7 Billion Needles Series

Modern day Japan is the stage for a new form of hard science-fiction, as author Nobuaki Tadano revisits one of the genre’s Grand Masters, Hal Clement, in his debut work 7 Billion Needles. Loosely inspired by Clement’s golden age title Needle, 7 Billion Needles follows the life of a teenage girl whose quiet boring days are dramatically changed when her body is possessed by an alien life form caught up in an intergalactic manhunt.

In this final volume, life on Earth is on the brink. Hikaru finds herself in a battle with an organism bent on defining Earth’s ideal life-force. By going through the a few million years worth of genetic makeup from Earth’s history, this new threat quickly is breaking down the very fabric of life as time and space have developed.

With now two aliens residing in her, Hikaru’s purpose is clear. She must prove that humanity is at the top. And she must do this on her own. Her future will be forever tied with the two parasites living in her bloodstream, but as a young person capable of expanding the gene pool with her own make up, she alone is at the top of the native food-chain.

Hikaru Takabe used to be the class loner. She was that girl who always kept to herself and would have rather had her headphones on at all times, even during class sessions. She never dared open her heart to anyone. But after she was obliviated by a meteor and rebuilt from her DNA up by a cosmic creature called “Horizon” her outlook on life took a quick turn for the positive.

Now Hikaru will have to host another inter-galactic entity within her. Now the interstellar mass-murderer “Maelstrom” has settled inside her along with Horizon. But this completely new life-form not only has brought less privacy into Hikaru’s life, but it may have changed the direction of evolution itself. As if sensing the earth’s unusual state, a new existence proclaiming itself “the moderator” suddenly appears in front of Hikaru. According to him the earth is about to attempt a “macro evolution” in extreme chaos, so that he needs to correct the process in case that it causes disorder of the universe.

Modern day Japan is the stage for a new form of hard science-fiction, as author Nobuaki Tadano revisits one of the genre’s Grand Masters, Hal Clement, in his debut work 7 Billion Needles. Loosely inspired by Clement’s golden age title Needle, 7 Billion Needles follows the life of a teenage girl whose quiet boring days are dramatically changed when her body is possessed by an alien life form caught up in an intergalactic manhunt.

In this second volume of 7 Billion Needles, Hikaru is briefly lulled into a sense of normalcy. As strange as “normal” might seem to her now, “happy days” are much more welcomed than the surreal days she experienced with Celistial. Having wasted Maelstrom in a massive battle she has been freed from the voices in her head(-phones) and is now moving on with her life with new found resolve.

So when she gets an opportunity to formally exorcise her personal demons, which come in the form of painful memories of her deceased father, Hikaru takes the first ferry to the Izu Islands to pay her final respects. When she and her friends arrive and make their way around Hikaru’s ancestral home, they all quickly realize that they were not alone making this trip. Not only is Maelstrom still around and possibly more determined than ever to defeat Celestial, but Celestial was never in Hikaru’s headphones at all…He was in her blood all this time! Making her bond to him almost as deep as her connection to her family…

Modern-day Japan is the stage for a new take on hard science fiction, as author Nobuaki Tadano revisits one of the genre’s grand masters, Hal Clement, in his debut work. Loosely inspired by Clement’s golden age title Needle, 7 Billion Needles follows the life of a teenage girl whose quiet boring days implode, her body possessed by an alien lifeform caught up in an intergalactic manhunt.

On a clear calm night, while on a class trip to the beach, Hikaru Takabe decides to go for a walk to escape the shackles of peer pressure. Observing the stars above a dark sea, she is struck by a meteor and disintegrates in an instant.

Flash forward one page, and she is sitting amongst classmates in school without a scratch on her. The meteor dream seemed so real she can’t believe she’s alive, but as aloof as ever, she shrugs off the events and moves on with life. What she can’t shake off is the strange buzz coming from her new pair of headphones…