Thanks for the link! I read it earlier today and, wow, she was hard sci-fi, as of the early 1900s. I want to call out two things (water harvesting, energy use), but further details will be spoilers.
I reckon she also presaged some of the demographic / cultural re-workings we are experiencing in the 21st century. Hers was a time of radical social reform and political turmoil in the Indian subcontinent, as well as the world. I suppose many urban intellectuals as well as revolutionaries in the hinterland felt a palpable sense of "hang on, this <insert huge transformation> could actually happen, and we could make it happen".
Fertile ground for all sorts of literary imagination.
Added all of these to my Goodreads -- as an Indian, I had no idea that these books existed. Great article (with some really cool UI choices); I'm looking forward to reading more from this magazine! Thanks for sharing.
Ditto... several titles they listed were alien to me! And I had no idea about Rokeya.
Alas, these will have to wait a bit until my next book-funding cycle... I accidentally overdid some Diwali discount book shopping and have a slushpile of about forty scifi titles to work through, and a fiscal deficit to repair :sweat-smile: :D
That said, my extant slushpile has Sci-Fi by contemporary Indian / Indian-origin authors...
Lavanya Lakshminarayan's Interstellar Megachef (next up in the reading Q, along with the Strugatsky brothers).
And SB Divya's books:
Read and enjoyed and will recommend:
- Meru (very cool embodiment of beings, mythologically-inspired)
To-read:
- Loka
- Machinehood
- Contingency plans for the apocalypse
The articles references articles she has written on science fiction, but if one is interested in SFF more broadly, Monidipa "Mimi" Mondal is India's first Hugo nominee, as he co-editor of Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler, an anthology of letters and essays. This won a Locus award.
Her fantasy novella, "His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light" was nominated for a Nebula. She also contributed a DnD adventure to "Journeys through the Radiant Citadel"
She is also read well in Bangladesh because she wrote primarily in Bengali. Infact she was well versed in quite a few languages. Her Sultana's Dream is a little over the top though
That's true. Bose is also the source of Marconi's radio component and he developed junction based electronics way before it's time. Bose was quite fiercely anti-patent. Marconi patented the coherer in his name.
It is only recently that Bose's contributions in radio and electronics are being acknowledged (colonialism doing what it does) although these were quite well known in Bengal.
I can second the article's recommendation of Samit Basu, I've liked everything of his I've read. I would also recommend Indra Das, and Saad Z. Hossain.
A surprisingly missing entry is Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh. It's oddly good, and is very unique.
The writer talks at length about Bengali SciFi, but misses Ghana Da! The novels and stories are really enjoyable mixture of SF and pulp. Two collections are there in Eglish: The adventures of Ghanada, and Mosquito and Other stories. They are by the author Premendra Mitra/Mitter.
Probably worth drawing this thread's attention to the debate over whether ancient Hindu texts mention nuclear weapons and atomic war. Up to the beholder whether that makes those texts sci-fi or not, I guess.
Every great culture, over the millennia has imagined great weapons and unlimited godlike destructive power. You could, as you are doing now, retrofit our narrative on any of those if you wish. Make your own sci-fi fantasy. Those texts are not.
It's true that ancient Indians had some interesting insights into astronomy and natural sciences (recognizing the heliocentricity as early as the aitareya BrAhmaNa, and some ideas about electricity) and have some evidence about Indo-Aryan warfare being evolved with variety of weapons.
But it would sound like boomer uncles to claim that there is mention of space travel or nuclear weapons in our epics. The astra-s are simply figments of imagination.
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