sábado, 29 de junio de 2019

Tales of Future Past | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Tales of Future Past | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Pratik Kanjilal |Published: June 29, 2019 12:07:12 am

Tales of Future Past

Two ambitious, engaging anthologies that navigate the best that Indian science fiction has to offer

books, hg wells, george orwell, dystopia, authors, science fiction, science fiction books, The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, strange worlds strange times, book reviews, indian express news
Artwork for a 1906 edition of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corréa


HISTORIANS STUDY the past because it illuminates the present, and writers of science fiction examine the future for precisely the same reason – it is a glass in which we see ourselves more clearly, with the benefit of foresight. But until very recent times, science fiction has flourished sporadically in India, not as a genre. Perhaps it’s because the ancients had exhausted the possibilities of the collective unconscious, and readers are satisfied with the classics in new formats, like comic books and animation films. Or perhaps because here, contemporary truth is stranger than fiction. In India, 1984 does not only recall George Orwell. As Tarun K Saint notes, the year was a real, lived-in dystopia featuring insurgency, the slaying of a prime minister, a pogrom and Bhopal’s industrial disaster.

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