of British SF authors J G Ballard, John Lymington or Christopher Priest this is a superb evocation of the dark, cerebral side of science fiction rendered real by the efficient, effective art of a master art technician. Why this isn’t still in print I shall never know, but I have my suspicions…
© 1991 Yukinobu Hoshino/Futabasha, Inc.
English edition © 1991 Viz Communications Japan, Inc. All Rights Reserved.