Subodhana (Subo) Wijeyeratne

Subodhana Wijeyeratne is a historian of technology with a focus on East Asia in general, and Japan in particular. His primary historical interests lie in the history of science and technology, especially the interaction between human communities and large-scale scientific enterprises such as space programs, deep-sea exploration, aviation, and exploration. Dr. Wijeyeratne received his PhD in History from Harvard University. His dissertation, Red Sun Rising: Rocketry and Space Exploration in Japan, 1920–2003, examined the development of Japan’s space program within the context of the nation’s political, social, geographic, and technological conditions in the twentieth century. 

His academic work has appeared in venues including Historia Scientiarum, Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Roadsides, and The Journal of Space Operations and Communicator. He also has a chapter, “Earthly Dreams and Cosmic Afterlives: The Failure and Reutilization of Japanese Space Facilities,” in Cosmic Fragments: Displacement and Dislocation in the Global Space Age, edited by Asif Siddiqi and published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His current and recent research includes work on Sino-Japanese space cooperation, local engineers during the American Occupation of Japan, Japanese scientific ballooning, race and public intellectual life in modern Japan, and female Japanese aviators in the early twentieth century. His first monograph, The Islands and the Stars: The History of Japan’s Space Programs, is published by Stanford University Press in 2026.

Dr. Wijeyeratne is also a writer of speculative fiction. His short fiction has appeared in venues including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, khōréō, Welkin, Expanded Horizons, Mythaxis, Kaleidotrope, Aurealis, and LampLight Magazine. His story “Termina” was a finalist for the Analog Readers’ Choice Award for Best Short Story, and “They Meet in the Wall” received a Mariner Award. He is the author of the short-story collection Tales from the Stone Lotus and the novels The Slixes and Triangulum: An Epic of the Nine World of Surya, described by Publishers Weekly as an “inventive, immersive space opera." He has completed a further novel, A Beast Called Man, and is working on his fourth, The Crimson Banner of Dawn.

The latest information on his academic and fiction work can be found at subowijeyeratne.com

subowijeyeratne.com