U is such a challenging letter I had to take a visit to Japan (via Google) to find an interesting author.

Sayori Ueda writes in Japanese but has had some novels translated into English. She’s written short story collections and stand alone science fiction/fantasy novels as well as some other ones which look absolutely fascinating but haven’t been translated as yet. She’s won the Sakyo Komatsu Award in 2003 and the Japan SF Award in 2011 and I suspect will win many more as she’s still fairly young. One of her short stories is being developed into a feature film, Sam Hamm has been been retained to write the script!

She’s a thoughtful person as you can see when you read this interview

I remember wondering what these children might hope for if they should survive war.

She’s taken a documentary and turned her thoughts into a novel.

When I’ve brought my To Be Read Pile down to a reasonable level I’ll be buying her book The Cage of Zeus as I’m intensely curious about it. The idea that humans with sex organs from both genders might make a more balanced society is an interesting one and I’d like to see how she treats it.