sunday fantasy 407: Yukinobu Hoshino

Please allow me to wax lyrical for a bit.

This is taken from “Where Eagles Dare”, a short story in Hoshino’s speculative/fantastical WW2 manga work “The Temple of El Alamein”. The story concludes with an encounter between a Messerschmitt Me 262 and Boeing B-29 Superfortress - something that never happened during the war.

(Other chapters involve, pyramids, dinosaurs, wicker men, and why Germany never actually invaded the United Kingdom…)

Hoshino also did “The Sea of Fallen Beasts”, which has stories along similar lines - but he is best known for his character Professor Munakata (the slightly disappointing - despite featuring airships - Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure being the only work released in the west), and also his science fiction works - of which the following needs mentioning:

2001 Nights : One of my favourite works of science fiction of all time, across any medium. I cannot stress enough how much these stories - starting in the SDI era and then into mankind’s journeys to the stars - have affected me over the years. The series was published in the US in the mid-90’s, and is bottomlessly recommended. Hoshino released a sequel of sorts - 2001+5 - in 2006, but it has yet to be translated into English (legally or not) UPDATE: “scanlated” here

Stardust Memories : Similar stories to the above, but overall slightly inferior due to the lack of narrative linking them. Not officially released in English, but scanlated here

Kodoku Experiment : Your standard tale of an unstoppable extraterrestrial lifeform unleashed on a spaceship, but very enjoyable. Again, Not officially released in English, but scanlated here