Satoshi Hase (born 1974) is a Japanese science fiction and fantasy novelist whose work explores relationships between people, artificial intelligence, and technology. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he graduated from Kansai University and made his professional debut in 2001 after winning the Gold Prize in the sixth Sneaker Awards. He developed a career spanning light novels and science fiction for a general readership. His 2012 novel BEATLESS follows an encounter between a boy and a humanlike machine produced by intelligence beyond human capabilities, questioning the boundary between those who use tools and those who are used by them. In 2014 he launched the Analoghack Open Resource, making the setting of the novel and related works available for others to use in creative projects. He supervised the story of its 2018 anime adaptation and expanded the novel for its paperback edition. His first story collection, My Humanity, examines conflicts between technologies for transmitting experience and cultural backgrounds, as well as researchers confronting self-replicating nanomachines. It won the thirty-fifth Nihon SF Taisho Award in 2015. Protocol of Humanity grew out of a collaboration with a contemporary dance company. Centering on a dancer who loses his right leg and uses an AI-controlled prosthesis, the novel investigates bodily expression and the procedures that distinguish human movement from robotic performance. It received the Seiun Award for best Japanese long-form work in 2023 and the forty-fourth Nihon SF Taisho Award in 2024. Hase also served on the Ethics Committee of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence from 2014 to 2019 and participated in corporate science fiction prototyping projects.
