Since the end of the Second Word War ant particularly over the past decade Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual, from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s; while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan. Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Covering a remarkable range of texts from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyusaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy-this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre.