Karsten Leunbach’s SciFi Collection
Karsten was an avid reader - especially when it came to SciFi and feminist literature. He did not have a smartphone to scroll, but always had a paperback in his pocket. Being an educated engineer, he was interested in science, technology, and making sense of the world through rational thinking. But he also had another side, curious, weird, and imaginative. He was the son of famous activist and doctor, Dr. Leunbach, who believed that fascism should be defeated through sexual liberation. Between the two world wars,
the young Karsten’s father would sit inside a metal box, absorbing “Orgone”– the energy of life – while thinking about communism and a new world order, when he wasn’t in prison for helping families in need and performing illegal abortions.
Being brought up in a progressive environment, Karsten grew up to be a somewhat charismatic personality with a lust for life. He was involved in the cultural-radical movement in Denmark, loved psychology and writing, and had many kids with many wives. As he reached retirement, new adventures began: Hang gliding in his 60’ies, experimenting with acid in his 70’ies, but around his 80’ies he finally gave up on writing the history of the whole world.
Throughout his life he was reading all the science fiction he could get his hands on. Especially from the classical, American era of the 1950ies, 60ies, and 70ies, when the rapid scientific and technological developments of WWII had inspired wonder and imagination amongst authors, and the arms and space race of the Cold War spiked both hope and fear.
When he lived with his last wife, who became deaf, he would use the paper from their written conversations as bookmarks – thus, many of the books contain small fragments of everyday conversations about lasagna, sleeping pills, and the flu, contrasting the thousands of pages about strange worlds, extra-terrestrial political intrigues, and the limits of human consciousness.
Even though he was an eccentric, he was known to be very calm and comfortable, even phlegmatic at times. He slept a lot and had a special nap-room at his work. His last years on Earth was spent in bed, drinking full fat milk, eating chocolate, and finding it hard to read even with three pairs of glasses on. But dreaming a lot – about flying and strange worlds, I imagine.
Karsten Leunbach is my grandfather, and I’m very thankful that he passed on his love of both science and fiction to me. For unknown reasons, I never attended his funeral, and passing on his collection of SciFi is a way of honoring his memory.
This pulp science project is also an exploration of “collection” as an extra-material concept: What happens when a collection is dispersed? Will the collected objects forever be part of a bigger story?
Rosa Leunbach, 2023
