Category: Fiction

  • The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction

    Tarun K. Saint (Editor), Manjula Padmanabhan (Foreword)

    Once upon a time, the only fiction I used to read were those written by Indian authors. The reason was a relatability to the contexts and references. The only exception was science fiction, in which the situation was exactly the opposite. After I read Strange Worlds! Strange Times!, I realised that a further exploration of Science Fiction from this part of the world was warranted. And that’s how I picked up this book. Though the title has ‘South Asian”, the entries are from only India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It’s a collection of 28 works – mostly prose, with some poetry, and many stories actually fall under the broader ambit of speculative fiction. As with other fiction, there was an immediate affinity for many of the contexts and references in this book too. While the premise in many were promising, I really liked only a handful. 

    Harishankar Parsai’s “Inspector Matadeen on the Moon”, translated by C.M. Naim, is satire on full throttle and takes some excellent digs on the police force, bureaucracy and attitudes of citizens. Anil Menon’s “Shit Flower” has wordplay in the title itself, and continues that trend all through the story. But set in a Mumbai of the future that has suddenly lost control of its “bowels”, it also has a wonderful take on life and memories, while taking jabs at organised faith. 

    Shovon Chowdhury’s “The Man who turned into Gandhi” imagines Gandhi in contemporary times and is packed with humour and irony. Tarun Saint, also the editor of the book, authors “A Visit to Partition World”, with the story set in a “Westworld” with a Partition theme. A very interesting idea that I think might actually happen at some point! Mirror-Rorrim by Clark Prasad is an exciting thriller with its protagonists trying to solve mysteries across both identity and time. And it has Star Trek references! Manjula Padmanabhan’s Flexi-time is an intriguing mix of “Arrival” and Indian idiosyncrasies. 

    “The Other Side” by Payal Dhar features a young girl who discovers family secrets in an authoritarian future. Aliens and railways collide in the racy 15004 by Sami Ahmad Khan. The inspiration for “The Last Tiger” is evident – “modelled on the Great Leader from the early 2000s”. A satirical tale on an unusual Republic Day event involving the last tiger. Rimi B Chatterjee’s “A night with the Joking Clown” has a cyberpunk feel to it but also has a view on genders and relationships. Vandana Singh’s “Reunion”, the last story in the book, introduced me to cli-fi (climate fiction!) and made me wonder if the scenario she describes is the future. 

    Overall, if you want to to get a sense of Science/Speculative fiction from this part of the world, give it a shot. 

  • Strange Worlds! Strange Times!

    (edited by) Vinayak Varma

    I think I’ll just gush, because this, I guess, is what the entire “kid in a candy store” feeling is like! But to begin with, I have to confess I didn’t read the first 20 pages! It was quite a coincidence that a book with this title mysteriously arrived without them. That meant that I missed the Manjula Padmanabhan story, and dove haphazardly into the Srinath Perur one. Jerry Pinto made me gaze up at the stars again with a delightfully profound take on “outer space and inner space” – a phrase that Vandana Singh uses in the last story in the book. 

    Zac O’Yeah manages to catch Bluru’s little idiosyncrasies superbly and had me cackling away for quite a while. And then Rashmi Ruth Devadasan does the same to Chennai (?) with a dose of zombies. Vinayak Varma, who needs to be thanked separately for stitching this all up together, does a neat border town story with sniper shots at saffron and creation! 

    And there’s a (translated) J.C Bose story. Oh yes, the very same, and a fascinating back story (actually stories) on how this work came to be. I have never been much into comics (though recently Kavalier & Clay did make me think deeply on the subject) but Sunando C’s few pages of work were fascinating! A walking Taj Mahal, and telekinesis – Indrapramit Das’ imagination is evident. Shalini Srinivasan gives us a dose of reality – a parallel one, that is. And to end it all, Vandana Singh writes a brilliant story involving dimensionality (I was reminded of Liu Cixin’s sophons) 

    What made me love the book was the sheer diversity of texture and context. All the stories have an equal grounding in some part/aspect of India as they do in science/speculative fiction. And it’s almost as if the writers have let themselves go at it in total abandon. Delightful and amazing indeed! 
    P.S. Loved it so much that I sent it to three unsuspecting folks! 

  • Trigger Warning

    Neil Gaiman

    “We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting. These are stories about those masks, and the people we are underneath them.” Thus reads the blurb on the back cover. It’s quite meta, because the book does have a dark theme – “Many of these stories end badly for at least one of the people in them. Consider yourself warned”- and I am reading this after Covid struck! The setting couldn’t have been worse, or better!

    The book has 24 stories (including the poems) and they are of different hues. Made richer because of the long introduction, which provides the context to a lot of these stories. There’s magic, science fiction, twisty fairy tales whose characters you almost know, and yes, ghost stories too! Gaiman also gives in to self-confessed trips of silliness – “And weep, like Alexander” is one such. His own fandom can be seen in a fantastic Sherlock Holmes story, a neat tribute to Ray Bradbury, a Doctor Who tale, and a surreal and profound one for David Bowie as well. There might be more that I might have missed because of a lack of context. Gaiman ends with a story with characters from American Gods. I probably wouldn’t have gotten that if I hadn’t watched the show, I need to buy that book! In addition, there are some clever formats too – A Calendar of Tales has a story for every month, each almost a different genre. Orange is another, a subject’s responses (no questions) to an investigator’s questionnaire.

    What’s common in all of these is the power of imagination, and Gaiman’s way with words. The class of a storyteller is his/her ability to transport the reader to a place and time far away, and Gaiman did that for me more than a dozen times in this book. Pick it up, I am sure you will find your own treasures.

  • The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

    Bill Watterson

    I remember saving up credit card reward points for a long time and finally being able to afford this – more than a decade ago. It had a pride of place in my bookshelf, but I never really read it, mostly because I used to read the strips online and in newspapers. During the Covid lockdown, books weren’t getting delivered. It was the perfect time to pick up an all-time favourite.
    The set consists of four books, each around 370 pages. I didn’t read them in one shot, and took a break after each book. The first book begins with an introduction to the life, thoughts, and philosophy of Bill Watterson. It’s an amazing story of belief, values, and perseverance. Some of it did remind me of Calvin’s Dad. 🙂

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  • Exhalation

    Before I start, I have to ask, when is the next collection coming out? Can’t. Wait. I read “Stories of Your Life and Others” about 2.5 years ago, and was blown not just by the quality of the stories, but by the sheer range of subjects from physics and mathematics to language and theism, not to mention artificial intelligence. Exhalation has nine stories, and each of them is a work of art.

    I tried to deconstruct Ted Chiang’s magic, and for me, it came down to three aspects – the imagination to think up the most original and profound questions, the skill to weave it into scenarios that make it relatable and accessible to the reader, and the ability to articulate his perspectives in such a way that one is forced to engage with them and construct one’s own thought exercises!

    “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is Arabian Nights in terms of setting as well as nested storytelling but beneath all that is a dizzying tale of time travel that questions whether one can really change the past. “Exhalation”, after which the book is named, has an alien setting but with a dash of steampunk and robotics. The core of it though is what makes it profound – entropy and its inevitable conclusion. “What’s expected of us” is the first of the stories that deal with free will, and goes directly into the heart of it, with a first person narrative of one’s reaction when confronted with immutable proof that it doesn’t exist! The Lifecycle of Software Objects is an excellent take on artificial intelligence, with clear parallels to parenting, and the underlying thought that “experience is algorithmically incompressible”and that the “common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world” cannot be achieved by compiling heuristics. The parenting theme continues in “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny”, but in a different direction, definitely sadder.

    “The truth of fact, the truth of feeling” is simply brilliant, and has two stories that show the parallels when there is a fundamental shift in technology, both around memory. If I really had to choose, this one would be my favourite. The Great Silence is a poignant juxtaposition and a sharp commentary on what we’re missing out on by rampaging through other species. Omphalos is a very interesting take on creationism, and a contemplation of how it would be if humanity were really the reason for the universe, and were literally too, at the centre of it. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” is the last story, and probably the most imaginative. It mixes parallel universes and free will, and delves into the meaning of the latter when many parallel “branches” (emanating from a decision) are playing out.

    No story is the same, or even similar. When I read some authors, I think to myself that if one really had to write, then this should be the benchmark. In speculative fiction – my favourite genre, Ted Chiang is that author!