グラン・ヴァカンス―廃園の天使〈1〉

by Hirotaka Tobi, 飛 浩隆

仮想リゾート“数値海岸”の一区画“夏の区界”。南欧の港町を模したそこでは、ゲストである人間の訪問が途絶えてから1000年、取り残されたAIたちが永遠に続く夏を過ごしていた。だが、それは突如として終焉のときを迎える。謎の存在“蜘蛛”の大群が、街のすべてを無化しはじめたのだ。わずかに生き残ったAIたちの、絶望にみちた一夜の攻防戦が幕を開ける―仮想と現実の闘争を描く『廃園の天使』シリーズ第1作。

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Novels, Dystopia, Fantasy, Japan, Japanese Literature

494 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

Hirotaka Tobi (飛 浩隆 Tobi Hirotaka) (born 1960 in Shimane Prefecture, Japan), sometimes spelled as TOBI Hirotaka, is a Japanese science fiction writer.

Awards

2005: Seiun Award Japanese Short Form for "Katadorareta chikara"
2005: Nihon SF Taisho Award for Katadorareta chikara
2010: Seiun Award Japanese Short Form for "Jisei no yume"
2015: Seiun Award Japanese Short Form for "Umi no yubi"

Reviews

[Shabbeer Hassan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A flimsy plot filled with a weird, macabre collection of sci-fi tropes and non-existent central message. This book left me more confused than amazed at the breadth of ideas. It's almost like Hirotaka Tobi had a bunch of great ideas which he then propped in a poorly framed plot. Not worth a re-read!

My Rating -2/5

[Ian Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hirotaka TOBI (in all caps) has been one of the more successful sci-fi authors within Japan for some years, though not until recently in 2018 has his 2002 debut novel been translated and widely published in English. VIZ Media's Haikasoru imprint has suddenly become highly active in bringing such works to an English-reading audience, and I was already pleased with their release of All You Need Is Kill and looking forward to Battle Royale and Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

The setup here is highly reminiscent of Black Mirror's famous 'San Junipero' episode, though obviously predates it. A highly advanced computer simulation of a quaint resort town has been running for a millenium, populated by intricate human-like AIs programmed with internal thoughts and emotions. People can pay to visit and inhabit one of the pre-existing 'characters' to roleplay for a time.

Past that though, it gets, as we literary people say, weird as shit. Some kind of bad guy seems to be invading the virtual world and co-opting the spider-like maintenance bots in order to destroy and consume it all - landscape, buildings and AI 'people'. Quite often this involves cyber-murder with a heavy dose of disturbing Barker-esque body horror, the fantastical nature of which is facilitated by the virtual setting rather than supernatural means. Then there are magical macguffins called 'Eyes' that can manipulate the world in all manner of ways.

It's strange enough to be barely comprehensible at times, and I'm left wondering what, if anything, the book has to say. Possibly it's a musing on the nature of human emotion and intelligence by examining artificial versions, but beyond that it's not clear to me. Therefore it's sufficiently exotic that I enjoyed its challenging of my expectations, but I shall reserve any firm judgements on it until I've canvassed other opinions at book club and elsewhere.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Confusing, disturbing, and uncomfortably sexual in equal measure.

It's basically Westworld, so obviously the guests were going to sexually abuse the AIs, but it's not just rape, it's incest and vore and just really grotesque torture.

Then the humans leave, and someone (something?) else comes along to pick up where the humans left off.

I wanted to learn the answer to "why are these AIs all being tortured after so long left to their own devices?" But I didn't want to have to keep reading through chapter after chapter of torture to get the answer. And frankly I had very little clue what was going on anyway whenever they did try to explain something.

[Maria Laufmaschinemeister · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books exposes the reader to difficult things and asks difficult questions. I really enjoyed it. At first, you try to understand the nature of the AI digital resort. Then you try to understand the nature of the spider threat. Gradually, you start to realise that the nature of the resort was not what it appeared.
Tobi Hirotaka's portrayal of AIs, with their battles between programmed behaviour and their emotional responses suppressed by the programming is really strong in this book.
The most powerful theme of the book is the nature of memory. The AIs cherish their 'fake' memories given to them by the script writers and suppress their actual, lived memories. We normally treat artificial memories in sci-fi with scorn, as a deceit, and so many plots revolve around unearthing 'authentic' memories. But if artificial memories define how people relate to each other, can we actually call them fake?

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely the worst thing I have read in quite some time. The translation was excellent, without many of the issues you usually get, particularly with dialogue.

The plot however was terrible. The reader is told that:

a) All the characters in the book are AIs, and that people have not interacted with them for 1000 years. This is regularly mentioned ensuring that the reader does not engage with the story.

b) The existence of this world was to allow for almost impossibly masochistic behaviour, and thus (as the book points out) maybe the world should not exist.

Then more AIs turn up and torture and kill everything very graphically for an extremely poorly explained reason. Blah.

[Sue Dix · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has got to be one of the strangest, most convoluted, hard to grasp (aside from Ulysses), books that I have ever read. Ostensibly, it’s about the senseless(?) destruction of an AI world, and contains gratuitous violence and gore. But I think I kind of liked(?) it. Not enough to read any more in the series, though. It’s part of my TBR from a defunct bookclub that I have vowed to read. Onward.

[Bear]

Dnf ~2% in. I just could not get into this. I wanted to but it does nothing for me

[2TReads]

Cannot get into this one. The writing lost me not even halfway into Chapter One. Itbwas a bit too dry.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly was A Book. Imaginative, descriptive, graphic even. But can't really say if it was good.

[Nicholas Ackerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This unusual story suffers from many drawbacks. It's mostly a last stand story until the last act. All the characters are digital archetypes, which makes them difficult to empathize with. The suffering and the pain the residents of the Realm of Summer are subjected to in the past is repulsive, though easily skimmable to move beyond. Incest and pedophilia between artificial characters would make it easy to give this one star, even with the portrayals in a strongly negative light.

There were a few things that bring the rating up. The examination of the nature of the AIs and their underlying functions, as well as how they fit together. The ultimate role of Langoni, where is its hard to say whether his villainous actions ultimately keep him a villain. The almost existential ending that ties a few key scenes and impressions together.

Every Sci fi story in this generation seems required to be open ended enough for a sequel, but this one leaves open two very unique and different paths that might improve over this book.

[Arielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this book, but I am glad that I read it, I think? There’s a long list of TWs here and it’s definitely not for the squeamish, but I think it explores (although, to be sure, does not fully develop) some interesting ideas. Think Neon Genesis Evangelion but focused more of the nature of pain and of memories. And body horror, lots of body horror. That said, it definitely reads as if it is setting up for a sequel, although from what I understand there isn’t really a direct one, and the one that exists has no English translation. So things feel unresolved and just kinda gross at the end.

(Sidenote: I do wish I hadn’t read it in a day. I started feeling ill at some of the descriptions.)

[Jason Seaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a thoroughly intriguing idea for a setting - a virtual-reality world that has been abandoned but running for centuries, the NPCs both locked into patterns and developing their own history - but one where ant sort of consequence can seem just out of reach. TOBI builds a world that might make a great movie or anime, but also too conventional. It feels too much like monsters invading human space, with explanations saved for later.

The latter chapters do get into a more AI- specific backstory, but there's a switch to it that may admittedly be logical but also seems reveled in, and the hard turn took that twisted background makes getting to the end tougher than it should be.

[Chris Duval · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine a magic realism novel (of the Latin American sort) with the vulgarity and the gross, sometimes horrific, physical transformations that some of those novels have. Now cast it (in an extension of the sense programmers use for cast) as a virtual world with AIs as all the characters. It's engrossing and very imaginative, but I didn't always like it.

[Scotty Marinara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was bizarre. I enjoyed it and will definitely read the sequel, but it didn't sit well with me in a lot if ways I can't quantify right now.

[Alejandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the way it explained pain and everything so thurowly

[Lnshift9xshift0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

和读欧美科幻时不同，读本书的时候我总有一种看日本动画的感觉。点子不算新奇，但是在作者编排下并不枯燥。

点子：⭐⭐⭐

故事性：⭐⭐⭐⭐

文学性：⭐⭐⭐

[Athena Tordil · Rating 4 out of 5]

crush nako si spica HAHAHAHAHAHA

[Martine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Dusty Aquarium · Rating 1 out of 5]

I decided to read this on a camping trip, and the story of this book constantly filled my mind for 3 days. I had to constantly remind myself that a person was on the other end writing the story word-by-word. Why? After spending half a book portraying its characters in an idyllic life, the author spends the next half making them suffer in the most horrible and violent ways possible. It would be justifiable if characters had development or the authors had something meaningful to tell through the suffering of the characters, but there wasn't any. All in all, quite disturbing.

[Sue Chant · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ page 175. The general story is a bunch of AIs in an obsolete holiday world are fighting against something that is trying to disassemble their environment. Some interesting ideas but it's so shambolic I couldn't be bothered to finish.

[S · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly one of the weirdest books I've read in my life. It was practically brutal torture porn when the plot picked up, and was so strangely, unnecessarily, sexual at times. Interesting concept but in trying to explain all the abstract ways the world worked I was taken out of the story.

[Tim Nowotny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a similar problem with this one as with the novel „The Three Body Problem“. But in a lesser degree
The setting is interesting and the setting of a self aware simulation environment running too long offers great opportunity. Unfortunately, in this world, the long life of things resulted in immobility of characters. Everything feels very set and running in loops.
This makes for a quite detached experience and the mystery of the invasion just become one more thing that‘s „just happening“. Unfortunately the style adds to this.
I think a bit more explanation of things, a sense of longing, exploration would have helped me here. It did not deliver