Live data from Hacker News

The history of Indian science fiction

altermag.com

41–44 of 44 posts

Re: The history of Indian science fiction

#42
post #41
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it's the first article of this magazine. I'd be excited to see what else they work on but I don't see any links to an rss feed :(

Hi @culi, Quick update, our RSS feed is now live :3 Subscribe here: https://altermag.com/rss.xml

Wow, that's awesome! Thanks for getting back on this and thanks for the awesome work

Re: The history of Indian science fiction

#43
post #9

"the sultana's dream" is online, and well worth a read: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream....

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 could actually happen, and we could make it happen".

Fertile ground for all sorts of literary imagination.

Re: The history of Indian science fiction

#44
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.

Post reply on HN