In the foreword to Between Worlds, The IF Anthology of New Indian SFF VOL 1, editor Gautam Bhatia connects readers to the history of science fiction and fantasy in India, beginning 1883. Muhammad Husain Jah, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Rahul Sankrityayan wrote SFF in Urdu, Bengali, English and Hindi, usually in response to contemporary events. Bhatia also mentions that the anthology opted to go with a peer-review format for its submissions instead of the usual commission-based one. As a result, this volume has a mix of stories by known authors and new ones.
The opening story, The Last Projectionist by Ajay Patri sets the bar high. It presents documentary-style testimonials by those affected by the shelving of a biopic, presumably of the last projectionist — an actual job in the film industry. Both speculative and historical angles are added by introducing projection as an interrogation tool post the Mutiny of 1857. Once a process to tap into people’s brains to identify conspirators, it paved the way for the strong-willed Jayalakshmi, who embraced it as an art form “by which a person manifested their thoughts, the ideas that they were imagining, upon an external medium.” However, she refuses to be recorded or photographed, which becomes a point of contention.
In Muniyamma, the memory of a midwife is transferred into a robot, “four feet tall, chrome-layered, like a metal dustbin” with “hands like steel spanners and titanium sockets for eyes”, who continues to deliver babies amidst straining authoritarian rule on another planet. Author Prashanth Srivatsa poetic prose beautifully captures the relationship people have with their land, still often an active subject of exploration in Indian fiction in translation and in stories from the North-Eastern states.
In Suchitra Sukumar’s A Rough-Edged Confection, a defiant middle-aged woman comes into her own post-menopause, her voice merging with that of the goddess she prays to.
The anthology includes stories with endearing depictions of familial relationships. In Heartland, Anushree Nande’s protagonist, who has the power to walk into people’s memories, accidentally finds the location of her birth parents’ home. At their doorstep, she is puzzled to know that they have no memory of her. In a moving section, the character describes the heartbreak she experiences as she comes to terms with her power. Heartland also stands out for its depiction of the friendships of early childhood when kids are more curious about peculiarities than threatened by them.
Sobhita Narayan’s Of Holo Maa, Without Maa shows siblings born two decades apart coming to terms with the death of their mother. Their father brings out the HOLOMAI their mother had signed that transferred her memories. It’s a story of distrust and closure, rather beautifully explored.
In Srividya’s Tomorrow’s Ancestors, the intersection of caste and class is explored through time travel in Chennai. The story raises concerns like the dignity of workers, and establishes that, as social change takes place over generations, equality might actually be achievable in the future.
In CMD: Reset by Purnima Bala, a mother refuses to become a cyborg, and in Priyamvadha Shivaji’s Sudden Showers, a conflict within a small community disappears.
Shubham Mamgain’s Dilli, Circa 50 NE, explores political protest and the subversion of power in a city where it’s impossible to step out during the day. Elements such as brightoleum jelly, parantha-flavoured phylum pouches, frappe-flavoured cockroach milk, and mosquito crackers suggest that the author had fun writing the story, inviting the reader to wonder, for better or worse?
In We Are All Mayflies, Amal Singh imagines a civilisation on a moon where inhabitants die by starcurse at the age of 42. In navigating the politics of medicine, the author creates a love story to root for, one with joy, poems, death, and heartbreak.
The anthology ends with LA Nolan’s novelette, Luna Hortus, where an intergalactic detective finds himself pulled to a case while on holiday and visiting his sister. Here, the pace grabs the reader’s attention even if the plot is somewhat predictable.
Taken together, these stories explore both inner turmoil and the possibly fantastic scientific advancements of the future. Though the volume doesn’t expressly follow a particular theme, memory often pops up and sets the scene: memories of a lost home, memories of parents that cannot be recovered, or that of an AI turning into a sentient being, among other such scenarios. There’s a sense of playing with the limits and fractures of memory, and of bringing the past and the future together in the process.
The enduring effects of colonialism has meant that Indian readers are often more acquainted with canonical English science fiction and fantasy texts and quite ignorant of works in the same genre from the subcontinent. However, the last half decade has seen a spurt in the number of Indian SFF novels being published. The scene looks especially promising with the appearance of anthologies such as this one by India’s first English imprint dedicated to the genre.
If there’s one complaint with this volume it is the absence of short author biographies. Hopefully, this will be set right in subsequent volumes that will perhaps explore styles and themes in stories that both merge with the established canon and pave the way for a new one.
Akankshya Abismruta is an independent writer.
