Writer Creates Ultimate Mall for Future’s Jaded Shopper

Somtow Sucharitkul would trade the Sherman Oaks Galleria and 10 like it for just one week in Mallworld.

Mallworld is a totally awesome, 30-mile-long shopping plaza afloat in deep space. With some 20,000 stores in an almost bottomless array of shopping levels, it is the place for tomorrow’s glitz-conscious consumer.

And if Sucharitkul--a science fiction writer who set a popular series of satirical stories in Mallworld--could actually live there instead of in his modest Van Nuys apartment, life would be grand.

Where else, he asks, could you be a human pinball in a pinball machine the size of a football field? Or contemplate a noble death at the hands of a vampire in a suicide parlor that guarantees your prompt return to life?

‘Important New Writer’

“It beats the hell out of Lazer-Maze,” says the 34-year-old writer.

Sucharitkul settled in the San Fernando Valley a year ago to pursue what is proving to be one of the most varied careers in science fiction today.

In a field whose reigning enfants terrible are becoming disturbingly long of tooth and blunt of bite, Sucharitkul shows signs of becoming a ranking satirist.

Robert Bloch, author of “Psycho” and an honored name in the genre, calls Sucharitkul “a brilliant and important new writer whose work is like a bolt of lightning--it is both illuminating and electrifying.”

In 1981, Sucharitkul received the John W. Campbell Award for the genre’s best new writer, and has twice been nominated for its Hugo Award, science fiction’s equivalent of the Oscar.

“Mallworld,” published by Donning in 1982 and reprinted by Tor in 1984, brought Sucharitkul international acclaim as a science fiction satirist.

“The French are very fond of ‘Mallworld,’ ” he said, “and it’s the only fiction of mine to have been published behind the Iron Curtain.

“No doubt it’s considered a searing indictment of the capitalist system, a biting satire of American decadence. But I was merely describing the kind of place in which I’d most like to live.”

Sucharitkul is a self-admitted mall fiend. When he visits an American city for the first time, he heads straight for its malls.

Malls of Worship

“They were really the most astonishing thing about America I noticed during my first visits here,” he said. “Other countries have their temples and mosques and synagogues, but this was an entirely new kind of worship.

“I have few doubts that the Galleria performs the functions of a cathedral during the Middle Ages,” said Sucharitkul.

In his book, Mallworld is the bright spot in an otherwise dim universe, one in which even sight of the stars has been denied humanity. In fact, it serves quite admirably as a stand-in for the smoggy San Fernando Valley.

Sucharitkul moved to Van Nuys from Washington, his home of six years, “because I felt that I could work creatively in an atmosphere of incredible cultural desolation.

“And I love it here. My love for the Valley is somewhat like my love for B movies. In some ways, B movies are the only interesting things coming out of Hollywood.”

Sucharitkul, who also writes under the name S. P. Somtow, was born in Bangkok, Thailand, grandnephew of Siam’s Queen Indrasakdisachi. His father is an international jurist who served as a Thai ambassador to Rome and Jerusalem, among other capitals, and now teaches at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

“I spent my childhood following my father around Europe as he gathered degrees,” said Sucharitkul. “It was wonderful for writing science fiction because I never got the sense that any particular culture is the way it has to be.”

Sucharitkul’s outsider sensibility was first honed on the playing fields of Eton, to which he was dispatched by his father for the purpose of obtaining a first-rate British education.

And though his Latin was weak and his social standing not quite up to school standards, young Sucharitkul prevailed, eventually graduating from Cambridge with a master’s degree in music.

Avant-Garde Composer

After returning to Thailand, where he learned his native language and traditional Thai music, he became, according to the magazine Asia Week, one of his country’s top avant-garde composers.

“I had initially envisioned myself becoming the Kwisatz Haderach (the Hebrew term for a future-day messiah used in the science fiction novel “Dune”) of Thai music,” he said.

“But I burned out at about the same time that my music, which in some traditional circles was accused of being sacrilegious or even Communist-inspired, seemed to be falling out of favor.”

Sucharitkul turned to writing upon discovering about eight years ago that a poem he had composed as an 11-year-old had been reprinted as the epigraph to actress Shirley MacLaine’s autobiography, “Don’t Fall Off the Mountain.”

His poem had appeared in the English-language Bangkok Post, and he surmises that it must have caught MacLaine’s attention as she was passing through Thailand.

“Oh, I expect she thought these were the words of some ancient sage possessing the mysteries of the East,” he said, laughing.

He received the princely sum of $200 for the poem, still the most per-word he’s ever been paid for his writing.

Sucharitkul dabbled in science fiction, which he had read diligently as a child, churning out a pastiche of works by his favorite writers in order to teach himself the form. In 1981 his first novel, “Starship & Haiku,” was published by Pocket Books.

Written for Television

Since moving to the Valley, Sucharitkul has written several scripts for upcoming Saturday morning TV cartoon shows, among them a syndicated animated series “Dinosaucers.”

He has also sold a script to Tercel Productions, a Los Angeles-based company, for a very low-budget feature film tentatively titled “Lizard Ninja.”

But though he has a love for schlock, Sucharitkul has not abandoned his novel writing. He has published 15 books and they reflect an eclectic range of interests.

His “Aquilad” series posits an alternate history in which the Ancient Romans settled North America. In upcoming novels, according to Sucharitkul, they will build a railway across Nebraska and will ultimately settle Mars.

Covers Serious Topics

He has written in a more serious vein as well. His young adult novel, “The Fallen Country,” deals with domestic violence and is frequently cited by educators, social workers and child psychiatrists. Another novel due in October, “Forgetting Places” is about teen suicide.

Meanwhile, he has begun a cautious return to music. He has written the lyrics for a Thai tourism jingle aimed at a yuppie American market, and is now hard at work in his Haskell Avenue home composing birthday music for the King of Thailand. Both projects are signs, he says, that his work is back in favor in Thailand.

He has not seriously contemplated a sequel to “Mallworld,” however. Mallworld was a pleasant pipe dream, but there are new books to write.

“They’ll never build the place, of course,” he says. “But I’d be happy if they simply threw a dome over Ventura Boulevard and kept it air-conditioned.”