Sakyo Komatsu

Sakyo Komatsu (小松 左京, Komatsu Sakyō, January 28, 1931 – July 26, 2011) was a Japanese science fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the most well known and highly regarded science fiction writers in Japan.

Early life

Born Minoru "Sakyo" Komatsu in Osaka, he was a graduate of Kyoto University where he studied Italian literature. After graduating, he worked at various jobs, including as a magazine reporter and a writer for stand-up comedy acts.

Career

Komatsu's writing career began in the 1960s. Reading Kōbō Abe and Italian classics made Komatsu feel modern literature and science fiction are the same.

In 1961, he submitted for the 1st Scientific-fiction Contest of Hayakawa's SF Magazine: "Peace on Earth" was a short story in which World War II does not end in 1945 and a young man prepares to defend Japan against the Allied invasion. Komatsu received an honourable mention and 5000 yen.

He won the same contest the following year with the story, "Memoirs of an Eccentric Time Traveller". His first novel, The Japanese Apache, was published two years later and sold 50,000 copies.

Urban legend

An urban legend, popular legend, urban myth, urban tale or contemporary legend is a form of modern folklore consisting of fictional stories with macabre elements deeply rooted in local popular culture. These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as for semi-serious explanations for random events such as disappearances and strange objects.

Despite its name, an urban legend does not necessarily originate in an urban area. Rather, the term is used to differentiate modern legend from traditional folklore of pre-industrial times. For this reason, sociologists and folklorists prefer the term "contemporary legend". Because people frequently allege that such tales happened to a "friend of a friend" (FOAF), the phrase has become a commonly used term when recounting this type of story.

Sometimes urban legends are repeated in news stories, or distributed by e-mail or social media. Examples include the news story of an alleged mass panic in America in 1938, after a radio drama describing a Martian invasion, or a repeated claim dating from 1972 that a large percentage of people have a biological father who is not their assumed father and are therefore illegitimate.

Kinji Fukasaku

Kinji Fukasaku (深作 欣二, Fukasaku Kinji, 3 July 1930 – 12 January 2003) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter.

He is known for directing the Japanese portion of the Hollywood film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), yakuza films including the seminal Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973), samurai period pieces such as Shogun's Samurai (1978), and his controversial final film Battle Royale (2000). He was also known for his trademark shaky camera technique, which he used extensively in many of his films from the early 1970s.

In 1997, he received the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government for his work in film.

Early life

Kinji Fukasaku was born in 1930 in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture as the youngest of five children. When he was 15 years old, Fukasaku's class was drafted, and he worked as a munitions worker during World War II. In July 1945, the class was caught in artillery fire. Since the children could not escape artillery fire, they had to dive under each other in order to survive. The surviving members of the class had to dispose of the corpses After the war, he spent much of his time watching foreign films.

Cow Head

Cow Head is a town in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The town had a population of 475 in the Canada 2011 Census.

The Dr. Henry N. Payne Community Museum (c. 1941) in Cow Head, Newfoundland and Labrador is on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.

An interesting geologic feature found at Cow Head is a section of the former continental margin of Laurentia which dipped into the Iapetus ocean

See also

References

External links

Media related to Cow Head at Wikimedia Commons

Virus (1980 film)

Virus (復活の日 Fukkatsu no hi) — literally "Day of Resurrection" — is a 1980 post-apocalyptic science fiction movie directed by Kinji Fukasaku and based on a 1964 novel written by Sakyo Komatsu. It starred Masao Kusakari, Sonny Chiba, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Chuck Connors, Olivia Hussey, Edward James Olmos, Ken Ogata, Glenn Ford and Henry Silva. The film is notable for being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time.

Plot summary

In 1982, a shady transaction is occurring between an East German scientist, Dr. Krause, and a group of Americans. It is revealed that MM88 is a deadly virus, created accidentally by an American geneticist, that amplifies the potency of any other virus or bacterium it comes into contact with. The Americans recover the MM88, which was stolen from a lab in the US the year before, but the virus is released, creating a pandemic initially known as the "Italian Flu".

Within seven months, virtually all the world's population has died off. But the virus is inactive at temperatures below -10 degrees Celsius, and the polar winter has spared the 855 men and eight women stationed in Antarctica. The British nuclear submarine HMS Nereid joins the scientists after sinking a Soviet submarine whose infected crew attempt to make landfall near Palmer Station.