Communiqué from the Second International Science Fiction Symposium

July 2013

From July 19 to July 29, 2013, the Second International Science Fiction Symposium was held in Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Fukushima. The gathering continued a conversation that began in Japan in 1970 with the first International Science Fiction Symposium, where Eastern bloc writerfirst met their Western bloc colleagues.

Our journey began in Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb fell on August 6, 1945, and ended in Fukushima, where the multiple disasters on March 11, 2011 caused damage to a nuclear power plant and left a legacy of radioactive contamination.  This series of meetings included writers, artists, translators, critics, academics, and readers. We conferred with distinguished professors and science fiction fans at every city we visited, and we attended Koicon, the 52^nd Japanese National Science Fiction Convention (Hiroshima, July 20-21, 2013).  In a series of public symposia, we discussed far-reaching issues that face humanity in sessions titled “Nature, Culture, Future,”  "Robots, AI, and Creativity,” “Gender and Asia,” and “Translation, Japan, and the Planetary Imagination.”

Over the course of our discussions, we found much common ground. We believe in the power of story. From the first story muttered by the earliest humans to the electronic communications available today, stories seep into our consciousness and affect how we all think about the world. 

We believe that science fiction can change the world by imagining different futures and examining the consequences of technological and social change — both intended and unintended. By considering such changes in the context of a story, science fiction can show the results in human terms and encourage deeper thinking about the choices societies make. In this role, science fiction can both warn and encourage. 

We recognize that people are a part of the natural world, subject to problems brought about by natural events and human-generated change.  As science fiction writers, we consider ways that people can adapt and change their behavior in response to new technologies, social changes, climate change, and environmental devastation.

We believe that recognizing our shared community is key to realizing happiness and peace around the world. In our series of symposiums, we have been enriched by the discussions and fellowship of others who are similarly inspired by and involved in the creation of science fiction. We have been enriched by conversations occurring in many languages and coming from many cultural perspectives. More than anything, translation makes it possible for us to discover commonalities across cultures, and to discover new ways of seeing the world. Without these translated moments, we miss the opportunity to see and understand the many human narratives that are happening in parallel, and miss the chance to better understand the world's problems and solutions. It is vital for us all to work together to encourage translation and dissemination of science fiction back and forth between cultures, making use of all the technologies available to us, so that conversations about our shared future can be as rich and lively as possible.

Science fiction is no longer a narrow category of literature; science fictional thinking has become pervasive in contemporary art forms, having transcended its genre boundaries and the label “science fiction.” Fish don't notice the water they are swimming in — and we are all now swimming in the science-fictional future. More than a literary category or a view into the future, science fiction has become a way to understand our present moment, providing vital tools for playing with and questioning the world and our human impacts on it.

With that in mind, we believe that efforts to consider the future and understand our present would benefit from holding symposia like ISFS2 every few years in different countries, encouraging the participation of science fiction professionals from many countries, and encouraging the ongoing and increasing exchange of ideas and shared community.

Over the 43 years since the first International Science Fiction Symposium, science fiction has become a global conversation among writers, artists, translators, critics, academics, and readers working in many media, an exchange of ideas that can be further enriched by meeting in person. Symposium participants call for science fiction professionals join us in continuing to share information and contributing to collaborative efforts that cross national boundaries, ranging from translation to the creation of new works.   Our belief is that such efforts will encourage inspiration, debate, and mutual understanding — leading to a better understanding of possible futures and therefore a better future for us all.

To this end, all science fiction professionals participating in the Second International Science Fiction Symposium have signed below, in the hope of contributing to a better future for our world and all humanity. 

 (to be Signed alphabetically by all the participants)

                                          Yoshio Aramaki                                                             

Paolo Bacigalupi

                                          David Farnell

                                          Taiyo Fujii

                                          Michael Gorman

                                          Kazue Harada

                                          Katsura Hattori

                                          Joji Hayashi

                                          Shozo Katagiri

                                          Yusaku Kitano

                                          Mari Kotani

                                          Dana Lewis

                                          Mamoru Masuda

                                          Koji Mishima

                                         Natsuko Mori

                                          Pat Murphy

                                          Tadashi Nagasawa

                                          Susumu Niijima

                                          Mitsuyoshi Numano

                                          Yoishi Shimada

                                          Touya Tachihara

                                          Denis Taillandier

                                          Jun Takahashi

                                          Fumio Takano

                                          Koshu Tani

                                          Takayuki Tatsumi

                                          Tsukasa Tohno

                                          Sayuri Ueda

                                          Hideki Watanabe

                                          Wu Yan

                                          Masayoshi Yasugi

                                          Youchan (Yuko Ito)

                                          Baku Yumemakura