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Yukinobu Hoshino: 2001 Nights
Journey Beyond Tomorrow
Review by Tycho Schottelius
"2001 Nights" is a science-fiction comic trilogy written and drawn
by Yukinobu Hoshino, a Japanese comic artist. Unfortunately I know nothing
about his person and was not able to find any information about him. But this
space novel is sufficient to show me his experience as a comic artist.
"2001 Nights" consists of 750 pages with an average of at least five pictures per
page. They are all drawn by Yukinobu Hoshino himself.
The general plot of the story is simple:
Hoshino shows his visions of this evolutionary step in 19 different nights (chapters). He starts with a meeting of earth's most important politicians, the presidents of the Unites States of America and Russia. They set up a peace contract and decide to approach the universe together.
In the following chapters small excerpts of the adventures of different characters and their role in the exploration of space is given. Some of them are not connected, others are based on each other. They all are part of the framework story. Hoshino reflects on one central idea which develops through all three books.
Since there is no sufficient technology to travel long distances in space, some frozen human
spermatozoa and ova are shot onto a passing comet in order to travel to new planets. After
several hundred years the bord computer explores a suitable planet and a colony is built up.
In the meantime a new space technology has been developed on earth, which enables mankind to travel with the velocity of light and a group searches for the colonists. The last chapter describes a meeting between different generations.
The title "2001 Nights" is an allusion to the famous motion picture "2001 - A Space Odyssey" by Stanley Kubrick and also to "1001 Nights", the old arabic fairy tale collection. Hoshino's novel creates the same feeling of silent and neverending space like Kubrick's film does. The tales are very exciting and unusual.
My opinion
While reading this triology I had a feeling of watching one of the most fascinating science-fiction movies I can imagine.
Hoshino always tries to remain realistic and to keep to the facts of modern space science.
He gives a clear picture of the future and I can easily imagine his visions to
come true. He also combines entertaining space stories with philosophical and religious
ideas so that his work can be described as some kind of "edutainment". At the
same time he gives a clear idea of life after death and extraterrestrical lifeforms without being
boring with any kind of stereotyped idea.
By the way, Hoshino is a fantastic comic artist. He has great abilities in realistic drawing, and he works very precisely. Hoshino also manages to combine US American with Japanese comic style. Besides, he is very skilled at setting his story into pictures. The single pictures are successfully arranged and the effect ist sheer breath taking.
This comic novel is a well-succeeded fusion of realistic comic arts and synthetic science-fiction epic. And it shows us the view of an eastern artist in our western world - rather scarce in all kinds of artistic genres.
An internet project of Integrierte Gesamtschule Bonn-Beuel
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Stand: 29.03.1998 |
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