Complete RING series by Koji Suzuki: “I really dislike most horror writing.”
Koji Suzuki’s The Ring horror trilogy has expanded to include more books, plus lots of movies, TV shows, comics, and video games.
“All human diseases and illnesses are more or less influenced by state of mind,” the author said, explaining why he worked medical explanations into later volumes. “Even if you are physically healthy, your mind can affect your health.”
The Ring series of horror novels written by Koji Suzuki revolve around a curse, embodied within a videotape, unleashed by the ghost of a psychic who was raped and murdered before being thrown into a well. Though the curse was initially presented as a supernatural force, it is eventually revealed to be a cataclysmic virus.
Originally written as a trilogy, the first books were followed by a short story collection and two more novels. The books also inspired lots of media adaptations: The Ring horror media franchise includes eight Japanese films, two television series, six manga adaptations, three English-language film remakes, a Korean film remake, and two video games.
Scroll down for more information about the books in the series…
The New York Times says that once his “The Ring” series made him into one of Japan’s most successful writers, Suzuki promised to never write horror fiction again. Instead, he began focusing on fiction with “nothing to do with ghostly girls or deadly videotapes or postmodern creepiness.”
“I actually don’t like all that supernatural stuff,” he told NYT. “I really dislike most horror writing.”
In fact, he hoped his horror fiction frightened readers less because of the supernatural elements and more because it tapped into the limits of technology and scientific knowledge. From the article:
He has often thought about the consequences if a powerful enough computer were able to find a pattern in the numbers to the right of the decimal point, a discovery Carl Sagan imagined, with theological implications, in his novel Contact. Mr. Suzuki’s ending would undoubtedly be less comforting.
“That’s the sort of thing I find scary,” he said. “That’s what gives me the chills.”
In another interview, Metro asked Suzuki to expand on how in the second book in the series, the deaths seem to have a medical explanation.
“All human diseases and illnesses are more or less influenced by state of mind,” the author replied. “For example, stomach ulcers come from stress. Stress is psychological, it doesn’t have a physical source. So even if you are physically healthy, your mind can affect your health. In short, by watching the video, a sort of consciousness is activated. It sends signals to release virus-like substances from the body that trigger human cells to cause heart attacks.”
Below find the whole list of books and scroll down for more info about each volume in the series.
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Ring (1991)
Stunning Japanese thriller with a chilling supernatural twist. The novel that inspired the cult Japanese movie and the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name.
Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspaper’s weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesn’t take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly – until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances.
Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin.
When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular videotape with a portentous message at the end:
Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now.
Asakawa finds himself in a race against time – he has only seven days to find the cause of the teenagers’ deaths before it finds him. The hunt puts him on the trail of an apocalyptic power that will force Asakawa to choose between saving his family and saving civilization.
Spiral (1995)
Pathologist Ando is at a low point in his life. His small son’s death from drowning has resulted in the break-up of his marriage and he is suffering from traumatic recurrent nightmares. Work is his only escape, and his depressing world of loneliness and regret is shaken up when an old rival from medical school, Ryuji Takayama, turns up on his slab ready to be dissected.
Through Ryuji’s bizarre demise Ando learns of a series of mysterious deaths that seem to have been caused by a sinister virus. From beyond the grave Ryuji appears to be leading Ando towards a suspicious videotape – could this hold the answer to the riddle of the strange deaths? Or is it merely the first clue? When Ando meets Mai, an attractive former student of Ryuji’s, his desire to solve the puzzle transcends curiosity and becomes a matter of life or death.
‘Spiral’ is the stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed ‘Ring’, and can also be read as a standalone.
Loop (1998)
Kaoru’s father, Hideyuki, lies dying in a Tokyo hospital, his body ravaged by viral cancer. This nightmarish incurable disease has sprung out of nowhere and has begun to affect organisms all over the planet.
Twenty years ago Hideyki worked on a virtual reality project which replicated evolution on earth, called the Loop. The project failed when the organisms within it inexplicably stopped reproducing normally and started cloning. Nearly all of the other scientists who worked on the Loop are already dead – from cancer.
To get to the heart of the mystery, Kaoru must travel to the other side of the planet, to the Mojave desert. The secret he encounters there will overturn everything he thought he knew about the world – and his own identity.
In this suspense-filled follow-up to ‘Ring’ and ‘Spiral’, Suzuki masterfully confounds the reader with a stunning new twist on the Ring mythology.
Birthday (1999) - short story collection
Birthday is Ring-master Koji Suzuki’s return to the Ring universe, a collection of short stories focusing on the female characters with a theme of birth. An exploration of extraordinary circumstances from the perspective of memorable women, this expansion of the Ring, Spiral, and Loop world was adapted into a hit movie less than a year after the book’s publication.
Thirty years before the tragic events of Ring, Sadako Yamamura was an aspiring stage actress on the verge of her theatrical debut. The beautiful and ravishing Sadako was the object of every male’s desire involved with the company including n the director. There was one thespian she was interested in, but…
Fast forward past the events of Ring, Ryuji Takayama’s distraught lover, Mai Takano is struggling in the wake of the professor’s mysterious demise. Mai visits Ryuji’s parents’ house to find the missing pages of his soon-to-be published article. There she is drawn to a curious videotape and a fate more terrifying than Ryuji or Kazuyuki Asakawa’s.
Reiko Sugiura questioned the purpose of bringing a child into a world where there was only death. She already lost one son, and the father of her unborn child, Kaoru Futami, had disappeared in search of a cure to the deadly disease that threatened all life. Despite Kaoru’s to meet again in two months, he has not returned. Despondent but driven for answers Reiko is led to the Loop project, where she will discover the final truths of the Ring virus.
S (2012)
Twenty-one years after the legendary bestseller Ring, which spawned blockbuster films on both sides of the Pacific, and thirteen years after Birthday, the seeming last word on iconic villain Sadako and her containment, internationally acclaimed master of horror and Shirley Jackson Award-winner Koji Suzuki makes his much-awaited return to the famed trilogy’s mind-blowing story world with a new novel, S.
Takanori Ando, son of Spiral protagonist Mitsuo, works at a small CGI production company and hopes to become a filmmaker one day despite coming from a family of doctors. When he’s tasked by his boss to examine a putatively live-streamed video of a suicide that’s been floating around the internet, the aspiring director takes on more than he bargained for. His lover Akane, an orphan who grew up at a foster-care facility and is now a rookie high-school teacher, ends up watching the clip. She is pregnant, and she is…triggered.
Sinking hooks into our unconscious from its very first pages with its creepy imagery, and rewarding curious fans of the series with clever self-references, here is a fitting sequel to a tale renowned for its ongoing mutations.
Tide (2013)
Not yet translated into English, the sixth and final entry in the series, Tide, is linked most directly to Loop.
Cram-school math instructor Seiji Kashiwada is a creation of the supercomputer LOOP. The biological information implanted in him reflects the lives of Ryuji Takayama (from Ring and Loop) and Kaoru Futami (from Loop). But due to a system error, portions of his memory have become lost...
More horror authors and books on Monster Complex
Related links:
Koji Suzuki’s ‘Ring’: A Deeper Look At Sadako’s Rage [Abibliophobia] (Dread Central)
'The Ring' at 20: Millennial Horror That's Still Infecting Movies Today (New York Times)
Reflecting on 20 years of female roles in 'The Ring' (The Japan Times)
The Himeji Castle Horror Story That Inspired The Ring And Ringu (Slash Film)
The Haunted History Of The Lighthouse From The Ring (Slash Film)
THE RING: Still Horrifying 20 Years Later (Daily Dead)
Ringu Is a Gothic Horror Story for the Information Age (Escapist Magazine)
The Untold Truth Of The Ring (Looper)
3 Horror Film Series With Sequels That Officially Don't Count (WhatCulture.com)
