Inter Ice Age 4

Inter Ice Age 4 (第四間氷期, Dai-Yon Kampyōki) is an early science fiction novel by Japanese writer Kōbō Abe. It was first published in serial form in the journal *Sekai* between 1958 and 1959. The book became the first Japanese science fiction novel to be translated into English, appearing in 1970 in a translation by American scholar E. Dale Saunders.

The story is set in a near-future Japan where melting polar ice caps threaten to submerge the world. The protagonist, Professor Katsumi, leads a project to build a computer system that can predict human behavior. The system predicts that Katsumi will stubbornly refuse to cooperate with his government and colleagues in creating genetically engineered children adapted to live in the rising seas. Most of the novel is narrated by Katsumi and explores his deep alienation, as the computer presents him with representations of his refusal and the alternatives. This psychological drama involves a mysterious murder and the enrollment of Katsumi’s unborn child among the genetically altered water-breathers. The plot also includes a similar computer in Moscow used for political forecasting, prompting the Tokyo institute to avoid politics and focus on predicting an individual’s future. A man is chosen seemingly at random, but is murdered before he can be programmed; the computer, however, can still read his mind. The resulting complications are compounded by a climatic shift—Inter Ice Age 4—that puts the entire Earth underwater.

In the *Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction*, British author Brian Ash called the English translation “flat” and “featureless,” but noted that this could not hide the novel’s “miracle” of using biology to attack racism at its root, by questioning human attitudes toward those designed for life in alien habitats. Scholar Robert L. Trent observed that the novel’s genetic engineering creates an aquatic human, but people feel their own identity eroding, since after the flood only the aquatic humans will be considered “people,” highlighting themes of alienation and identity crisis. In a 2002 *Science Fiction Studies* introduction, Christopher Bolton described the novel as a turning point for Japanese SF, incorporating hard-science elements on an unprecedented scale while pushing toward a disturbing, surreal conclusion. Many critics have identified *Inter Ice Age 4* as Japan’s first full-length science fic