For many decades, Japan has been known for its contribution to cutting-edge technologies, and is ranked high in fields such as robotics research. Many of Japan’s advanced technologies have been inspired by ideas in comic books (authors like Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy) and literature (authors like Yasutaka Tsutsui).

Beginning his writing career in 1928, Juza Unno took inspiration from Western authors like Jules Verne, and his own knowledge of electric engineering to write fiction integrating a broad spectrum of innovative ideas. His stories touch upon topics from facial reconstruction and gender reassignment surgery to video phones, multi-dimensional beings, and celestial body orbit adjustment (and of course, robots).

Unno is sometimes referred to as the father of Japanese science fiction. This collection contains some of Unno’s best short and medium-length fiction, including the novella Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath, one of Unno’s most well-known stories about an underground dystopian world where the citizens are brainwashed daily by specially constructed music. Not only is this Japan’s first work in the dystopian genre, but it also touches upon many of Unno’s innovative ideas (not to mention the notable appearance of a tantalizingly beautiful robot).

Like many of his other works, Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath is a cautionary tale about how the misuse of technology can have disastrous consequences.

Fast Forward Japan contains a total of nine stories, including:

• The Living Intestine, an unusual tale of a doctor’s medical experiment gone awry.
• Adventures of the Dinosaur-Craft, a story where two boys use technology and creativity to have the adventure of a lifetime.
• The Last Broadcast, a story about a scientist whose breakthrough allows him to eavesdrop on a alien civilization on the brink of destruction.
• The World in One Thousand Years, a tale about a man who wakes up in the future from a long cryogenic sleep.