The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired two new books that may be of interest to students of literature, science, philosophy, and related subjects.
Memoirs of a Space Traveler and His Master’s Voice are shelved in the Fiction Stacks of Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus.
They were written by Stanisław Lem, a leading Polish author of science fiction.
Science fiction is different from fantasy insofar as its imaginary elements are often possible or at least imaginable, according to current scientific knowledge.
The TU Library owns many other books by and about science fiction authors.
Stanisław Lem’s books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 45 million copies. Worldwide, he is best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In the 1970s, one expert in the field wrote that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world.
Lem’s works explore philosophical themes through speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of communication with and understanding of alien intelligence, despair about human limitations, and humanity’s place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books.
Thailand and science fiction
TU students who are fans of science fiction are familiar with books by Juntree Siriboonrod (1917–1968), the Thai novelist sometimes called the father of Thai science fiction. Juntree started his career as a civil servant in the Mineral Fuels Division (now the Department of Mineral Fuels of the Ministry of Energy) of the Thai government. He began writing novels and science-related articles in limited circulation as a senior high school science teacher at the Kenneth MacKenzie School at Tanon Charoenprathet, Wiang Nuea, Mueang Lampang District, Lampang Province.
Thai students have been educated at the Kenneth MacKenzie School for over 100 years.
In 2005, Nanmee Books Co. Ltd., along with the Science Writers & Publisher Forum (SciPub), the Science Society of Thailand Under the Patronage of His Majesty the King, the Junior Science Talent Project (JSTP) and the Thailand National Science and Technology Development Agency, established the Juntree Siriboonrod Award for achievements in the field of Thai science fiction.
Another much-appreciated Thai author of science fiction is S. P. Somtow, several of whose books are in the TU Library collection. Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul (born 1952) is a Thai-American musical composer as well as science fiction, fantasy, and horror author writing in English.
Here are some thoughts about science fiction by authors, many of whose books are owned by the TU Library :
- Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
Brian Aldiss, in Penguin Science Fiction (1961), Introduction
- Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.
Brian Aldiss, Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973), Ch. 1: “The Origins of the Species”
- Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
Isaac Asimov, in “My Own View” in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
- I don’t know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home—in story after story—the notion that life is going to be different.
Isaac Asimov, “Science, Technology and Space: The Isaac Asimov Interview” Pat Stone, Mother Earth News, October 1980.
- Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial.
Isaac Asimov, “Science, Technology and Space: The Isaac Asimov Interview” Pat Stone, Mother Earth News, October 1980.
- The rockets that have made spaceflight possible are an advance that, more than any other technological victory of the twentieth century, was grounded in science fiction… . One thing that no science fiction writer visualized, however, as far as I know, was that the landings on the Moon would be watched by people on Earth by way of television.
Isaac Asimov, Asimov on Physics (1976), 35. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 307.
- Fantasies are things that can’t happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.
Ray Bradbury “Ray Bradbury”, Joshua Klein, A.V. Club, Jun 16, 1999.
- Science-fiction works hand-in-glove with the universe.
Ray Bradbury, “Introduction” in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories (1956)
- Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. …Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don’t know what they’re talking about.
Ray Bradbury, Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1995
- No less a critic than C. S. Lewis has described the ravenous addiction that these magazines inspired; the same phenomenon has led me to call science fiction the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug.
Arthur C. Clarke, “Of Sand and Stars”, 1983
- Inner Sanctum: Do you have any advice for young writers of science fiction?
Dung: Well, in my opinion, in order to write science fiction, an author has to love both the social and natural sciences and be a skillful writer. Moreover, you should have a deep knowledge of social issues. As a writer, an imaginative mind is necessary to create interesting work. First begin writing short stories, then try with novels. You must combine scientific knowledge and literary skill.
Inner Sanctum: In your opinion, what attracts a reader to science fiction? What do they gain from reading it?
Dung: Science fiction is based on scientific knowledge and imagination. It’s not all impossible. Captain Nemo’s submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was a prediction. The fact is that we now make them to explore the bottom of the sea.
Readers are attracted to it because they want an intelligent adventure. The stories make them think, imagine and deduce. The stories predict the future of science and even suggest what scientists will invent.
Vu Kim Dung, “Sci-fi writer inspires real world thinking”, Inner Sanctum, Vietnam News, (September, 13/2008).
- I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it’s written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change.
Robert A. Heinlein, “The Discovery of the Future,” Guest of Honor Speech, 3rd World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, Colorado (4 July 1941)
- It is absurd to condemn them [science fiction stories] because they do not often display any deep or sensitive characterization. They oughtn’t to. … Every good writer knows that the more unusual the scenes and events of his story are, the slighter, more ordinary, the more typical his persons should be. Hence Gulliver is a commonplace little man and Alice is a commonplace little girl. If they had been more remarkable they would have wrecked their books. The Ancient Mariner himself is a very ordinary man. To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much; he who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange.
C.S. Lewis, “On Science Fiction”, 24 November 1955 talk to the Cambridge University English Club on; published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)