All You Need Is KILL
Hiroshi Sakurazaka & Alexander O. Smith (translator)
381 pages
published in 2004
James Nicoll was casting about for science fiction books to read one day last week and got pointed in the direction of Haikasoru Books, a newish line of translated Japanese science fiction, found something to his liking and posted about it, as well as a poll on which Haikasoru title to read next. All of which explains why I was pulled towards the cover of All You Need is Kill when I saw it in a local bookstore. Since James liked the Haikasoru that he got and I trust his taste, that was enough reason for me to take a chance on this. I wasn’t disappointed.
What I got with All You Need is KILL is a fast paced, short novel (only 200 pages) that takes two old, familiar science fiction concepts and mashes them up into something new: Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day. Earth has been invaded by the alien Mimics, seemingly non-sapient but still with the ability to learn from their mistakes and most of the poorer part of the world has been overrun already. Keiji Kiriya is just one recruit given a short training, shoved into a battlesuit called a Jacket, sent out to defend Japan from the Mimics then dying in his first battle — only to wake up in his bunk the day before.
At first Keiji thinks his first battle was all a dream, but then the entire day starts to repeat itself, just as he “dreamed”, but when he’s going through PT for the second time, something changes. Watching the exercise in isometric pushups — do a pushup then hold that position — is Rita Vrataski, the “Full Metal Bitch”, the best Jacket soldier in the world, who has killed more Mimics than the rest of the army combined. The first time he didn’t notice her, but now his looking at her, as he also remembers her from the battle, means she notices him… But that’s the only real change up until the battle happens again and this time he’s killed almost immediately by a javelin that the firs time struck his friend — only to wake up in his bunk again.
It takes Keiji a few times to work out what’s going on, that yes, for some reason he is stuck in a time loop that ends with his death in battle, he can’t escape it (the one time he tries to run away, the Mimics invade the beach he ends up at) and that his only hope to end the loop is to get good enough to survive the battle and kill all enemies. So he sets to work, planning his day and a half of time to the battle as efficiently and gets serious about training, working with his company’s sergeant, who somehow seems to sense he’s no longer quite the raw cannon fodder he started out as. So he goes through battle after battle, getting better and better and taking longer to get killed. And then, on his 157th loop, Rita the Full Metal Bitch asks him: “how many loops is this for you?”
Rita, it turns out, has gone through the same sort of time loop as Keiji and it’s that what made her such a good warrior. She can also tell him what causes the loop and how to end it, which is not by just killing all the Mimics in battle, but to kill the enemy in a specific order. Mimics it seems can, if they lose a battle send a tachyon signal to the past which helps them avoid this loss. Keiji, like Rita before him, tapped into this signal when he killed a specific Mimic and the only way to win now and end the loop is to make sure that the signal cannot be sent anymore.
John Scalzi is right in his cover blurb to describe All You Need is KILL as “reads fast, kicks ass, and keeps on coming”. Hiroshi Sakurazaka is a wonderfully spare writer, who packs a lot of punch in just twohunderd pages. His battle descriptions are short and to the point, yet vivid enough to visualise. He does well to evoke the routine of Keiji as he goes through his cycle of time loops with the minimum amount of text as well. Character wise only Keiji and Rita are fully fleshed out, but that fits the focus of the story. As Keiji progresses through the loops, other people drop away as he no longer needs him and he focuses obsessively on preparing for battle. What Sakurazaka also does well is to provide a bit of context for the war: where the Mimics come from (a faint star in the Constellation of Cancer) and what they are (a ecoforming machine to adapt Earth for the real aliens). Not only that, but unlike some mil-sf writers he’s smart enough to realise that even in a win or die war like this, not everybody will be a soldier and the war might for many people be just something in the news, not of interest to their own lives….
Haikasoru advertises their line of books with the tagline “the Future is Japanese”. On the strenght of All You Need is KILL, I wouldn’t be displeased if that was true.