Friday, October 9, 2009

Dr. Anilir's books in Japanese

Armagan, a reader from Turkey, has the following question:
I wish to know what sort of books he has mainly written in Japanese;
are they serious academic treatises or popular children's books to encourage students about science?
I am answering the question here, as it might be of interest for other readers, too.

He has published three books so far in Japanese. He also contributed to another book which is a collection of articles written by many people. However, here I focus on the three books, of which he is the sole author. They are not academic publications, but for general public. The books are thought to encourage students about science, although they are also read by adults. Even when he talks about "science", often the actual content is more like a fantasy.

1. "Uchuu Elebehtah" (Space Elevator) published 2006/6/22
2. "Taimu Mashin" (Time Machine) published 2006/11/23
3. "Poketto no Naka no Uchuu" (The Space in Your Pocket) published 2009/8

Although the title of the first book is "Space Elevator", there is not so much detailed discussion of space elevator (although there is some explanation, of course.) The rest of the book is mixture of his personal experiences and his essay on various scientific subjects.

In the second book "Time Machine", he tells about his experience of trying to make a time machine when he was 15 years old. (The story already appeared in "Space Elevator" but he writes more details in this book.)

The third book "The Space in Your Pocket" is again mixture of his personal experiences (a kind of autobiography) and essay on various subjects (scientific and otherwise). Actually there is some overlap in his stories, with the other two books (it is not just a copy from the other books, but he tells again about the same story in several places.)

I do not know precise sales information of these books, but it seems that they have been selling well. All the publishers of his books are well-known, respected publishing companies in Japan.

Many of his personal "experiences" and author information in these books are now questioned. For example, see the posting on the "astronaut candidate" claim. We are also curious how his stories told in Japanese books are compared to what is told in Turkey. I will discuss these points later.

Posted by at 11:40 PM
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4 comments:

  1. Thank you, Narkes, for your kindness to answer my question about Dr. Anilir's corpus published in Japan more than satisfactorily.

    This seems congruent with my very distant (a little short of 9,000 km) observation that, apart from an single article in a collaborative book, which is sort of obligatory to save face (and to maintain a title) as an academician, his sole focus is on kids, in addition to rehashing of his youthful adventures in each book.

    Does this tell the blog audience something about his core competencies perhaps?
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  2. i have been thinking to give up poring with serkan because he is opening minds of children and gain them new perspectives, but he is playing with fire and I wish to come to light his real character.

    MErt
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  3. Thanks for your comments.

    As Mert mentioned, it is true that his book succeeded in getting many
    children and adults interested in science and giving them positive
    motivation. This is so even though his writings occasionally show his
    lack of understanding of physics, as Armagan suggests.

    I think most people are looking for fantasy in science, and he is good
    in filling the desire (including himself being a "superhero").

    I feel very sad when I think of reaction of those people. But the
    truth will eventually prevail; then better sooner than later.
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  4. I am sure University Of Tokyo is ashamed big time because of their failure for screening a PhD candidate and his dissertation. They should not award this fellow with the degree at the first place. The guy might claimed bunch of bull (such as he was involved with NASA, etc) none of which changes the fact that the UOT dissertation committee was fu... up big time. This should be a good lesson learned to all universities around the world. There may be lots of "pretender"s among us (any body remember the Pretender episodes on TV - here in US ? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pretender) - it is the duty of the people who serves on those dissertation committees and/or thesis advisor's, second readers, etc to screen these kind of stuff. The Pretender was a good tv show. Maybe this fellow watched it before he moved to Japan ;)
    ReplyDelete

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