SF Seminar Blog

The term `New Space Opera’ becomes known among Japanese SF fans from late 2005 or early 2006, because Hayapawa, the most famous SF publisher in Japan, translates many NSO. Singularity Sky is one of these translated NSOs.

However, the reactions from Japanese SF fans are controversial.

One reason is that many Japanese SF fans received the Singularity Sky as a serious story and hope that it provides a speculation about the Technological Singularity. IMO, Singularity Sky is a slapstick at its heart. Through this comic story line, it provides serious speculations to us. Unfortunately, this bizarre style is not well understood among Japanese fans. One reason will be that Hayapawa publishing introduced NSOs as something great.
The second reason is that Singularity Sky, and other many NSO, do not describe the Singularity itself directly (except for Accelerando, which is not translated yet).

For my impression, I enjoyed it as a slapstick. I must also agree with many Japanese fans, if they say that its speculation is inferior to some classical SF works such as Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, Glos Pana, and so on). However, in comparison with such works, almost all SF will be inferior. Not so fair comparison.
Anyways, the Iron Sunrise was translated into Japanese in Dec last year, which may mean that the reaction to Singularity Sky was not so bad.