Kojima recalled that, after he had stopped reading science fiction,…

Kojima interpreted the new generation of science fiction writers — including Project Itoh and Tow Ubukata — as heirs to the memes of a once-dormant SF. Relating this to Inherit the Stars, he placed the answer to the novel’s theme of inheritance in the generations of readers able to receive and demonstrate those memes, rather than in the book’s celestial locations.

Kojima first discovered 2001 in 1978, in his third year of junior high, when he bought a mook—purchased for its Star Wars coverage—that also included full-color images, diagrams and interviews about Kubrick’s film. As a reader of hard SF who dreamed of becoming an astronaut, he felt more drawn to 2001 than to space-opera. While waiting for a rerelease he read Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and listened to a radio-play adaptation, and he was fortunate to see the film for the first time in Cinerama in Osaka. From then on he attended every subsequent rerelease on the big screen.

In high school, a line from The Moon over the Mountain left Kojima dumbstruck; until then he had boasted of reading only foreign science fiction and mysteries. He reread the story aloud in class, at home, and wherever he could until he memorized it completely; for years he proudly assumed no one else had done the same, until he later learned that the writer Koji Yanagi had also memorized it during his student days.

“Every time our eyes met, I thought I had to buy something, and that, for me, was a science fiction book.”

“As I reflect on that time, maybe it was my escape from reality.”