Edge - Hardcover

Suzuki, Koji

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1934287385 ISBN 13: 9781934287385

Publisher: Vertical, 2012

Synopsis

Edge begins with a massive and catastrophic shifting of the San Andreas fault. The fears of California someday tumbling into the sea--that have become the stuff of parody--become real. But even the terror resulting from this catastrophe pales in comparison to the understanding behind its happening, a cataclysm extending beyond mankind's understanding of horror as it had previously been known. The world is falling apart because things are out of joint at the quantum level, about which of course there's never been any guarantee that everything has to remain stable.

Koji Suzuki returns to the genre he's most famous for after many years of "not wanting to write any more horror." As expected from Suzuki, the chills are of a more cerebral, psychological sort, arguably more unsettling and scary than the slice-and-dice gore fests that horror has become known in the U.S. Never content to simply do "Suzuki"--as it were--but rather push the envelope on what horror is in general and for which readers have come to know him, Edge City borders on being cutting-edge science fiction. The author himself terms this novel, which he has worked on for some years, a work of "quantum horror."

About this title

About the Author:

Koji Suzuki was born in 1957 in Hamamatsu, southwest of Tokyo. He attended Keio University where he majored in French. After graduating he held numerous odd jobs, including a stint as a cram school teacher. Also a self-described jock, he holds a first-class yachting license and crossed the U.S., from Key West to Los Angeles, on his motorcycle.The father of two daughters, Suzuki is a respected authority on childrearing and has written numerous works on the subject. He acquired his expertise when he was a struggling writer and househusband. Suzuki also has translated a children's book into Japanese, The Little Sod Diaries by the crime novelist Simon Brett.In 1990, Suzuki's first full-length work, Paradise won the Japanese Fantasy Novel Award and launched his career as a fiction writer. Ring, written with a baby on his lap, catapulted him to fame, and the multi-million selling sequels Spiral and Loop cemented his reputation as a world-class talent. Often called the "Stephen King of Japan," Suzuki has played a crucial role in establishing mainstream credentials for horror novels in his country. He is based in Tokyo but loves to travel, often in the United States. Birthday is his sixth novel to appear in English.

Review:

"For anyone who's read author Koji Suzuki's Ring, you'll know that the author is less concerned with jolting you using sudden shocks or abrupt, violent scenarios; instead, Suzuki has a thing for gradually tilting the world for his characters and the reader, shifting the rules ever so slightly so that the certainties of our science can no longer be trusted... Edge, which sees the author at his most instructive, the book acting at times as a brief(ish) treatise on nothing so much as the history since the Big Bang, the evolution of mankind, the fragility of our math, and all tied into the abrupt disappearance of a suburban Japanese family. As apocalypses go, this is an inventive one, and although Edge won't have you leaving the lights on out of fear of the dark, Suzuki's novel (which mixes that genre with sci-fi, journalism, and a little bit of reality TV) will probably have you keeping the lights on picking through some of the works in his extensively-sourced bibliography." - MTV.com

"Suzuki is called the Stephen King of his country, but that's not really accurate; King isn't nearly as adept at creating complex characters, explaining scientific principles or writing the kind of dialogue that might actually be spoken by humans." - Las Vegas Mercury

"...Suzuki is plowing a path that nobody else has traveled, ..." - Agony Columns

About this edition

• Publisher: Vertical
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1934287385
• ISBN 13: 9781934287385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384