From aliens attacking India, immortals and supernatural detectives to a reality-altering child, and a distraught mother in a near-future dystopia, they’re all in here.
A book for robots who question their programming, Autonomous is an intelligent thriller with patent pirates, biohackers, sentient robots and questions about freedom, free will, and gender.
A brief history of Stephen Hawking and his love of sci-fi & pop culture including the one bit of his work he wished science fiction writers would use (they haven’t, yet).
The findings of the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for alarming reading. Can climate-fiction help reverse some climate change?
Science fiction can be inspiring— even if it is increasingly turning dystopian. A city like Bangalore– at the epicentre of India’s tech boom, with the power to shape the country’s future– could surely use more direction from sci-fi.
Missing good space opera? Intergalactic adventures, interstellar intrigue, ancient aliens, sentient spaceships and space battles in a fun, fulfilling book? Here’s a good read that’ll scratch that itch.
In which we talk about his award-winning Numbercaste, big data, credit scores, Sri Lankan sci-fi, Commonwealth Empire, his alternative history trilogy, ‘crafting one’s own Iron Throne’, and more.
An overview of Infomocracy, the sci-fi political thriller about the future of democracy in an age of Information; with an exclusive Q&A with its author, Malka Older.
The list of books I’d recommend to someone who wants to start reading sci-fi has now ben updated, with this tale from a master storyteller telling a different kind of sci-fi story.
Revisiting Frank Herbert’s seminal – and enjoyable – must-read epic of political intrigue, human emotions, ecology, imperialism, mysticism, messianic deliverance, and more. Soon to be a Denis Villeneuve film.
It isn’t Seth MacFarlane setting Family Guy in space, but something better. A spoof or a parody it’s not. And if you haven’t seen it, here’s a discovery you may come to enjoy. Here’s why.
One part near-future scifi in a post-internet world, one part locked-room murder mystery, and two parts fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller, with a dash of Hammett.
It’s not often that the Nobel Prize in Physics makes waves among sci-fi fans and movie buffs. It happened this year with Kip Thorne along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish winning the prize.
The complete saga of hope, duplicity and frustration in one place — featuring Arthur C Clarke, Mike Wilson, Peter Sellers, Marlon Brando, Steven Spielberg, E.T., and others.
While its influence on Star Wars may be unacknowledged, it’s one of the most influential sci-fi comic series ever, and with a Luc Besson movie coming up, it’s time to catch up on Valérian and Laureline.
‘Redshirts’ a fine spoof, a loving tribute to the genre. It’s a meta-fictional reinterpretation of TOS. And you can read it even if you’re not a Star Trek fan.
The reasons Comic Con Bangalore or the Indian comic book industry have not grown have nothing to do with the organisers and everything to do with us, the ‘comics’ fans.
Do robots have feelings? Can a machine be ‘exploited’? What happens when androids become more ‘human’ and people less so? Get ready for a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness, the evolution of sin, and 50 shades of humanity
Scientist. World-renowned astrophysicist. Winner of the Sahitya Akademi award. Tireless populariser of science. And an immensely talented writer of science fiction.
Prescient. Drug-addled. Prolific. Five times married. PKD was all of this. But never rich, never mainstream, never acknowledged as a serious writer while he lived, despite his massive contribution to our culture.
Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the macabre and horror writer extraordinaire as also the progenitor of the modern detective story. But his contributions to science fiction are not very well known.
Action & adventure in an alternate world, and yes, giant robots mark this coming-of-age tale as Peter Tieryas returns to the world of the United States of Japan.
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories – published in India by Zubaan Books – cements Vandana Singh’s status as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary literature, SF or otherwise.
For a book admired by H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf & Jorge Luis Borges, one that influenced Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Bruce Sterling, and which first spoke of Dyson Spheres, Star Maker remains relatively unknown.
An overview of a book for anyone interested in the idea of Time and Time Travel – James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History, a book that’s bigger on the inside.
Hailed by Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison et al, Hitler’s science-fantasy book is only available thanks to Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, which comes with a scholarly afterword by NYU’s Homer Whipple.
From Bengal and Maharashtra, to Karnataka, Assam, and Tamil Nadu, a brief overview of Indian scientists and their contribution to science fiction literature.
From calling Google the devil, breaking down Amazon’s BS machine, and the time she ‘tricked’ Playboy and bought a Volkswagen bus, to the time refused to blurb a sci-fi anthology, four times Ursula Le Guin showed us what she’s made of.
Communicating science via fiction and art, Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne – a rock star in his own right – continues to make waves with his work, well after his ‘retirement’.
From sparking Tim Berners-Lee’s first ideas about the Web, to helping sci-fi going mainstream, a lot can be traced back to the seminal pages of Playboy.
With data rajas, AIs, robots, gods, water wars, nutes, Krishna Cops and divided into a dozen semi-independent states, it’s a familiar-yet-modern India, a hundred years after independence.
‘And Brahma said: Let us defrag.’ Further speculations on the Ramayana by way of speculative and science fiction in one rollercoaster of an anthology, Breaking the Bow.
