I grew up reading almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy books, sometimes one a day during the summers. I was like the main character in Oscar Wao except I wasn’t fat or bad with the ladies (well…I wasn’t fat). To this day, even though I blog for Sepia Mutiny and am surrounded by talented co-bloggers, some of whom are authors, I have never read a single book of desi-fiction. Ever. I have no excuse at all. It just hasn’t happened yet. I read books to escape into worlds that I can never be a part of, or to get smart on something that I want to know more about before I die. Desi-lit, no matter how far removed from my experiences, just seems too close. Every time I pick up a book of desi fiction I tell myself that this time I will read it, this will be the one…only to push it aside once again. Nobody has to tell me, I already know that it is my loss. I have a theory about books. I believe the right book falls into your hands when you are meant to read it. You don’t pick books, they pick you. I haven’t read a science fiction or fantasy book in at least a decade by the way.
The other day while reading Boing Boing I came across a book review that might just become my first desi fiction book. I say “might” because I can’t guarantee it until it happens given my fickle history. The book is titled Cyberabad Days: Return to the India of 2047 and is a collection of science fiction short stories:
Cyberabad Days returns to McDonald’s India of 2047, a balkanized state that we toured in his 2006 novel River of Gods, which was nominated for the best novel Hugo Award. The India of River of Gods has fractured into a handful of warring nations, wracked by water-shortage and poverty, rising on rogue technology, compassion, and the synthesis of the modern and the ancient.
In Cyberabad Days, seven stories (one a Hugo winner, another a Hugo nominee) McDonald performs the quintessential science fictional magic trick: imagining massive technological change and making it intensely personal by telling the stories of real, vividly realized people who leap off the page and into our minds. And he does this with a deft prose that is half-poetic, conjuring up the rhythms and taste and smells of his places and people, so that you are really, truly transported into these unimaginably weird worlds. McDonald’s India research is prodigious, but it’s nothing to the fabulous future he imagines arising from today’s reality. [Link]
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p>With only two episodes left of Battlestar Galactica, I know I am going to be jonesing for some tales of human-robot hijinks. The short story mentioned below seems promising:
Vishnu at the Cat Circus: the long, concluding novella in the volume is an account of three siblings: one genetically enhanced to be a neo-Brahmin, one a rogue AI wallah who is at the center of the ascension of humanity’s computers into a godlike state, and one who remains human and bails out the teeming masses who are tossed back and forth by the technological upheaval. A story of character, Vishnu blends spirituality and technology to look at how the street might find its own use for things, when that street is rooted in ancient traditions that are capable of assimilating enormous (but not infinite) change. [Link]
Has anyone already read this? Please share your thoughts.
This looks great – thanks abhi ! Also grew up reading lots of scifi. I guess this question will inevitably come up, but is there any desi sci-fi anyone knows of writtent by Indians ? The only ones I know of were the futuristic Ramayan 3392 graphic novels created by Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur (they also did some other adaptations). Not sure how good those were.
Any desi sci-fi authors anyone can recommend ?
Any desi sci-fi authors anyone can recommend ?
i can’t even name an asian author aside from ted chiang off the top of my head (there are more black sf authors i can name off the top of my head, like delaney and the late octavia butler).
I’ve read one of his books – Desolation Road and enjoyed it (although not enough to remember what exactly I enjoyed about it). That’s pretty old though. May not be representative of now.
That was unhelpful, but i do have a point.
I’ve always been a little suspicious of reviews of work where people set stories in the mysterious east. It may be “unimaginably weird” to the reviewer but it’s often not very original. Take something like the Dune – Middle East connections. A lot of people talk like Dune was a work of penetrating insight and political commentary. It’s a good story, but in this aspect it’s fairly straightforward – spice as oil, the messianic story, and a liberal borrowing of arabic/urdu words.
I guess I’m saying the book is probably worth reading, even good. But you may be disappointed if you approach this as an ‘Indian’ scifi book.
This book looks interesting. Waiting to hear from others about Cyberabad…
Speaking about desi sci-fi, there is the “Prof Shanku” series written by Satyajit Ray. It is more a children’s fiction series of sort and were not exactly sci-fi of grand scale. But I used love them while growing up. They were all written in Bengali, and few have been translated.
and a liberal borrowing of arabic/urdu words.
urdu?
fwiw, joan vinge’s snow queen and summer queen have an indian-tinged interstellar civilization.
Razib. They’re probably all originally arabic, but some exist in urdu as well.
I love Google (even found an old SM post):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_science_fiction_writers
http://www.livemint.com/2008/11/22000939/Indian-science-fiction-authors.html (this one includes video clips of the authors)
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003544.html
http://users.rcn.com/singhvan/IndianSFF.html
That’s really cool re: Ray’s stories. Also interesting the Dune connections.
Reminds me of when I read Chronicles of Narnia and the LoTR – those authors’ takes on Eastern characters, their god(s) and alliances. These would have been the first exposure for many kids to eastern themes.
Apparently there was also a “National discussion entitled ‘The First Ever National Discussion: Science Fiction: Past, Present Future’ was organized in the holy city of Varanasi, India.” in November 08, where they drafted the Benaras Document on Science Fiction -2008 – interesting list of goals and suggestions listed to ‘propogate’ interested nationally in Science Fiction:
http://indiascifiarvind.blogspot.com/2009/01/benaras-document-on-science-fiction.html
many secondary worlds in fantasy are pretty obviously modeled on india. e.g., ‘Nilnamesh’ in the darkness that comes before.
Razib. They’re probably all originally arabic, but some exist in urdu as well.
yes. fwiw, the fremen are of synthetic origin; dharmic as well as abrahamic (e.g., ‘zensufi’ and ‘buddislamic’). the abrahamic aspects made better space opera….
I just read this last week, having seen the side link on ultrabrown. Someone gave me ‘River of Gods’ for xmas a couple years ago and I really couldn’t wrap my head around the convoluted plot, although I thought there were certainly some great sci-fi concepts in there. (I also felt the guy had clearly done insane amounts of Indian research, but I’m merely observing as a whitey who’s probably read too much brown fiction). I had left it in my mental “good idea, poorly executed” file until I came across his short story ‘The Little Goddess’ in a sci-fi anthology (also in Cyberabad) and thought it worked WAY better — same interesting futuristic ideas, but just focused around one small plot/character rather than a sprawling mess of a novel. So I vote for Cyberabad over River of Gods in terms of an entry point for curious brown sci-fi fans, it was much more manageable and humorous and character-driven. You can read it while listening to Karsh’s “Classical Science Fiction” EP. 😉
Speaking of brown sci-fi, Bobby Friction twittered (I hate the term ‘tweet’) that his flyer designer Kunal had already anticipated the Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan. Ha ha ha ha…
desi sci-fi ? try The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh – not really his genre, but the fact that he’s an awesome writer pulls it through.
I think there was this chap, who lived in Sri Lanka, who wrote a couple of decent stories, Clerk or something ;-).
The Hugo award-winning ‘Lord of Light’ by Roger Zelazny is pretty fabulous desi-sci-fi.
Oh no! It’s a white man writing about India! We’re being raped by colonialists with this Orientalist Sci-Fi!
McDonald is a good writer, I liked River of Gods overall but there were some things I didn’t dig. It would be interesting to see if any of his work gets adapted into a movie in the post Slumdog era.
Any desi sci-fi authors anyone can recommend ?
Biman Nath’s day job is science, but here is his sf novel.
1 · GurMando said
manjula padmanabhan is considered very good – i haven’t read her though. also, valmiki is ok, although he runs toward a tendency for unbelievably boring and tedious one-dimensional heroes.
Vandana Singh
16 · Joolz said
I definitely intend on picking up this book and its sequel – my question was not to lament re: caucasians stealing / playing with our culture. Just curious about the existing genre in our community once the meme was presented.
Appreciate all the great feedback. Anyone else who has read these yet ?
Jayant Narlikar – I have read the originals in marathi many years ago. Don’t know if translations are any good. Prof Narlikar is an astrophysicist famous (in geek circles) for Hoyle-Narlikar theory.
Well okay, but I can only think of one Desi writer who has been writing about the West without a Desi connection, and that’s Vikram Seth.
21 · Mr. X in Bombay said
Sujatha Rangarajan – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sujatha_Rangarajan – Tamil sci-fic writer.
He was working on Shankar’s Endhiran (based on his novels ‘En Iniya Iyanthra'(My dear Robot) and ‘Jeano’) before he passed away on February 27, 2008.
There is this blog – Scientific Indian
There’s heckuva lot of SF in India but you would never know because it’s published mostly in Tamizh, Hindi and Bangla. The dime variety pulp SF is a big thing, but unknown even within the region where it is published. A lot of it is inspired by US authors chiefly Clarke and Asimov. The higher brow stuff of course comes from the late Sujatha, who kept a full time day job at Bharat Electronics Ltd for >35 years. And not to forget the man who wrote ET – Satyajit Ray – who was ripped off without nary a thank you by Spielberg. Ray did not write much adult SF, give him a break – movies, music, photography, literature, illustration, painting, childrens fiction…..
SF in the US although about the future is actually a latecomer in terms of literary trends and its understanding of culture. So while SN Balagangadhara and his team have by now established beyond doubt that what one reads of the exotic East is not so much about the East as much as about the writer’s experience of his/her own culture SF writers don’t read much it seems, Ian MacDonald is no exception!
Yet another western author writing about how India would collapse into several smaller kingdoms/nations. Yawn.
Sujata (S.Rangarajan) is a celebrity Tamil Sci-fi writer. His magnum opus is “En Iniya Iyandhira” which was also made into a Sci-fi TV series in Tamil in DD 🙁 The story is about a futuristic india in which the protaganist , a beautiful girl named Nila (Tamil:Moon) gets mixed up with revolutionaries against a tyrant called Jeeva. In the climax, it is revealed that the tyrant is in fact a holographic image controlled by the head of the revolutionary. The theme was far ahead of its times for a normal tamil audience of a tamil weekly of 1980s!! But, people loved it.. Every tamilian knows about the Robot Dog Jeno from it.
26 · Paranoid Android said
See Ramchandra Guha’s India After Gandhi – Why India Survives. It has an impressive list of naysayers.
Salman Rushdie wrote Grimus, his first novel and has said in an interview that he was embarrassed by it.
O.V.Vijayan may not be considered a sci-fi writer but I think a couple of his works (that I have read but cannot recollect the titles; maybe they were excerpts or short stories) have elements of sci-fi in them.
Is this what we have come to?
First they tell us that Mumbai is a poor city with slums and dogs, and now Mr McDonald wins awards by writing about how Indians are going to die of water fights?
Wrings hands in despair
Eeek! I’m so excited that Sepia Mutiny has finally written about Ian MacDonald! Gosh, I love you people. LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
Everyone should read River of Gods. And I’m going to get Cyberabad soon.
http://www.likhari.org/Likhari%20Pages%202008/5303%20roop%20dhillon%20Suraj_Lekh%20kldhar%2025%20November%202008.htm
As this link shows, people ahev been writing Sci Fi in local Indian languages for years. There are amny examples in Bengali, almost as old as English, adn there are many more now in Hindi and Punjabi!!
I can read Punjabi very very slowly..never apid much attention at the Gurdwara you know! But I love Sci Fi. Have to admit only ever read English books. With the little knowledge I have I have just read this Roop Dhillon’s piece you posted. I am shocked, didn’t think they wrote about anything but the Pind! Mind you it is about the Pind, but with Robots..maybe I willgo to the those Gurdwara classes again.
Anyhow, Despite this supposdedly being about I MacDonald, I have noticed many links to actual Desi writers in their own languages. Dude I am impressed!
GurMando thank you for Ray’s stories. Malathi O.V.Vijayan is real interesting, and Wanderer that’s a cool Pind story with a Cyborg twist!!
Thanks – but Zee posted about Ray’s stories, which I agree, are very cool.
I would love to read the Robot Pind stories. I am sure the first thing they did was fix the roads 🙂
Abhi, I’m so glad you posted this. I read the book last week, and thought it was terrific. It was a disappointing and not all together surprising ending though [spoiler deleted], but it was great until then.
Sigh! The perpetual Western fear/(fantasy?) of seeing India break up into many nations (anarchy) seems to never die. It was a staple in Foggy bottom circles in the 50s and 60s (eg. read Selig Harrison’s book, India, the Dangerous Decades Ahead or some such title, or more recently (as in the last 10 years) an op-ed in the Forbes by Steve Forbes). Of course, that is a mutli-national state that should wither as a natural course was very popular with pooh-bahs in the communist movement in India at one point in time (may even be so now). Of course, a novel’ setting is not a political prognosis and it can imagine any world whether realistic or not. But the futuristic setting of the novel seems particularly banal that one cannot but question the political/idealogical antecdents of the author.
OV Vijayan is way above Ian MacDonald’s pay grade. It isn’t a fair comparison.
Sujatha did not simply write, he mass produced fiction of a few kinds, apart from SF. He also worked extensively on developing a scientific lexicography in Tamizh, and went about it innovatively. Instead of seeking a literal translation, as some have with Sanskrit, French and Hindi, Sujatha chose to attach the colloquial meaning to traditional terms. So SW became mellinam, which is also the aproximate term used for the soft consonants in Tamizh, making it a more popular term of use. HE also coined the now much used Tamizh term for the Internet – INayam – or “that which unites”. And then he wrote film scripts too!
Non-English Non-US SF tends to be serious stuff, and is older. Read Sam Lundwall’s “Science fiction: An Illustrated History” form more
the futuristic setting of the novel seems particularly banal that one cannot but question the political/idealogical antecdents of the author.
I don’t read a lot of sci fi, but don’t most of these novels describe the apocalypse when it comes to the future? The picture of the Statue of Liberty submerged in water comes to mind…
I really enjoyed Ian McDonald’s “River of Gods,” the book that this is based on.
The best science fiction voice coming out of South Asia that I know if is Manjula Padmanabhan. She has a play called Harvest, a recent SF novel called Escape, and several strong short stories in a collection called Kleptomania.
Totally recommended.
PS said:
I don’t read a lot of sci fi, but don’t most of these novels describe the apocalypse when it comes to the future? The picture of the Statue of Liberty submerged in water comes to mind…
Not all sci-fi is apocalytpic visions of the future (Star Wars being a good example). And I don’t have a problem with an apocalytic vision–after all things don’t have to end in Bollywood style. But If I wrote a novel with the same setting as the planet of apes, you would hardly find it compelling. Unless the story itself is compelling, in which case the setting becomes irrelevant (a la Bollywood movies). Macdonald may well have woven a great story, but the setting is unorginal and unimaginative.
I discovered Blaft via Jai Arjun Singh yesterday.
From Blaft’s website (don’t miss the illustration on this book’s cover):
My life is too short, my bank account too small, my children too precious, and my daytime job too much of a reality for me to keep up with the wealth of literature I discover each day from all over. (Off-topic, for Russophiles out there: Just this weekend I discovered David Bezmozgis and cannot get enough of his writing.)
Malathi,
This is great news. Just the Kumudam alone – at one time India’s largest circulated periodical – has enough SF to fill a library. Must get this title from Landmark!
GurMando
Here is direct link.
http://www.likhari.org/Likhari%20Pages%202008/5303%20roop%20dhillon%20Suraj_Lekh%20kldhar%2025%20November%202008.htm
It is in Punjabi mind. I don’t think it is strictly a Pind story, so I disagree a little with Desi. It shares with McDonald a negative future, but one defined by Indians themselves and related to their concerns. The Story is called Kaldaar Kay Kaldaas, a word play on Punjabi and Hindustani, which Can roughly be translated as Robot or Slave? I think this quite clever as Robot is a Polish word which means Slave.
The story concerns fears that rural India has changed for the worst, similiar to Victorian England’s industrilsation process. The Pind fears that workers are being replaced by industrial machinery and computers. The nature and values of the country are changing. The middle classes are gaining, as they embrace globalisation and exploit industrialisation and eventually replace the labourers with androids which don’t sleep, don’t get paid and have no families to provide for. However they can think. At this point the story borrows heavily from the rules laid out by Asminov, but so what? This is an Indian writing Sci fi relevant to Indian thought in an Indian language.
Like Ludites the humans attack the factories and the robots. The twist? The whole thing is from the Robot’s viewpoint. They did not ask to be created. But as they exist, the horror of their massacre, leads them to fight back and kill the humans, leading to a desire to rule.
Like McDonald, this is a bleak future, but one which nods to its own culture and its own genuine fears…That is where I think this Roop Dhillon has done Punjabi a favor.
That said Punjabi Sci Fi is in its infancy. I have only found an example of one other writer, a Scientist called DP Singh.
For the most part Tamil, Bengali and Hindi are leading in this field. With more stories like this, I might make it a habit to actually read local Indian languages!!
I found the first book of Samit Basu’s Gameworld Trilogy, The Simoqin Prophesies pretty interesting reading, with its heavy references to other fantasy/mythological worlds. It’s a nice easy read 🙂
Haven’t read the other two books of the trilogy yet so don’t have an opinion on the series though.
Yeah I dis some googling..looks like there are only 2 people writing Punjabi Science Fiction. DP Singh and Roop Dhillon
Sounds interesting.
Personally, I couldn’t care less if a story was a desi story or not or whether it is written by a desi. If there is someone out there who can write like Haldeman or Vonnegut, I’m all for recommendations, as long as it’s in English 🙂 Some day I hope to be able to enjoy literature in desi languages.
I was going to talk about Shine Coconut Moon, but as you have closed, I’ll make a passing comment here. The West is an Anglo Saxon – European culture. They rule the USA, despite Obama. They always will. You forget reality if you don’t appreciate that you are different.
Now to link it with this subject…I have read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5. I agree it is good. Better than MacDonald. But Nanda Kishore Ji, why do you only want to read English? Bengali is so much superior. You restrict yourself.. Start the process of enjoying Desi languages now. Punjabi is also a good one, and Hindi is as well.
I am glad there is Punjabi Science Fiction, Bengali Science Fiction et al. It is sad that most of you here call this a brown website, but use English as the only form of communication
Panini…so why are you here, writing in English? This is to all intents and purposes an English Language website…Stick to the subject man…