Story: 3 / 10
Characters: 4
Setting: 7
Prose: 4 ( )

This is a difficult one to rate. I feel like some of it was a little over my head. I'm not sure if that was a problem with translation or my thick skull. Probably the latter, since I found the prose to be quite good. The translator actually deserves a great amount of praise for doing such a nice job.

The book is very metaphysical. It covers a lot of big questions like "what are the boundaries of time and space?", "what lies beyond the boundaries of our universe?", "why does everything decay?" But the book doesn't give you an omnipotent view of what's happening. I felt as confused about the events as the characters in it. Even the end left me feeling a little confused about what I just read. Ultimately, I believe the book is about the struggle between life and entropy.

However, don't let my confusion or description of its themes make you think this is some slow-moving and boring philosophy book disguised as a sci-fi novel. There is plenty of action in this book, and it's of a very wild nature. There is a rather long chase in which Jesus of Nazareth is using a maser (that's right a maser, not a laser) to hunt Siddhartha (aka Buddha) who retaliates with mini-nuclear missiles (he has been "reincarnated" as a cyborg). There's something you don't read every day!

Overall, the book is a good, quick read, that will leave you thinking about big questions. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2293205.html

I was a little baffled at first, as we moved from Plato to Buddha to Jesus as incarnations of non-human entities; was this a Shaggy God story? Though I'll admit that it was very interesting to see a non-Christian writer's take on the New Testament, and in the end the Buddha and sf do seem to find a harmonious coexistence after exciting and occasionally confusing conflicts. I finished it rather puzzled; the book seemed to owe a lot to Childhood's End, and a little to the New Wave, but not much to more recent genre developments.

The mystery was resolved when I realised that 百億の昼と千億の夜 was published in 1967, so it's not very surprising that it reflects the concerns of that decade. It is the only one of Mitsuse's 20-odd novels to have been published in English; while the Japanese graphic story-telling tradition has a huge English-language following, this seems to be less true of unillustrated prose. While I regret not having better access to this particular tradition, I do hope that it's moved on a bit from 1967. ( )

Haikasoru is an American imprint dedicated to bringing Japanese science fiction to the English-reading world. My science fiction reading is usually very US/UK centric, with some Dutch works thrown in if I can find them. Sometimes you get Polish or Russian works, and because their world-view is different, so is their science fiction. So when I learned about Haikasoru, I looked through their catalog and found some interesting books, of which "10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights" by Ryu Mitsuse was one. This book, published in Japan in the late 1960s and a major bestseller over there, is an interesting view on aliens on Earth.
The book starts at the beginning of Earth, with the creation of our planet by the laws of physics. Life appears (much later), and we follow the thoughts of one sentient creature. Then we get a chapter about the philosopher Plato who is looking for Atlantis. We also see Siddharta on his way to enlightenment and Jesus just before his conviction up to and including his death on the cross. But this book is science fiction for sure, because now that we have these main characters, we find out just what has been going on on Earth, and what these old beliefs and religions have to do with it.
The style of this book is very different from other science fiction books I've read. I always think that it is because the writer is Japanese, and Japanese storytelling (to me) seems slower. They take time to set a mood, so you are not only following the actions of the characters, but you also get into a certain state of mind. This book is similar in that way. The action is in the final part of the book, the first half takes its time to set up the story. That made the book great, because the story itself is confusing at times, and now, a week after reading it, I'm not quite sure I could tell you exactly what happened. But that wasn't important, I loved the book, and give it five out of five stars. ( )

File this under classic novels that might have just passed their sell-by date, as Ryu Mitsuse is mostly dealing with the place of passion and the hunt for meaning in the face of an indifferent Universe. To put it another way, when it's explained that Mitsuse has Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Clifford Simak as influences it all makes perfect sense. Also highly recommended to fans of Roger Zelazny. I do have to give points to the author for a take on Jesus of Nazareth that is, well, idiosyncratic! ( )