Chapter 322: Japan Sinks

Tatsuzawa Yuriko made up her mind and, using her authority as the club Director, forcefully passed her plan.

That was to establish a specialized sci-fi work award in the name of the Sci-Fi Club.

And set a prize of 100,000 yen to solicit specific entries from all over Nihon.

The requirements for the entries were that the word count should not be less than 30,000 words, and the content should be hard sci-fi driven by technology or scientific speculation.

Soon, this news flowed to the outside world through newspapers and related magazines and was known by some specific people.

Among them was Akiwara Yuto, who was preparing to accept Satake Maki's suggestion and was considering entering the sci-fi world.

But when he saw this amount, the corners of his mouth couldn't help but twitch.

"Is this too poor?"

A prize of 100,000 yen, while not small for a general new writer award, was being offered by the Nihon Sci-Fi Club, which currently best represented the future direction of hard sci-fi in Nihon.

One had to know that the Uemura Award of the same level not only gave a full 1,000,000 yen but also a golden pocket watch.

However, he pondered for a moment and discovered that he might have misunderstood.

"The current hard sci-fi market in Nihon, the total annual sales of all books, might not even be as good as one of my bestselling books. In that case, it's not easy for them to come up with this money."

"However, should I submit to this competition?"

Akiwara Yuto was a bit indecisive for a moment.

In his memory from his past life, the highest award for Nihon sci-fi was the Seiun Award.

This award was held once a year, voted on by participants of the Nihon Sci-Fi Convention, and selected winners from sci-fi works completed in the previous year.

Therefore, this award was also known as the Nihon version of the Hugo Award.

But in this world, although there were world sci-fi awards similar to the Hugo Award, the local Nihon sci-fi market withered faster than in his past life, to the point where there were no similar awards at all.

The "Sci-Fi Future Award" organized by the Nihon Sci-Fi Club right now might be his best choice.

"Forget it, let's test the waters."

He thought about it and finally made up his mind.

Although from the current perspective, the Nihon hard sci-fi market was extremely narrow, leading to sluggish sales.

But nothing was absolute; if there was a work that could cause a sensation in public opinion, it might drive the sales of the entire market.

Like in 2019 in his past life, the local Nihon sci-fi market was actually withered to the point of no return; even if soft sci-fi was included, there were no sales.

To the point that many critics called it the end of sci-fi.

But after the Nihon version of Liu's "The Three-Body Problem" was released, everything changed earth-shakingly.

After "The Three-Body Problem" entered the Nihon market, the first-week circulation exceeded 80,000 copies, setting a record for first-week sales of sci-fi in Nihon.

After that, because of the constant praise from critics, a huge social trend was formed.

Later on, weekly sales reached as high as 110,000 copies.

Before Akiwara Yuto transmigrated, the sales of the Nihon version of "The Three-Body Problem" series had already exceeded 21 million copies.

This number was very exaggerated; one had to know that each book of "The Three-Body Problem" was priced at over 2,000 yen, which was considered very expensive compared to similar works.

At this price point, readers who were still willing to insist on buying this work were undoubtedly true fans.

And with such huge sales, even if Liu only had a 12% royalty share, he could still earn 5 billion yen.

With this case in front of him, Akiwara Yuto did not ignore the Nihon sci-fi market because of its current withering.

"However, if I participate in this award, what kind of work should I write?"

Akiwara Yuto stood up and walked two steps, subconsciously frowning.

In any case, "The Three-Body Problem" was impossible; he had no intention of changing domestic works into Nihon works.

Then what kind of sci-fi was suitable and had the potential to be a big seller? And it had to be hard sci-fi driven by technology or scientific speculation.

In the constant digging of his memory, Akiwara Yuto suddenly remembered the so-called "Three Greats of Nihon Sci-Fi"—Hoshi Shinichi, Tsutsui Yasutaka, and Komatsu Sakyo.

Hoshi Shinichi was the "founder of Nihon micro-fiction," with works like "The Devil's Kingdom," "Artificial Beauty," "Voice Net," and "The Devil's Label."

The name "Kudo Shinichi" in "Detective Conan" was taken from his name.

Although his works also had a layer of sci-fi skin, many were still mainly about satirizing reality, such as the story of a couple who caught a devil and abused it every day to vent their stress.

Besides that, for Akiwara Yuto, he needed a long-form novel, while the other's works were only short stories.

Abandoning this option, he turned his gaze to Tsutsui Yasutaka.

Tsutsui Yasutaka, most people in the country might not know this author.

But the animations adapted from his works, such as "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and "Paprika," were famous in the domestic ACG circle.

However, his writing scope was still more inclined toward soft sci-fi.

For example, the "All Silent Except Nihon" he wrote was a very spoof-heavy and funny sci-fi short story.

It told the story of 2011, where all other countries on the Nihon archipelago were submerged by the sea level due to a disaster.

In order to survive, high-ranking officials and nobles from all over the world had to flock to Nihon for refuge.

These arrogant foreign leaders had to be submissive, and the glamorous Hollywood superstars were reduced to playing bit parts.

When Akiwara Yuto learned in his past life that this "spoof" work won the Seiun Award, he was so speechless he couldn't even talk.

In his view, this work had huge logical flaws.

If such a situation really happened, it was estimated that all other countries would unite to attack Nihon, and it wouldn't be impossible to drop nuclear weapons on Nihon again.

Forget it, exclude this one too.

Thinking of this, he turned his gaze to Komatsu Sakyo, the man known as the "bulldozer of the Nihon sci-fi world."

His representative work was naturally the famous "Japan Sinks."

After this work was published, it won the 5th Seiun Award for Nihon Long-form, and was filmed into a movie by Toho Co., Ltd.

The result caused a great sensation in Nihon society and became the pioneer of the disaster movie craze.

The movie drove the sales of the book, making "Japan Sinks" achieve a quite astonishing result.

After being published in 1973, it set a sales record of 4 million copies for the upper and lower volumes, becoming the number one bestseller in Nihon that year.

And later, it was constantly adapted into various versions and brought to the screen.

There were even reports claiming that Liu's "The Three-Body Problem" was also influenced by this work to a certain extent.

Akiwara Yuto thought for a moment and finally decided to use this one.

He took out a pen and started writing furiously... ===== CHAPTER 323 =====