Building on the groundbreaking Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, published by Rutgers University Press in 2015, Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions addresses the impact of a volatile post-pandemic present on speculative futures by and about Asians. The backdrop of this highly anticipated follow-up is a world that is radically different than in 2015: COVID-19, threats of a “new cold war” with China, Russi...

A fresh take on the dopplegänger and its place in Japanese film and literature—past and presentSince its earliest known use in German Romanticism in the late 1700s, the word Doppelgänger (double-walker) can be found throughout a vast array of literature, culture, and media. This motif of doubling can also be seen traversing historical and cultural boundaries. Double Visions, Double Fictions analyzes the myriad manifestations of the doppelgänger in...

The magnum opus of a Japanese master of speculative fiction, and a book that established Yoshio Aramaki as a leading representative of the genre, The Sacred Era is part post-apocalyptic world, part faux-religious tract, and part dream narrative. In a distant future ruled by a new Papal Court serving the Holy Empire of Igitur, a young student known only as K arrives at the capital to take The Sacred Examination, a text that will qualify him for metaphysical research service with th...