Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
[This review was published in the September 2025 issue of Locus. After some back and forth exchanges, I was informed that the editors of Locus's website had decided not to run the review online. I am reprinting it here, both for my own records, and because I think this is one of the most intriguing science fiction novels published last year, one that is worthy of more public discussion.] Looking out at the Tokyo skyline in an early scene in Rie Qudan's Sympathy Tower Tokyo , architect Sara Machina considers Zaha Hadid's iconic Olympic stadium, designed for the 2020 games. The expensive, controversial design, Sara tells us, was nearly abandoned and replaced by a more conventional structure. To Sara, however, the stadium feels inevitable: "only [Hadid's] stadium could supply Tokyo with the beauty it desperately needed. If it went unbuilt, the city would never be content. The stadium would be built because it had to be built; it would exist because it had to exist....