Muma no hyōteki 夢魔の標的、by Hoshi Shinichi 星新一
After reading only detective novels for a while, I thought I could sure use a change of genre, so I turned to one of the classics of Japanese science fiction, Hoshi Shinichi.
In “Muma no hyōteki” the main character, a ventriloquist 腹話術師、 is haunted by weird dreams and by the feeling that an invisible presence is lurking around him. At a certain point he starts losing control over his doll, クルコちゃん、who speaks independent of his will. What makes matters worse is that nobody believes him, so he has to try to solve the problem by himself. After some inquiring he finds out that the thing that has taken over the voice of クルコちゃんmay be a “dream demon” 夢魔. In order to find out its reasons and stop it from interfering with his life, he seeks the help of a doctor who manages to communicate with this being by bringing the ventriloquist in a state of hypnosis. It turns out that they are dealing with something far more powerful than exepcted, whose target is not the ventriloquist himself, but the entire world...
The story is entertaining, easy to read and the amount of SF elements is reasonable, so I would gladly recommend it everyone.
In “Muma no hyōteki” the main character, a ventriloquist 腹話術師、 is haunted by weird dreams and by the feeling that an invisible presence is lurking around him. At a certain point he starts losing control over his doll, クルコちゃん、who speaks independent of his will. What makes matters worse is that nobody believes him, so he has to try to solve the problem by himself. After some inquiring he finds out that the thing that has taken over the voice of クルコちゃんmay be a “dream demon” 夢魔. In order to find out its reasons and stop it from interfering with his life, he seeks the help of a doctor who manages to communicate with this being by bringing the ventriloquist in a state of hypnosis. It turns out that they are dealing with something far more powerful than exepcted, whose target is not the ventriloquist himself, but the entire world...
The story is entertaining, easy to read and the amount of SF elements is reasonable, so I would gladly recommend it everyone.