WHY DON’T YOU THINK ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION WHEN YOU HEAR  SOUTH ASIA?

One of the phrases stuck in my mind is: “We don’t expect Afghan women to write science fiction.” The quote by Elif Shafak—from an article discussing the problems faced by women writers in the 21st century—lays bare one of the thoughts we may not have had consciously. If the combination of South Asia and science fiction seems unusual, it indicates a particular way of thinking.

I myself have never been keen on science fiction. Even before trying it, I held the perception that the human element would be largely absent. I want to think this perception came from bad experiences with exams or science courses, but I’m not entirely sure why I was so averse to it. What surprised me, however, was when I did open up to it, I realized I had already read and watched works firmly rooted within the science fiction genre all my life.

It was only in the pandemic with an exhaustion toward shows and movies I had seen too much of that I tried the 2020 film Palm Springs. Labeled a science fiction romantic comedy, the film tells the story of two people stuck in a time loop, re-living the day of a wedding they’re both unwillingly attending. Set in a familiar place with a familiar plot, I eased in and gave the story a chance.

I point this out, not for those willing to or who have already given a chance to science fiction, but for those still reluctant to attempt it. Because of the many peculiarities that many readers have, mine has always been the need for a place that looks like Earth—and specifically, the parts of Earth that many people can also inhabit.

This new realization—that the genre need not be restricted to outer space, the deep sea, or the cavernous interiors of a volcano—made me reconsider a lot of the media I had already consumed that I didn’t think of as science fiction. Karishma Ka Karishma (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Sultana’s Dream (1905), stories by Satyajit Ray and Professor Jafar Iqbal that have come to be true staples of Bengal text. The shock then of noticing the massive gap in my thinking.

Digging deeper into this, I stumbled across whole books on science fiction and imperialism, and even science fiction in Asia and Africa. In The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014), seminal analyst of the field John Rieder writes, “At no point in the history of SF is colonialism not yet or no longer relevant, and there is no point on the earth that has not been affected by it.”

It wasn’t until I read some of these books that I recognized how I completely failed to clock Koi… Mil Gaya (2003) as science fiction, even as the blue-skinned Jadoo has reemerged in memes recently. I similarly misidentified Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome (1995)—heavily focused on the life of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ronald Ross—as just South Asian fiction, which of course meant it was not science fiction. This perception had formed from the blurbs because I hadn’t read the book. My mind filled in the gaps, and it had done so in the slick manner that is possible when no challenge has been brought to a line of thought.

Sci-fi texts, along with interest in sci-fi texts, have long existed in this subcontinent. In the late 1960s, Satyajit Ray launched the SF Cine Club, made up of science fiction enthusiasts. Though it lasted for only 3 years, the interest in the club was undeniable. It was able to garner the attention of Indira Gandhi, Dr. Zakir Husain, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and even Walt Disney. That three Bangali sci-fi magazines existed—Ashchorjo, Bishmoy, and Fantastic—is further proof that sci-fi is neither new nor foreign to South Asia.

We have all already consumed South Asian sci-fi in some shape or form, and we have also consumed the myriad ways that colonial ideas about non-Western and Western countries continue to persist—a key one being that technological progress and innovation belongs in the West.

︎

Escapism is often listed by readers as a central feature of fiction—but it was never one for me. I found it fun looking into the external factors of the work’s production and finding parallels with the sociopolitical conditions of the modern world, regardless of what text I was reading. I got to traverse multiple centuries and continents because of my English Literature degree. But in the last year, a thought came, that I was escaping in text in my own ways—through English texts.

My avoidance with many Bangladeshi texts has many reasons, some of which I was aware of, and some I wasn’t ready to confront. The reality that “Bangladeshi” is to many a neat category to place a whole person in—regardless of who they are—is a common, unpleasant experience for virtually everyone finding themselves in a foreign land. It is why I feel that Bangladeshi writers in Bangladesh are able to have a more diverse range than many immigrant Bangladeshi writers, or writers of Bangladeshi descent; for the sole matter of living in a place where one is not the norm—a harrowing everyday experience that shapes the world the writer subsequently writes in.

I think in many ways the fear of this categorization should reach a global audience. For me, the anxieties of misrepresenting or doing injustice to a place that might get negative attention because the text would be in English, felt suffocating. Toying with genres like magical realism or the idea of using a pseudonym to avoid responsibility are thoughts I have had but could never go through with; for the first it was the feeling of not being skilled enough and for the second, a desire to run away should there be trouble.

Even more bizarre, the idea of writing speculative fiction, of which science fiction is an undeniable part, did not come to me. Would it not still be true and relatable to a Bangladeshi or foreign audience if I constructed a world with many of the same rules but altered beyond easy recognition? Isn’t all fiction unreal but still speaking to feelings actually felt?

The strangeness then, of realizing: how vital science fiction could be for imagining better futures in a world beset by globalization, neo-imperialism, and continuing settler colonialism. My own limited view of what science fiction could entail had prevented me from looking at the many avenues through which more stories could come, something I failed to notice even as I complained of the sameness of the stories I was reading.

^{︎Invitation cards for Sci-Fi Cine Club, designed by Satyajit Ray, 1968 // PHOTO: HarperCollins India}

The idea of science fiction bearing no semblance to the real world ought to be challenged. One of the most famous science fiction writers, whose work has seen renewed interest following Trump’s presidency, has been Octavia Butler. Her work is a stark example of the ways in which the genre can be levied to critique the modern world, from systemic discrimination to the destruction of the environment.

Written in 1980, her article “The Lost Races of Science Fiction” speaks of an incident 14 years prior, when a teacher in a creative writing class advised a student against using a black character in his story—as it would shift the focus. The implication, of course, is that the mere inclusion of a black character alters the very nature of the story and makes it “about race.”

Mimi Mondal, a Dalit Bangali Indian woman, and no stranger to the works of Octavia Butler, said something that very aptly explains the relevance of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF), “In some ways all SFF is an act of negotiating the “other”—placing the human against the unknown and the uncanny.”

In the same interview, Mondal talked about the group Sad Puppies, a right-wing hate group with the stated aim of battling “wokeness” in the Hugo Awards. The group, linked with Milo Yiannopoulos, is centered around agitations largely against the greater inclusivity of writers from different backgrounds. The interview ends with Mondal stating that a number of SFF writers have retired because they feared for safety.

This is yet another example of how the status quo is being forcefully maintained and how writers of color remain in the periphery. It reinforces stereotypes that have existed from the time of the British Empire. Needing to forge an identity that justified its domination of different cultures, one of the ideas propagated was that the West was materialistic and the East was spiritual. Over time, as the effects of the deracination became rooted in the psyches of the colonized, many found pride in this binaristic categorization. In light of this, the point that needs to be made is that the very writing of science fiction can be a transgressive act when written by a South Asian, writing for an international audience without being treated as an anthropological source.

With the case of Bangladesh specifically, this issue is more severe as Bangladeshi writing in English is still in its nascent stage. However, as can be seen from the previous authors mentioned, promising science fiction texts have come from the subcontinent and will continue to come from the subcontinent. A look at the contents of the aforementioned Oxford handbook makes it clear just how broad science fiction can be, and I managed to list a string of everyday things that I hadn’t previously considered to be science fiction:

Fruits that have been adulterated enough to be a public health issue, cows genetically modified, capsized ferries revealing underwater bases, medical treatments allowing couples to only have boys, skin lightening treatments with horrid side effects, plots to steal water from organizations, unmitigated pandemics that arise from mismanagement, gas extractions by MNCs gone wrong, vehicles designed to travel on both land and water, government surveillance, cyborg police forces, technology that allows border crossings without being noticed. These are just a handful of science fiction tropes existing within Bangladesh.

While scrolling Instagram today, I came across a story on a Japanese bakery that seemed equally fantastical. A bakery—needing a device that could identify by sight their many different bakery goods without human intervention—finally got the technology they needed. A doctor, noticing the ad for this, realized that the same technology could be used for cancer cells detection. The makers of the original technology, BRAIN CO., LTD, have now created a model for detecting cancerous cells called Cyto-AiSCAN.

To see SF as a realm for only science enthusiasts when we are living proof of how life-altering technology can be, means that not only are we losing a chance to imagine better worlds, but we are losing the chance of gaining deeper insight into worlds where persisting customs and co-ordinated attempts to emotionally mobilize populations has desensitized us to what is horrifying.

We have by now become familiar with the Arundhati Roy turn of phrase, “The pandemic is a portal.” I would borrow from that and say technologies offer different avenues. When we come out on the other side, through a portal or otherwise, we still remain human. It is the same with technological innovations; we remain humans, albeit altered ones. And science fiction is one of the vital vehicles for understanding what it means to be on these new roads.

AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO