Robin Sloan just added an entry to his companion mini-site about his latest novel, Moonbound — this one on the independent manga work of Hayao Miyazaki, much in the tech press lately because of his unhappiness with AI in art; but this entry is not about that, at least not in any direct way. Robin opens:

What do you say about Hayao Miyazaki, about whom so much has been written, upon whom so much praise has been heaped? There’s your clue, in my first sentence: I want to talk about Hayao Miyazaki, alone, not Studio Ghibli.

And continues:

… All throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, as Ghibli released Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, and more, he toiled on the manga  —  when? at what hour??  —  steadily expanding its world, pushing it far beyond the bounds of the movie. It is a sci-fi fantasy in the Dying Earth sub-genre, with rich ecological themes, a bright thread of quasi-medieval adventurism, some excellent swords. Yes, Moonbound drank from this well.

I was more than primed for this entry, because I have been describing Moonbound to people like this:

Miyazaki cyberpunk infused with a great deal of Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin, and seasoned with dashes of Gene Wolfe, Robert Jordan, and Tad Williams.

Go give Robin’s post. And Moonbound, of course!