In 1948, the year that he published his first novel,
Owarishi michino shirubeni, Abe earned a medical degree from Tokyo University. Although Abe never practiced medicine, his background in the sciences figured prominently in his fiction. For example,
Daiyon kampyok (1959) is a science fiction novel set in a futuristic Japan that is threatened by melting polar ice caps. The protagonist of this novel is a scientist who designs a computer capable of predicting human behavior. After the machine foretells that its creator will condemn government experiments on human fetuses that would insure Japan's survival in a subaqueous environment, the scientist's wife gives birth to a child with fish-like fins instead of arms. While a reviewer for the
Times Literary Supplement deemed the novel's plot "too phantasmagorical and implausible," several critics favorably noted Abe's accurate use of scientific terminology.
Abe garnered international acclaim following the publication of Suna no onn (1962; Woman in the Dune). This novel relates the nightmarish experiences of an alienated male teacher and amateur entomologist who is enslaved by a group of people living beneath a huge sand dune.
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