Ludvík Souček

Who was Ludvík Souček?

Ludvík Souček was probably the best-known author of science fiction in Czechoslovakia.

He graduated at Medical faculty of Charles University in Prague as a dentist in 1951 and started his professional life at the dental clinic as an assistant. Later, he joined the military and became an officer. He spent two years in Korea as a member of Czechoslovak peace mission after Korean War. Next, he was employed as a dentist in the Central Military Hospital in Prague, then served at Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defence. He shortly worked at the Central Committee KSČ. The same year he was employed in the military redaction of the Czechoslovak Television as an editor and later in the Albatros publishing house. Because of serious disease, he went into disability pension in 1976.

He was a member of KSČ all his life, and the ideology definitely profoundly influenced his literary work. In spite of his deep communist persuasion, Souček arguably remains the most popular and most widely known author of Czech Science fiction.