Search Worlds Without End

Widely acknowledged as Yasutaka Tsutsui's masterpiece, Paprika unites his surreal, quirky imagination with a mind-bending narrative about a psychiatric institute that has developed the technology to invade people's dreams.

When prototype models of a dream-invading device go missing at the Institute for Psychiatric Research, it transpires that someone is using them to drive people insane. Threatened both personally and professionally, brilliant psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba has to journey into the world of fantasy to fight her mysterious opponents. As she delves ever deeper into the imagination, the borderline between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred, and nightmares begin to leak into the everyday realm. The scene is set for a final showdown between the dream detective and her enemies, with the subconscious as their battleground, and the future of the waking world at stake.

An irresistible mix of imagination, satire, and humor, these stories by acclaimed Japanese author Yasutaka Tsutsui imagine the consequences of a world where the fantastic and the mundane collide.

The opening story, "The Dabba Dabba Tree," details the hilarious side effects of a small conical tree that, when placed at the foot of one's bed, creates erotic dreams. In "Commuter Army," a sly commentary on the ludicrousness of war, a weapons supplier becomes an unwilling conscript in a war zone. "The World is Tilting" imagines a floating city that slowly begins to sink on one side, causing its citizens to reorient their daily lives to preserve a semblance of normality. And in the title story, we see how obscenely absurd the environment on Planet Porno appears to a group of scientists. The stories in Salmonella Men on Planet Porno winningly combine madcap hilarity and a sharp eye toward the insanities of contemporary life.

Contents:

• The Dabba Dabba Tree - short story 1974
• Rumours About Me - short story 1972
• Don't Laugh - short story 1970
• Farmer Airlines - short story 1976
• Bear's Wood Main Line - short story 1974
• The Very Edge of Happiness - short story 1974
• Commuter Army - short story 1974
• Hello, Hello, Hello! - short story 1974
• The World Is Tilting - short story 2002
• Bravo Herr Mozart! - short story 1986
• The Last Smoker - short story 2002
• Bad for the Heart - novelette 1974
• Salmonella Men on Planet Porno - novella 2005

One of Tsutsui's best-known and most popular works in his native Japan, The Girl Who Leapt through Time is the story of fifteenyear- old schoolgirl Kazuko, who accidentally discovers that she can leap back and forth in time. In her quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious figure that she believes to be responsible for her paranormal abilities, she'll have to push the boundaries of space and time, and challenge the notions of dream and reality.

The Alma Edition also contains a second story: The Stuff That Nightmares Are Made Of. A rickety old bridge, a Prajna mask, heights, a presence behind a telegraph pole - these are the keys in High Schooler Masako's life that will lead her to a forgotten episode of her past.