Book Report: Cyber Shogun Revolution by Peter Tieryas

(Full spoiler for the book as usual.)

2020’s Cyber Shogun Revolution (“CSR” for short) is a fitting final installment for the United States of Japan trilogy. Reasons include but certainly are not limited to the sense of “not a banger, but a whimper.” Tieryas pulled a Kojima here with no victory is worth celebrating in this book, in comparison to the first book’s being told “mission accomplished” on a hospital bed and the second book’s protagonist coming of age.

The worst imaginable high-school reunion

With Tieryas insisting that all 3 novels standing on their own, CSR has 2 point-of-view characters and a classic duo of solider and spook. The solider is a lady named Reiko Morikawa, mecha polit with a robot arm. The spook is a male member of the thought police named Bishop Wakana, a nod to those who read the first book. Bishop’s dad was ordered to commit ritual suicide for the shitstorm back in 1988. Reiko and Bishop were classmates at high school. Turns out, their dreams were very different before they joined the police of a police state called United States of Japan. In 2020, those 2 would have front row seats to see that state’s downfall.

It would be fair to say that USJ novels only have one kind of twist: even the fairly gun-ho fascists on the surface are not really true believers in their authoritarian regime, whether the story Tieryas tells wants us to root for those people or not. Take Bishop for example, as a thought police in the advanced-than-real-life timeline of USJ, he wears contact lens telling him everything about the people passing him by on the street, and his thought can be boiled down to “way too much information” instead of seeing those as a gold mine for extortion,

As for the solider, “Reiko remembered sleepless nights talking about their favorite class at Berkeley—Professor Kojima’s lectures on existence and social politics in the modern world, with all his brilliant nuance that she light on subjects they only thought they knew.” Yep, she is sort of a Kojima fangirl, so what can go wrong?

War without mercy and righteousness

Without first book’s time lapses and second book’s boy got to pass an exam, CSR with only 2 grown-ass people does limit its scope while feeling bit too convoluted. The duo would go through one explained foul-up after another, never allowed to feel accomplished.

Perhaps, this is Tieryas’ criticism towards authoritarianism. In a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion, USJ’s low efficiency bureaucracy is called “old men high up in their castles who just wanted power for themselves” Even as many parts of California going to hell in many handbaskets, they threw their weight around not to solve the crisis but just to show that they are still in charge. Yet things just are out of control.

In some ways, “ending with a bang” and “ending with a whimper” is not mutually exclusive. After all, a bang can be heard as a whimper when heard far enough. But this trilogy does not end with a war between USJ and German Americas is as the Japanese would put it namamanshii, too real to be fun.

The year CSR was eligible for the Seiun best translated novel award, Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, freshly tr won instead while this one was not even nominated. To me. Dark Forest is not only Liu’s best long form work, but it does bring back some of that Asian Pride that Mecha Samurai Empire has but CSR lost. In it, a Chinaman named Luo Ji with likely Korean lineage (Who got turned into a black man in the Netflix show. This guy being black is not my problem) manages to establish deference against alien invasion because he was told how to play this interstellar zero-sum game (The Netflix show switched the zero-sum game out for bad humor, which is a problem.). Guess them Japanese do not like bummer either.

His best might be yet to come

The hard-to-translate Japanese word “sensei” is used to honor people in particular trades: teachers no matter the subject, medic doctors, attorneys of law in private sector and published authors. “Published authors” are a tricky bunch, for one thing “man-ga-ka”, cartoonist or graphic novelist, is counted while film director and (solo) game developers are out.

In that sense, Tieryas would be called sensei for the 4 novels and loads of shorter stories he wrote while Hideo Kojima would not be called that unless he would write the novelizations of Death Stranding 2, OD , “Metal Gear Solid with serial number filed off” and a couple more future game made by Kojima Productions. Guess in that sense, it was good manner on Tieryas’ part to make Kojima into both a teacher and author in his novels.

CSR does show its author tired out. Neither USJ’s high tension nor MSE’s Homeric sense is present. Though it’s not to say that the book does not feel like a finale by design. Much like Philip K Dick’s Hugo Award Winning Man in the High Castle, CSR is an alternative historic novel with a contemporary to its time of writing and publishing setting. While paranoia Phil had plan to return to his Nazi occupied North America, he never had the chance. Instead, he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep which left deeper marks on science fiction in more than a media form. Tierya ended United States of Japan as a nation state in this final book and went on to do writing on some indie titles. Maybe by the time he comes back around to “book mongering”, it just might inspire a future Blade Runner.

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