“Wolf?”
A voice called to him, and Evangeline approached with starlight in her hair. He turned himself partly toward her.
“Felix just said his first word! He called me ‘Vater’!”
“Oh, my!”
Looking somewhat confused, Evangeline approached her husband and took Felix into her arms, feeling the warmth of his tiny body. Her husband extended his arm around her shoulders. The two of them turned their gaze to the overwhelming, even fearsome profusion of stars, and stood for a few seconds in silence.
Felix raised his hands toward the sky and closed his fists, trying to grab the stars. He did not know what he did. Was it not, after all, simply his way of expressing the longing that runs through all of human history for what lies beyond reach?
“Let’s go inside,” Evangeline said gently. Mittermeier nodded, and with his arm still around her, the two began to walk. The provisional palace overflowed both with grief over the kaiser’s passing and a strange energy aimed at ritualizing his death. Toward this, Wolfgang Mittermeier walked.
The legend ends, and history begins…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yoshiki Tanaka was born in 1952 in Kumamoto Prefecture and completed a doctorate in literature at Gakushuin University. Tanaka won the Gen’eijo (a mystery magazine) New Writer Award with his debut story “Midori no Sogen ni…” (On the green field…) in 1978, then started his career as a science fiction and fantasy writer. Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which translates the European wars of the nineteenth century to an interstellar setting, won the Seiun Award for best science fiction novel in 1987. Tanaka’s other works include the fantasy series The Heroic Legend of Arslan and many other science fiction, fantasy, historical, and mystery novels and stories.
HAIKASORU
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
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USURPER OF THE SUN—HOUSUKE NOJIRI
Aki Shiraishi is a high school student working in the astronomy club and one of the few witnesses to an amazing event—someone is building a tower on the planet Mercury. Soon, the Builders have constructed a ring around the sun, threatening the ecology of Earth with an immense shadow. Aki is inspired to pursue a career in science, and the truth. She must determine the purpose of the ring and the plans of its creators, as the survival of both species—humanity and the alien Builders—hangs in the balance.
THE OUROBOROS WAVE—JYOUJI HAYASHI
Ninety years from now, a satellite detects a nearby black hole scientists dub Kali for the Hindu goddess of destruction. Humanity embarks on a generations-long project to tap the energy of the black hole and establish colonies on planets across the solar system. Earth and Mars and the moons Europa (Jupiter) and Titania (Uranus) develop radically different societies, with only Kali, that swirling vortex of destruction and creation, and the hated but crucial Artificial Accretion Disk Development association (AADD) in common.
TEN BILLION DAYS AND ONE HUNDRED BILLION NIGHTS—RYU MITSUSE
Ten billion days—that is how long it will take the philosopher Plato to determine the true systems of the world. One hundred billion nights—that is how far into the future Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha, and the demigod Asura will travel to witness the end of all worlds. Named the greatest Japanese science fiction novel of all time, Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights is an epic eons in the making. Originally published in 1967, the novel was revised by the author in later years and republished in 1973.
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