A trip to his ancestral home in his early teens was what led Abhijit Bhattacharya to discover his aunt’s collection of Isaac Asimov books and begin his fascinating encounter with science-fiction. In later years, he ran into other sci-fi enthusiasts through book clubs and chance encounters at bookstores, sometimes exchanging recommendations. “There are a large number of sci-fi enthusiasts across Bengaluru, and I’ve met many at bookstores that still have a dedicated sci-fi section. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find books at brick-and-mortar stores in India. I’ve had to order books from online retailers more often,” he says.
Prateeksha Satyamoorthy, a software engineer, attended a few different literary meet-ups in Bengaluru before deciding she wanted to attend a sci-fi themed one to discuss the topics she loved. When she did not find any, she went ahead and set up one herself. “The first meet-up happened in September last year, and we have since had regular meet-ups once a month for film screenings and book discussions,” says Prateeksha. The group, now known as the Bangalore Sci-Fi Club, is working to promote the genre in India through screenings, storytelling sessions, cosplay, and workshops for adults and children.
“The sci-fi scene in India is almost non-existent,” says Abhijit. “While we have a lot of authors writing stories from an Indian perspective, we don’t see many sci-fi stories from the same perspective.” This dearth of sci-fi material from India is something the group is working to change, with it set to bring out an anthology of sci-fi short stories in the near future.
“I was attending Write Club (a weekly writing club), and saw they were making anthologies, and wondered why shouldn’t there be a sci-fi anthology. I asked people who were interested in writing, and most of them had already written a few sci-fi stories themselves. The stories in our anthology deal with love, time travel, wormholes, propaganda and more.”
One of the contributors to the anthology, Karthik Lakshminarayanan, a manager with a strategy consulting firm, believes India still has a long way to go on the sci-fi front. “The genre has developed in pockets. We had Sujatha Rangarajan in Tamil and a few of Satyajit Ray's works in Bengali but we are yet to see much in English. Maybe one day we will see someone do for sci-fi what authors like Chetan Bhagat and Amish have done in other genres,” he says.
While books have been a dominating force in the genre, all three acknowledge that there is a lot to be explored when it comes to sci-fi. “There are very few proper sci-fi movies out there, except ones like Gattaca or Minority Report. Of course, there are a lot of good games with a science fiction setting such as the Mass Effect or Deus Ex series,” says Abhijit.
While the size of the online community they have created is just shy of a hundred people, Prateeksha believes that there are many more out there. “Karthik is the published author among us, but while others haven't published work, they write a lot. Many sci-fi enthusiasts are hiding, or don't know where to find others. US, China and Japan are better that way.”
The sci-fi club hopes that their efforts will provide a boost to the genre in India, as it is a genre that has much to offer. “I feel sci-fi has a larger role to play in society. It exposes the tremendous power science and technology can bring, and shows the events and consequences of that power being wielded in various ways,” says Prateeksha, to which Abhijit adds, “It is primarily a story about people with hypothetical technology. The laser guns and spaceships aren't needed for a good science fiction story. There's much more to science-fiction.”
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Sci-fi Starter
Books
Foundation series - Isaac Asimov
Works by John Scalzi and Douglas Adams
Movies and TV
Minority Report, Interstellar, Gattaca, Star Trek, The Machine
Anime
Cowboy Bebop, Denou Coil, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost In The Shell, Akira, Neuromancer
Video Games
Mass Effect and, Deus Ex series</infobox>
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