S.P. Somtow's first novel, Starship & Haiku, was awarded the Locus Award and caused a sensation in 1981 with its extraordinary Asian-skewed view of the post nuclear apocalypse. In this novel, only Japan has survived a world-wide holocaust, and Japan's culture has turned inward, exalting its past and its aesthetic of suicide. In this grim world, a young girl makes contact with a renegade member of an alien race ... the whales. Together, they plan a new future for the world's intelligent life. Part savage satire, part poetic evocation of a manga-like universe, S.P. Somtow's novel was the inspiration for Kathy Mar's award-winning song "Starship and Haiku."

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