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My pleasure at discovering that I was to review a book by Midori was substantially tempered by the sight of the words “science” and “fiction”. In fact, they struck terror into my heart; I’m a sci-fi virgin. But, I figured, who better to pop my science fiction cherry with than Midori? As it turned out, I need not have fretted. Master Han’s Daughter –Tales of Depraved NeoTokyo was like going on a week’s holiday to somewhere exotic and erotic, but somehow familiar: somewhere that, if you didn’t die trying, you could quite reasonably see yourself living. Or at least renting a holiday apartment there.

Midori’s cohesive collection of short stories is set in a future so near, some might be able to see it from where they are sitting. See those res towers in the distance? And beyond, the Sumida Trench, where the dismembered bodies of the Jane and John Does fetch up? That glow of the neon-lit tawdriness of the bordellos and the bod mod shops? Well, that’s ShinEdo: putrid and polluted, bleak and full of despair. But, on the plus side: there’s so much sex! There is sex to suit every gender, persuasion, inclination, perversion and then some. And I haven’t even started on the drugs – but clearly nobody ever just says no! Oh, and the local lingo is dead easy to pick up so you won’t even need a phrasebook.

Tales of Depraved NeoTokyo is seven stories bookended by Master Han’s Daughter Part One – in which we meet the man I came to think of my tour guide – and Part Two, in which we accompany him on his nerve-wracking scheme to bed Miss Mai, the top totty in town, with access to all the best drugs. The city is populated by a motley crew of label gals and trendboys, gadget junkies and rent-boys, grabbers and cyber-punks all “looking to score, to get off and to be happy for a little while”. Mainly looking to get off. And get off they can. They are spoilt for choice. Although, it does depend on who you are, how sophisticated your augmentations and, crucially, how many yen you wish to blow. To accompany your early morning java you could off-load into Sofia, the cyber-slut school-girl with her sorority pin and white socks. Or if you really want to push the neo-sexual boat out why not opt for the top-of-the range “quantum hentai flesh-to-flesh hook up” from Hydra Man. The price includes two medics on standby; safe sex in the mid-twenty-first century?

My top stories both feature Aya, a switchblade and Kalishnikov-carrying lesbian biker and her .45 toting girl, Dex. In Aya’s Blade, we’re riding pillion on a wild night-time mission to find the missing Dex. We’re trawling the streets and the bars of a no-go corner of town with only Dex’s scent and Aya’s sexual memories to guide us. We next meet the couple in Kitsune Gumi – A Dance with the Foxes, and this time they are members of a posse of cruel, beautiful femmes who target Kenji, a devastatingly handsome net celebrity. The steel-whip-wielding, renegade Foxes show the beautiful boy a night he’ll never forget; his scars won’t let him.

Don’t think that I just breezed through every one of these stories. Some I found challenging in the extreme: Love is a difficult and important parable for our community, bravely and boldly told. The completion of Mantra left me with a huge sense of achievement as I had struggled with the degree of suspension of disbelief required. Midori never shrinks from picking up and running with her most fantastical ideas: in A Cat Named Miu she gives us tragically eroticised anthropomorphism. She has thoughtfully included some author’s notes, which I thought a useful and enjoyable addition, as we are often left wondering who inspired whom, and which characters and plotlines had flummoxed the writer. And this time we know. The Nurse works well as an imagined prequel to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Even a sci-fi virgo intacto like me has seen Bladerunner!) And it is this story which has the most traditionally futuristic flavour.

Your Documents, Please is just plain horny in the most perverse way possible, while maintaining a really positive message: there is a place for everyone and that place can be full of desire. Although this is a collection of short stories, it reads like a novel. The characters and the locations become familiar. And ShinEdo has such a strong identity – with its own history, religion, language, laws and customs – and it plays such a pivotal role in the tales, that it is the main character. Midori’s language is clearly carefully chosen: familiar enough to understand, idiosyncratic enough to feel other-worldly.

And, while I survived and even enjoyed my trip to NeoTokyo, I don’t know that science fiction sans erotica is ever going to be my genre of choice. But, this futuristic hybrid should thrill Midori fans and recruit new ones, especially those with a desire to ****

Anne Adams

Master Han’s Daughter
Midori
Circlet Press
www.circlet.com