Translation by Eugene Woodbury Available

Eugene completed a number of translations, most notably translations of Twelve Kingdoms novels. He understood that a translation is itself an art--not something that can be left to a machine. A translation needs to capture the tone and pacing of an original--as well as its allusions, even jokes!

In the past few years, he completed translations of Ranpo Edogawa's Boy Detectives Club books.

The first translation he made, The Space Alien, is now available on his blog.

The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb. In 1954, Godzilla will stomp onto the world stage. UFOs are appearing all over the world. And in Ranpo Edogawa’s latest young adult novel, five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo.

A day after that alarming incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano’s neighbor goes missing. He then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming he was kidnapped by a mysterious winged lizard creature—

The same lizard creature that is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro’s best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? These are the kind of questions that only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.