The Big Bad Book of Kaiju

　I contributed a short story to the Big Bad Book of Kaiju published by Titan Books in August. It is a long short story of about 7,400 words. In Japanese, it is about 50 sheets of manuscript paper with 15,000 characters. If you look at the number of characters, it is about the size of a short story in a literary magazine.The contents will be announced after the summary comes out on the official website.

　As the name suggests, Big Book is a thick and big book. There are more and more people asking for names in anthologies, but there are many of them that are close to 1,000 pages. The Big Book of Cyberpunk in the photo containing my “collaboration” is a 2,000-page two-tier group.I don’t know if it will be this thick, but this Big Bad Book of Kaju will have 24 works on 400 pages. It looks like you can enjoy it a lot, and the price is $29.I thought books were cheaper in Japan, but if this volume of books is about 4,500 yen, it’s not much different from Japan, and considering the price, it’s cheaper than a hamburger without coke in Los Angeles, so it’s easy.

In April last year, I received an offer from editor Henry through the form of this blog. I want to publish an anthology about Kaiju next year (2026), and I was wondering if you could write something about it. Only English books and e-books and audiobooks, the exclusive period is n years (not very long.It is a common offer that the salary is not lower than the standard of SFWA (SF Writers Association), excluding the publication of the yearbook anthology and the publication of self-selected short stories.

If you write with an offer of this format, translations and publications to Japanese and other languages will be possible even within the exclusive period, and adaptations such as comicalization and stage will not be bound.When it becomes a contract, there is a sentence that says to include credit so that the original text can be referred to, but there is no option to include credit, so don’t worry about it. I decided to take on it without hesitation, and I proposed the plot that came to mind at that time.It is a story that depicts from the perspective of a foreigner and produces Kaijuu. Isn’t it okay? At that point, the story of translation came up.

The translator was progressing with the story prepared by the publisher.If everyone needs to translate, the cost will not be ridiculous, but I was the only one who needed to translate among the participating writers, and if it was about 30 sheets (about 10,000 characters), it wouldn’t be an eye-catching amount – but that’s where the devil came.

Can I write in English? I asked.I can’t write fluent English, and I don’t read English novels that much, so I don’t have many drawers.

However, on this stage, the interview is over, and I read the English literature to a certain extent. I’m also reading a letter drawn by the person who is the main character.In fact, this is not the first time I have written a coherent fiction in English. Not only did I write, but I also progressed to confirm the gera through the review. ” It is a novel about the protagonist of the probe entitled “Three Light Years of Loneliness”, and a booklet related to futurology was scheduled to be published from an American university.The booklet based on diversity did not have a budget due to various circumstances, and the story disappeared. It’s a very interesting story related to generative AI, so I want to publish it somewhere, but I’ve written it at least once, so I knew it would be manageable.

I also know how to write fiction where rough narration and dialogue are allowed. ” “Three Light Years of Loneliness” set the probe as the main character. Since the monologue is a generated sentence, it is a device that convinces even if it is unnatural. This time, I chose a way to read the diary of someone I’m not used to writing as fiction.If you make a smooth description in the middle, it will be a good contrast, and that technique is no different from Japanese. I’ve been writing for ten years, so there’s a drawer in that direction.

However, it was a time when I was depressed about my family’s care, and the feature story was not progressing, so maybe I wanted to do something different.Anyway, “Isn’t it okay? I’ll help you,” so I started writing enthusiastically. If you think about it, an editor would say, “It’s okay.” If it doesn’t work, you can ask a translator.

At the end of last year, I completed the manuscript I wrote in Japanese until the middle while going back and forth between the island and Tokyo in English. I didn’t use the output at all because it was an absolute project that could not be generated by AI, but AI helped me a lot.I trained my English skills that can only be used to write that work by analyzing the GPT that I saw as a teacher and the novel that refers to the expression, and having them hear the wording of the time (of course, I think I got a little better at ordinary English).I also put a little effort into novel-writer to make writing English easier. The finished work is quite good.

I would like to introduce it in Japan, but if I write in English, I don’t have a manuscript in Japanese. “

Editors:
Jonathan Maberry
Henry Herz