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What does it mean to imagine a better world? More importantly, how do we even begin to reclaim our imagination?
If you build a life here in Bangkok – living, commuting, working – you probably hold several grievances with the city; when the dull routine of urban life makes you want to take leave from your tedious 9-to-5 and lose yourself in a world of escapism, a great sci-fi book or series will carry you far from the madding crowd.
Yet, the itch to build something new – that horizon of possibilities – stays just out of reach, no matter how many books you’ve read or expert podcasts you’ve binged. Or so it seems. Maybe what our times really need is a bit more imagination and the courage to ask: Is there an alternative? Here lies the core of speculative fiction. It speaks to that human need to break free from an all-too-banal realism.
Two recent Bangkok event announcements share a telling keyword: ‘speculative’. First up is the Bangkok Speculative Literature Festival on 22 August at Bangkok Kunsthalle, exploring fiction and alternate realms. Then there’s Speculative Chula: Not Yet Built at the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre through 2 August, treating the Samyan neighbourhood as an open-ended hypothesis for better urban living, as the not-yet.
Koktail explores this unifying thread, which speaks to a collective desire for world-making and a clearer conceptualisation of our surroundings, while stressing the urgent role of imagination, not just in literature, but in our contemporary world.
The “What-If” Impulse: Reclaiming Our Imagination
What is the speculative, really? What does it actually mean to speculate? It’s easy to treat science fiction as the whole story, but the term also embraces fantastical and horror elements. Greats like Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin operated in that soft sci-fi sweet spot, combining these modes together until the boundaries were dissolved altogether. The speculative isn’t pulled out of thin air; it’s built right on the fringes of reality, testing the exact lines where the unreal gets shut down. Everything hangs on two small words: ‘what if?’
To speculate is to depart from what is established as Reality, a shift in which the function of art is no longer mimetic (i.e., imitating reality by trying to capture a nugget of truth on an impressionist canvas), but non-mimetic, even though it starts with reality itself, or rather, what reality forbids and disavows. This is one way to define it: that which goes against Reality, Truth or at least the prevailing way it is expressed. Speculative fiction, as one might argue, can be thought of as a human endeavour, rather than a technological one. It’s not about what tools, gadgets or large language models think ought to be, but humans.
For Fredric Jameson, speculative fiction is bound to the utopian impulse for a better world: not merely constructing it, but conceptualising, visualising and representing it. It creates a space for experimentation, giving form to radical possibilities. If the failure of imagination is symptomatic of today’s crisis – where we passively accept that “things just go on” the way they do – then speculative fiction offers a vital rupture with the enduring status quo.
The technique powering science and speculative fiction is cognitive estrangement, a term coined by Darko Suvin in his seminal study of the genre. By recontextualising both the reader and their surroundings, it introduces the novum, an innovative device that delivers a Brechtian-style jolt to the system. This jolt shatters routine assumptions, opening fresh pathways towards alternative futures.
Bangkok Speculative Literature Festival: The Art of Imagining Another World
Organised by Bkk Lit Fest and set to take place on 22 August at Bangkok Kunsthalle, Bangkok Speculative Literature – one of the capital’s first events to zoom in on the sub-genre – brings together leading Thai and international authors. The lineup features two-time SEA Write Award winner Veeraporn Nitiprapha, Hugo Award-nominated author and editor Regina Kanyu Wang, Sunday Times bestseller Katalina Watt and writer Apinuch Petcharapiracht, who is known by her pen name Moonscape.
As today’s technological, ecological and cultural crises proliferate, there is a growing urge to turn to literature for answers, or at least a new way to frame the problem. Yet speculative vision does not always look forward; it can just as easily stem from the past. Nitiprapha’s Memories of the Memories of the Black Rose Cat, for instance, is a family saga filled with cross-cultural encounters and spectral presences that grapples with the hardships of the diasporic experience.
Indeed, speculative fiction does not retreat from social issues; rather, it relies on the faculty of imagination to face them directly. Ghosts, monsters and otherworldly creatures frequently speak to deep-seated issues like xenophobia, patriarchy and class oppression. That is the essence of its allegorical power: it is not about predicting the future, but clarifying the present. Any attempt to imagine a better world must start with confronting reality itself. That is the launching point of fiction: not to capture reality, but to mutate it.
Speculative Chula: Not Yet Built – What If Samyan Became Something Else?
Currently showing at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre (BACC) until 2 August, Speculative Chula: Not Yet Built presents the results of a ten-week design research sprint between Harvard GSD and Thai design students. Co-organised by Netiwit “Frank” Chotiphatphaisal’s Sam Yan Press and the Sam Yan Civic Design Lab, the exhibition features five speculative futures placed side-by-side with essays and the perspectives of shrine caretakers, vendors and long-time Samyan locals.
It remains an ongoing march towards justice for those trying to protect Samyan – from its traditional shophouses to the original Chao Mae Tuptim Shrine, which now sits hemmed in by grey concrete and corrugated iron as Chulalongkorn University’s Property Management (PMCU) pushes its gentrification plans. As commercial developments replace cultural spaces – most notably seen in the demolition of the Scala Cinema – students and locals are wondering whether the local community can come out of this in one piece, or if a different path is possible.
Here, speculation takes on a distinct urgency. The question is never what will happen, but what could. Can there be a better way for Bangkokians to live? It starts with the sheer desire to imagine, the gut feeling that the present is unbearable, which is the root of all real transformation. Bangkok’s cultural sphere is leaning into the speculative, exploring alternative paths and plural futures. As the old French slogan goes: Be realistic, demand the impossible. Imagination does not belong solely to the pages of books; it exists in action and in the way we think about that action.
Both events ask us to imagine alternative futures. Will you join the conversation?
