National newsmagazine, people. Walls, writing on . See, now we actually exist.

The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers, Sarnath Banerjee

(more launches coming up in various cities, so visit Sarnath’s site often. I’ll probably be there at the Cal launch, cheering and whistling)
Also, get this.

The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense, ed. Michael Heyman, Anushka Ravishankar

(Much love to Mike, Nonsense Ph.D. and general genial genius, The Society for the Prevention of Sense and Anushka. Go read now, it’s wonderful, and they’ve done an incredible amount of work collecting nonsense from all around this very nonsensical country)

And while you’re at it, this.

Chowringhee, Shankar, trans. Arunava Sinha

(Translated by Bultu, a gentlemen the TOI recently called an internet product and an effortless reproducer. To make him happy, start several blogs at ibibo and make pots of money)

And this.

Crush, Annie Zaidi

(Join the Annie’s Ardent Admirers Association, of which I am a proud member. Contact me for memberships at discounted rates)

Watchoo waiting fer? Go!

Thousands of years ago, flying saucers, death-rays, hideous alien monsters and incredible machines were captured by Indian writers in tales of wonder and imagination, massive epics that still enthrall the world. India is a country crawling with legends, folk-tales, mysteries, horrors and supreme strangeness, which should have rendered Indians strongly culturally geared towards a fondness for fantasy and science fiction. It is surprising, to say the least, that even with these resources at our disposal a nation as culturally predisposed to the fantastic as we are should have produced a contemporary speculative fiction genre that is marginal at best, at least in literary terms, especially since the speculative works of authors like Salman Rushdie and the Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Amitav Ghosh are firmly excluded from the murky depths of genre.
Market conditions and literary prejudices are held largely responsible for the lack of a strong tradition in the field of speculative fiction especially in English, but the future definitely looks bright. We’ve seen an increasing number of speculative fiction works across media over the last few years, and a slow trickle of fantasy and science fiction manuscripts has slowly begun to weigh down desks in Indian publishing houses . This project will discuss future roads down which Indian writers seeking to produce successful speculative fiction might do well to tread if we are to have a body of work in the field that matches western sci-fi and fantasy in quality and richness, while simultaneously possessing a strong and distinct Indian/South Asian identity – new themes, new ideas, new colours in the already bewildering palette of spec-fic. We’ll be discussing not just the literary aspect of things, but the practicalities as well – markets, publishing, access, publicity.

The Trousers of Time, as tailored by Terry Pratchett, are where possible futures are divided, and right now there’s no way of knowing which leg Indian speculative fiction will be hurtling down. I’ve been writing fantasy for four years now, and I for one don’t know at all. This project is, in many ways, a speculative work in itself, and is by no means finished at this point – how could it be, when the genre it discusses is just getting started? Consider this a first draft. I’ll be putting up more material from time to time, and you should add corrections, suggestions, comments and developments as the future becomes clearer, threads fray and tear, and seams bulge all over the place.

Before we get into this, though, there are several people to thank: The good people at Sarai-CSDS, who gave me one of their Independent Fellowships to do this, and the writers, critics and editors who contributed so generously to it.

Essays:
IWE and genre
The Indian superhero
The South Asian diaspora and speculative fiction
Indian children’s literature and speculative fiction
Comics, graphic novels and Indian spec-fic

Interviews:
Anil Menon
Ashok Banker
Cheryl Morgan
Gotham Chopra
Jai Arjun Singh
Jaya Bhattacharji
Jeff VanderMeer
Manjula Padmanabhan
Mary Anne Mohanraj
Matthew Cheney
Payal Dhar
Rana Dasgupta
Sarnath Banerjee
Thomas Abraham
Vandana Singh
Zoran Zivkovic

Remember, books are people too. It’s fairly clear that questions
related to literary taxonomy are primarily questions for booksellers
and critics, not readers or writers. On the other hand, these are
questions writers at least might consider being aware of, because they
play a very real role in determining their means of earning a
livelihood – which, while obviously not the objective of writing in
itself, is something a lot of writers would enjoy being able to do.
While struggling to get my own work published, I’ve learnt that
writing, while remaining the only meaningful experience in the entire
publishing process, is merely a stage of the entire quest, and in that
light, it’s been rewarding discussing some rather non-writerly
questions with other writers as well as publishers and critics.

Some of this project springs from personal frustration; the division
of books into categories that aren’t immediately obvious (non-fiction,
for example, is completely inoffensive) has always disappointed me as
a reader, and as a writer, simply because nearly all my favourite
books, like my favourite people, are multi-dimensional; they defy
definition, they grumble greatly when categorized. My own work is
found in shelves marked, depending on the speculations of bookstore
managers, Indian writing, SF/fantasy, children’s literature and once,
memorably, cookery. Literary borders are as difficult to draw as
political ones, though their creation fortunately involves less
bloodshed. That said, the social sciences of the literary world are
both fascinating and relevant, and their flaws, such as artificial
segmentation and aggregation, are the same as those of any process
that seeks to study heterogeneous objects as a mass.

This set of essays, however, is fundamentally flawed on many levels -
it is about a nascent, hard-to-define sub-section of literature, the
as-yet-mostly-nonexistent sub-genre of Indian speculative fiction in
English, which is itself a bastard child of two parents who, not
being dead, are difficult to analyze as they are not only infinitely
complex at any point, but, to complicate things further, change all
the time as well. However, since we’re dealing mostly with science
fiction and fantasy here, I’ll hope I can be forgiven for looking into
the future, and for making what might turn out to be wild, fantastical
claims.

What is Indian/South Asian literature in English? Even if we get past
the tricky question of origin, which has obsessed scholars since the
term came into being, and include the non-resident and the genetically
partially South Asian, in recent years the growing diversity in South
Asian English literature should lead to more questions – having
overcome the ‘South Asian’ part of the question by being
all-inclusive, how do we now define ‘literature’? Do we include comics
and graphic novels, speculative fiction, thrillers, chick-lit, campus
novels and crime fiction, all of which have reared their heads in
India over the last decade? This should prove a lot more difficult for
the sagacious and scholarly to do, given that literary snobbery is far
more acceptable than racism – and that Indian-origin writers abroad
might have very thin connections with India, but large advances and
literary awards add a great deal of density to the study of the field
– build its brand, in other words, however gut-shrinking that might
sound, while diversity in the form of new, not necessarily mainstream
writing increases the number of spices in the curry, but, in the eyes
of many not-so-neutral observers, does not necessarily add to its
taste.

The term ‘speculative fiction‘ is another puzzler. It’s a beast that’s
known by many names – weird fiction, SFF, literature of the
imagination – literature that in some way transcends the real, though
it’s nearly always a mirror image of the real, with certain upgrades.
Speculative fiction, spec-fic to friends, is essentially an umbrella,
a bar where a number of disgruntled genres come to hang out, its
leading patrons being fantasy, science fiction, horror and alternative
history. It’s claimed by the bartenders that magic realism is also a
customer, though one suspects magic realism, a frequent invitee at
literary wine-and-cheese soirees, would deny this if asked. The term
is often attributed to Robert A Heinlein, who used it as a synonym for
science fiction in an essay in 1948. Whatever the genre includes, the
reason for the term’s existence is simply that books within the genre
are difficult to classify, and terms like spec-fic sound vaguely
impressive, are easier to explain than more bizarre concoctions like
magic realism, and also convey that these books aren’t Literature,
silence disgruntled writers complaining that their work isn’t ‘just’
SF or fantasy, and bring together a great many fascinating writers who
write about mind-bogglingly diverse things in mind-bogglingly
divergent styles, and allow everyone concerned to ignore these facts:
all (good) fiction is inherently speculative, all fiction involves
imagination, and escapism in literature depends on content, not
classification or theme.

In contemporary speculative fiction, one of the most frequently
discussed sub-genres is one that is in the process of being created –
the New Weird, a genre starring speculative fiction writers like Neil
Gaiman, M. John Harrison and China Mieville, who all work under the
speculative umbrella, but blend their tales with other literary genres
as well. This is something science fiction has in common with science
– the most exciting work takes place in the overlaps between fields,
when boundaries are diffused and maps are redrawn.

“Something is happening in the literature of the fantastic. A
slippage. A freeing-up. The quality is astounding. Notions are
sputtering and bleeding across internal and external boundaries.
Particularly in Britain, where we are being reviewed in the papers, of
all things, and selling copies, and being read and riffed off by yer
actual proper literary writers. We are writing books which cheerfully
ignore the boundaries between SF, fantasy and horror. Justina Robson,
M John Harrison, Steve Cockayne, Al Reynolds, Steph Swainston and too
many others to mention, despite all our differences, share something.
And our furniture has invaded their headspace. From outside the field,
writers like Toby Litt and David Mitchell use the trappings of SF with
a respect and facility that has long been missing in the clodhopping
condescension of the literati.”
-China Mieville, author of Perdido Street Station, The Scar, etc., in
a guest editorial in The Third Alternative 35

Of course, spec-fic and mainstream literature have often had
cross-border talks – think of the magic realism of Murakami, or
Rushdie, or Marquez, or the not-SF SF of Margaret Atwood. Some of the
most iconic writers of contemporary speculative fiction blend genres
frequently and with ease – consider the exuberant book-peopled
universe that is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, or Stephen King’s Dark
Tower series – in the last few years, Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan
Strange and Mr. Norrell was a successful marriage between speculative
fiction and the 19th-century English novel. And then, of course,
there’s the most successful writer in the world, J.K. Rowling, whose
blend of spec-fic and school stories have changed the world. Philip
Roth does alternative history; Bret Easton Ellis does horror. In a
sense, the term New Weird examines a phenomenon that’s not new at all,
in a literary world of which the most outstandingly weird aspect is
its compulsive need to segregate stories into categories in the first
place. Given that the term isn’t very old, most New Weird writers
probably aren’t even aware that they could be so described, because,
fortunately, no one wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Today I will
start a New Weird novel.’ Jeff Vandermeer, one of the New Weird’s
leading lights, describes it as ” an affliction visited upon many of
us involuntarily. Labels like that one are at this point simply a
marketing tool.”

“I always tell wannabe writers not to read too much in the field where
they work. Obviously you need to keep in touch, but a deep knowledge
of the Old West or world history stands you in better stead than a
shelf of other people’s fantasy books. Import, don’t recycle. That’s
actually wisdom, that is.”
– Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld books, in an interview at
www.scifi.com

This is something Indian/South Asian writers of spec-fic would do well
to absorb. While it is, of course, necessary to keep in touch with
contemporary spec-fic (for practical reasons, to make sure you’re not
reinventing the wheel, as well as for sheer reading pleasure) there’s
no particular reason to feel disheartened by the fact that the first
glimmering of a body of work that could be called Indian spec-fic in
English began to be available in India about seven decades after pulp
SF magazines became wildly popular in the US, not to mention about a
century after Bengali SF became popular and a few millenia after the
Indian epics spoke of flying chariots, amazing weaponry and other
worlds – there’s still a lot that Indian spec-fic could give the
genre, though there is also a lot of catching up to do. The sheer
richness of India as a spec-fic source material resource – not just in
terms of myth and folklore and history, but in contemporary politics,
the arts, entertainment and social trends, and in the completely
absorbing story of India as a growing, rapidly evolving nation – calls
out for imaginative speculative treatment. And typically, this
resource has already been mined by Western writers in search of
something exotic to offer saturated Western SF markets.

This is not to suggest even for a moment, of course, that Indian
writers should see themselves in anyway constrained to write only
About India, since that might be damaging for their own writing, and
might only reinforce stereotypes already present in the publishing
world – the last thing Indian writers like being reduced to is writers
whose only possible role could be Explaining India. At the same time,
there’s obviously nothing wrong with Indians writing about India and
things Indian if that’s the space in which the writing is naturally,
organically set, and there are several Indian stories that survive,
indeed, thrive on, constant retelling. And there are still a number of
brilliant spec-fic novels just waiting to be written that are, in
various senses, Indian, and if Indian writers don’t write them, others
will. The process has already begun.

Even if we set aside the existence of India’s wealth in natural
resources as far as spec-fic is concerned, the sparsity of finished
Indian spec-fic is all the more remarkable given the abundance and
immense popularity of Indian writing in English. Of course, the
absence of Indian spec-fic books on bookshelves worldwide does not
mean these books aren’t being written – it just means they aren’t
being distributed even if they are being published. Spec-fic and
literary publishing are mostly segregated (another reason for
genre/mainstream borders) and the remarkable success of Indians in one
field is in no sense a source of increased attention for Indian
writers in the other. Besides, the literati aren’t the only with silly
prejudices in the publishing world; the SFF publishing space has its
own problems, the most blinding one being that readers of spec-fic,
especially in the US, are presumed to be looking for the familiar
unfamiliar – bug-eyed aliens, even more Tolkienspawn, more simplistic
George Lucas clones – that spec-fic, far from being literature that
explores new territory, boldly going where no books have gone before,
is as much literary comfort food as, say, most mass-produced
contemporary chick-lit. As publishers search for the familiar, much of
what is new and exciting but unfamiliar fails to break through the
crystal ceiling. Familiar plots, familiar characters, familiar tropes
gain strength through repeated cloning, making sure that the spec-fic
market remains white-male dominated, both in terms of protagonists and
writers. This is clearly something Indian writers will have to
struggle against, but they will certainly not be the first to join
battle – pioneers like Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler have
already made huge steps to make the spec-fic world aware of these
prejudices, and they haven’t been the only ones. Thanks to a variety
of factors, such as a real tiredness among readers of repetitive plots
and the phenomenonal information/culture bomb that is the Internet,
even American publishers are slowly opening their minds and their
coffers to spec-fic material from across the world – consider the
success of manga, the fastest growing phenomenon in world publishing
today. Spec-fic is certainly less inward-looking than it used to be,
and the New Weird, however questionable its definition, is a very real
symptom of this.

And it’s a better time now, than ever before, to be an Indian spec-fic
writer. The initial forays into Western markets have been made; Indian
spec-fic writing is increasing, albeit slowly, over various media as
the global popularity and increasing mainstream acceptability of
spec-fic trickle across to India; perhaps most importantly, the Indian
readership of spec-fic is growing and diversifying, as more
cutting-edge spec-fic, again, in various media, begins to be available
in ever-expanding bookstore chains. If good spec-fic is written now,
there’s more chance of it reaching Indian readers, and readers
worldwide, than ever before. To achieve that, here’s one possible
future; Indian writers bring their home-grown skills into the world of
spec-fic, blurring and reinventing genres, adding themes, experiences
and visions as yet unseen in the spec-fic world. In other words, they
colonize the New Weird, making it truly new. And truly weird.

Rana Dasgupta, author of Tokyo Cancelled, on putting books into boxes:

Q: In publishing terms, you’re seen as a ‘literary’ writer. But in
your first novel, you’ve used themes that relate fairly extensively to
the domain of speculative fiction – the memory database, the woman who
turns into a store, the relationship with a doll, and so forth. but
since your writing style puts you under ‘literature’, these influences
would then fall in the realm of ‘magic realism’, another imposed
classification to distinguish speculative-in-literary from
straightforward genre fiction, putting you into yet another artificial
pocket with writers like Margaret Atwood, Toby Litt and David
Mitchell. What are your thoughts on literary/publishing
classifications like ‘mainstream’ and ‘genre’? If, under threat of
torture, you had to classify your own work, where would you place it
on the speculative/literary spectrum?

A: Frankly I find the game of categorization very boring, whether it
is by nation or “genre”. It may have some function for people in
marketing, but it’s of no interest to me in my own writing. I write
something only because it seems to have a particular force to me, not
because it will satisfy the requirements of a particular genre, or
appeal to a certain kind of person.

In my personal view, books categorized as “science fiction” often meet
the standards of “literature” better than books categorized as
“literature” do. This is because i have a particular idea of
literature. for me, literature is philosophy: its purpose is not to
describe what we already know to be the case, but to create an
experiment with the imagination. Science fiction has always done this,
of course. Moreover, “reality” now seems to be an entirely science
fiction-style project, and to eschew science fiction totally is often
to retreat into some kind of improbable, and uninteresting, refuge.

I don’t think serious writers have any business internalizing the
slogans and generalizations of industry. To me it is entirely
destructive to their work. It can only result in the censorship of
the imagination – because something does not fit easily within a
genre, or will be too complex for the imagined audience, etc. It is
precisely in
the moments when one is surprised by one’s own writing, or fearful of
its implications, that one reaches into spaces that are interesting
and enduring.

Superhumans – Nietzschean uberbeings who bend circumstances, stories
and worlds around their fiery wills – are creatures Indians should be
familiar with. Among the heroes and villains of the Ramayana, the
Mahabharata and the Puranas we have several characters who could teach
Superman a thing or two about high-flying deeds of derring-do. And
through a strange combination of market forces, timing, and
serendipity, the time seems to be ripe for Indian superheroes to step
up and be counted – after making some very serious decisions about
clothing, of course.

It’s an interesting time to be discussing superheroes from India,
because Krrish, a big-budget superhero film, is due to release in a
few days*, featuring state-of-the-art special effects, a martial-arts
choreographer from Hong Kong, a cast full of Bollywood stars, music,
dancing, chaste love and lots of leather – and is expecting
competition from another Bollywood SFF film, Alag. Besides this,
Virgin Comics, a new publisher looking to redefine comics and
animation worldwide using India-themed content, is due to unleash its
first collection of Indian heroes (not superheroes, they say, because
cape-and-tights crusaders are best left to traditional comics
powerhouses DC and Marvel) in about a month – which means that the
time to discuss them as ‘potential’ phenomena is fast running out.
While the establishment of Virgin Comics and Animation is definitely
cause for hope among Indian speculative fiction writers looking to
start out professionally and it is to be hoped that Krrish will turn
out to be a compelling, entertaining superhero blockbuster, experience
leads one to believe that Bollywood’s attempts at speculative-fiction
material are best discussed in advance, because the actual viewing of
SFF Bollywood movies thus far has always been extremely inimical to
discussion of these ludicrous masterpieces as anything other than a
source of unintentional humour.

A prime example of this is an internationally famous box-office turkey
named ‘The Indian Superman‘, a completely unabashed copy of the
original, featuring Dharmendra as the Jor-El copy, Ashok Kumar as
Jonathan Kent and Puneet ‘Duryodhan’ Issar as Superman, and also
starring Jagdeep and Shakti Kapoor. Fortunately, this is not India’s
best-known superhero film thus far. That honour goes to Mr. India,
where Anil Kapoor plays a man visible only in areas lit by red lights.
The annals of non-superhero SFF Bollywood films, too, are full of
unforgettable classics – Ajooba, for instance, featuring the who’s who
of Bollywood at the time, and featuring Russian-made monsters, large
stuffed tigers and a Rishi Kapoor miniature doll cavorting inside a
blouse. Of course, not even the worst excesses of Bollywood SFF
filmmaking could match Lollywood’s International Gorillay, the climax
of which features arch-fiend Salman Rushdie being laser-skewered by
four lightning-emitting flying Korans. But since these essays aim to
take South Asian SFF and its future seriously, perhaps these classics
are best left for other discussions. Like their TV counterparts
Shaktimaan, Aryamaan, Hatim and Captain Vyom, Bollywood’s superheroes
thus far have mostly been badly produced, badly copied version of
well-known western costumed vigilantes from film and comics, though
Bollywood’s defenders might point out this is only right, given how
vigorously early American superhero comics copied one another.

Indian comics have also featured a number of interesting spec-fic
heroes, from Chacha Chowdhury’s sidekick Sabu from Jupiter to Amitabh
Bachchan as the pink-clad Supremo, in an Indrajaal Comics series
featuring Bollywood scriptwriter Gulzar, from half-machine RAW spy
Koushik to Raj Comics snake-man Nagraj. The heroes of Indrajaal
comics, notably the dashing detective Bahadur, commanded genuine cult
appeal and are cherished collectors’ items today. The superheroes of
Raj, Diamond and Manoj comics also inspired a considerable fan
following in India, thriving on local content, the intrinsic appeal of
comics and the lack of high-quality alternatives. Comprehensive lists
are available on the Internet, created lovingly by fans who grew up
devouring the adventures of Indrajaal Comics heroes Mandrake the
Magician and Lee Falk’s Phantom – indeed, the lack of memorable Indian
superheroes is even more ironic when one considers that the Phantom,
widely believed to be the first comics action hero to wear a
skin-tight costume, was originally based in India, in the ‘Bengalla’
forests, and his first enemies were the Singh Brotherhood.

The comic-book superhero in its current from is an American creation,
and has been popular since the late 1930s. Other nations have
superheroes too, of course – Japan probably has even more than the US
– but have not managed to sell them to the world as well as the
Americans. It’s interesting to note that thanks to the superhero,
speculative fiction is the mainstream in comics, and more literary,
serious, set-in-reality comics have to seek audiences in the margins –
a hierarchy that resembles Bollywood more than Hollywood, assuming
that Bollywood films, thanks to their not-so-realistic action
sequences and musical numbers, can be said to contain speculative
content. Be that as it may, the triumphal march of the American
comic-book hero across media and across countries is a sign of many
things – globalization, Americanization, the triumph of hype and
marketing, the universal power of the heroic archetype. And the
evolution of the superhero down the decades has been a potent metaphor
for the state of the world – from the clean-cut, often absurdly
simplistic, high-minded, clean-living and completely unconvincing
heroes of the Golden Age, the confused, violent, bitter heroes of the
Silver Age and the amoral, angst-ridden, equally confused, thoroughly
deconstructed, often self-mocking, ultimately human super-protagonists
of the current day. And as the superhero genre becomes more and more
complex, and succumbs to two major pushing forces – Hollywood, pushing
it towards the pop-culture mainstream, and grown-up comic-books called
graphic novels pushing it towards literature, multicultural, diverse
heroes become a necessity, to deal with an ever-growing, ever-changing
audience not just in America, but across the world.

Mainstream comics down the decades have always been more
audience-driven than writer-driven; the phenomenon of comicbook
writers becoming famous literary figures working in various media with
fan followings outside the field of comics is fairly recent. While
science fiction and fantasy literature have always been a step ahead
of their readers – in fact, the process is interesting and
Ourobouros-like; a path-breaking new work creates an army of fans, and
copies of that work then flood the SFF market to feed those same fans,
resulting in the need for more path-breaking work – superhero
comicbooks, until recently, were much more a reflection of what their
publishers thought their fans wanted. Through letters, conventions and
now the Internet, fans have been one of the key factors in determining
what the superhero industry does, and where it goes – sometimes to the
extent that fans wrote in and voted to decide major plot developments,
such as the death of the second Robin.

And as America became more multicultural, and its comics found their
way around the world, the blatant cultural/social/political
stereotyping of the early days had to be done away with. New,
important sections of fandom had to be represented in the comics they
read, wholly new and very diverse sets of people were reading
comicbooks, and people who were offended by representations of their
kind in comics found it easier to raise their voices in protest – so
black and Asian characters could no longer play just one note or serve
as identikit cannon fodder, female characters could no longer be silly
sex objects, right-wing patriotism had to be toned down a bit, and a
few superheroes had to be gay. While this diversification couldn’t do
away with stereotyping – many mainstream comicbooks remain riddled
with the worst clichés in the world – blatant racism, sexism, jingoism
and other politically incorrect prejudices were no longer openly
acceptable. Along with this came a growing demand for new plots and
new exotic settings – and once the word exotic featured in the list of
demands, could India really ever be far behind?

There are a surprisingly large number of Indian superheroes out there
in the universes created by Marvel and DC, which no doubt means that
there is a significant market among the South Asian diaspora for the
comic series they feature in. And since Gotham comics started
distributing Marvel and DC comics in India a few years ago, the demand
can only have increased. The only thing that hasn’t happened yet,
alas, is research. Indian characters continue to fit into standard
roles, and we’re yet to see a South Asian comics hero who does for
South Asians what Luke Cage did for African Americans, or what Northstar did for the gay community. And the arrival of Virgin Comics,and
potentially other comic-book companies in its wake if its projects
turn out to be successful, mean that the mainstream speculative comic
becomes a tremendously exciting avenue of exploration for the South
Asian writer and artist, both in its existing form and in potentially
reinvented forms. Which is not to say that writers outside the
subcontinent can’t create South Asian convincing spec-fic comicbook
heroes; just that they haven’t really bothered to, yet, as the
following list of Indian superheroes currently stomping around in the
West will demonstrate. While the list is by no means comprehensive, it
serves as a pointer to the roles available for South Asians in comics
published worldwide today – and also reveals, alarmingly, that the
Indian superheroes created in America, by and large, aren’t
particularly any better or more convincing than the American-clone
superheroes created in India.

Bombaby, the Screen Goddess, was a creation of Slave Labor Graphics,
California, starring Saira Banu-esque Sangeeta Mukherjee, dutiful
daughter (!), struggling sister, potential arranged marriage victim
(!) and avatar of that well-known Hindu deity (!), the goddess of
Mumbai (?)

Grant Morrison, one of the brightest talents in comics worldwide,
mind-bending writer of The Invisibles and Animal Man, came up with
Vimanarama, where a young British-Asian boy named Ali, whose father
runs a corner-shop (!) in Bradford (!) accidentally releases ancient
monsters who want, of course, to destroy the world, and can only be
stopped by the Ultra-Hadeen, a team of giant metal-clad
Vishnu-avatar-esque superheroes similar to Jack Kirby’s Eternals.
Featured Bollywood (!) inspired artwork starring many lotuses.

DC comics’ deadliest assassin, Lady Shiva, isn’t Indian, but is
worshipped by turban-wearing fanatics (!) as an avatar (!) of Shiva
(!) the famous Hindu goddess of death (?)

Chandi Gupta, a DC Justice Leage Europe (JLE) member, was left by her
parents with a cult (!) who, again, thought she was a Shiva
incarnation (?). This cult was evil (!) and planned to sacrifice her.
Like all clever Indians, Chandi turned NRI – in London, where she
lived under the name Maya, she helped the JLE win a battle, and then
joined them. On one of her earliest missions, she encountered and
defeated her former guru, (!) the Mahayogi (!)

Adri Nitall, was an unfortunate young lad from the village of Jajpur
(!) who was turned into a vampire by Marvel’s version of Dracula’s
minions, while his father, Taj (!) Nitall, hunted vampires with Van
Helsingh.

Black Box aka Commcast, Garabed Bashur (?), is a Marvel supervillain
from India, who, now that India is a known IT hub, is a cyberpath who
can psychically process electronic data. Right up there with Bashur in
terms of common Indian names is Shakti Haddad, a genetics expert
code-named Cerebra, who co-founded the X-Men of the future. Their
names, however, fade into insignificance when confronted by Chris
Claremont’s IT genius Muaharam Ram. Chris Claremont, one of superhero
comicdom’s most respected writers, is also a frequent Indian character
introducer, which is nice, except that his Indians are terrible
caricatures like the bindi-wearing Amina Synge (?) or his two most
famous Indian characters, Neal Sharra (?), or Thunderbird, who is from
Calcutta, in Bangladesh and Assam (!), where his family owns a tea
plantation and runs the Indian National Police (?). His lover, Karima
Shapandar (?), the Omega Sentinel, is a former Indian National Police
operative doomed to destroy mutants like Neal, which might have been a
good idea.

Of course, some Indian characters are better drawn than others – where
‘better’ is taken to mean ‘no obvious mistakes.’ Jinx, an Indian
elemental sorceress, is a relatively inoffensive DC supervillain.
Paras Gavaskar, or Indra, is a mutant Marvel superhero from the New
X-Men, who is probably one of the most believable Indian superheroes
out there. Fortunately there’s nothing Hindu or god-like about him, he
just has retractable armour plates. Spiderman India, an interesting
relocation of the world’s favourite web-crawler, featured a lungi-clad
teenager named Pavitr Prabhakar taking on green goblin/rakshas and a
multi-armed Doc Octopus-esque Hindu demon, and drew a lot of media
attention in India, where even mainstream literary coverage is
minimal.

The winner of the prize for best-done Indian comics character goes to
Fables creator Bill Willingham, for his stylish, smart and cliché-free
version of the Jungle Book gang – Mowgli, a world-roaming secret agent
who goes under the name of Vincent Jagatbehari, is an excellent
creation and probably the only charismatic Indian in world comics
today, and Kipling’s animals are well extrapolated from the book.

Of course, given how rare well-rounded (emotionally, that is)
characters are in mainstream comics as a whole, and that the new
evolved spec-fic comicbook (Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen, Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Fables, V for
Vendetta, Hellboy) is essentially a product of the last two decades,
the result of the maturing of an industry after years of professionals
gaining expertise and experimenting with the form, it seems
unreasonable to expect a wave of intelligent, fully formed South Asian
heroes to emerge immediately, no matter how demanding the market. But
given time, opportunities and a sufficiently large wave of talented
writers and artists, there’s no reason why Indians shouldn’t be a
significant force in the evolution of the superhero comicbook,
adapting it to create new, exciting, entertaining and enriching
varieties of speculative fiction. It’s actually possible now, for the
very first time.

*this was written a while ago, before Krrish was released. Turns out that was a good thing, as I suspected.

Fortunately for genre writers of Indian origin living outside India, they are less likely to be accused of distorting reality, since that is what they set out to do in the first place in order to understand the real world better. Or of being overly exotic – how exotic is an elephant when placed next to a demon or a spaceship? Unfortunately for them, they are unlikely to pick up huge advances from the literary publishing world at this point, because the publishing market for speculative fiction is a very different one from mainstream lit, and while the mainstream fiction market is still eager for Indian fiction, the speculative fiction world, which already has a fair number of colourful, mysterious, fragrant otherworlds.

British diaspora writer William Dalrymple stirred up a good amount of controversy recently with an Observer article where he claimed, among other things, that the diaspora was the last brown hope as far as Indian writing was concerned. While his views came in for some stringent criticism and ridicule, even prompting writer Amit Chaudhuri, that most literary of Indian litterateurs, to write speculative fiction (in an article where he compared the planets Dalrymple and he lived on), one observation he used while making his claims was that most of India’s most commercially successful and most widely published authors spend a large chunk of their time outside India – not noting, however, that this might have something to do with the fact that in writing, as in all other jobs, access is important, and resources flow to the places where they are optimally utilized.

In fact, what really most significantly differentiates the SFF writer in the Indian diaspora and the Indian writer in India is access. SFF is a very close-knit, community-driven market, possible even more so than mainstream lit, and a lot of sales of manuscripts are made at giant SFF conventions, where fans, editors, agents and writers gather to celebrate all things speculative. While obviously the quality of a work of fiction would determine its eventual future, the practicalities are important too – it’s impossible for even great books to reach bookshelves unless they reach the right editor or agent at the right time, and simply because there isn’t a tradition of Indian spec-fic publishing, it’s difficult to establish one. While opinions are widely divided on how relevant these conventions are for writers to sell manuscripts to editors and thus get their work published (completely essential, say some, no longer relevant, say others, in the interviews that follow these essays), the fact remains that Indian/South Asians in the diaspora are simply in a better place as far as getting their work out is considered. Also very relevant is the fact that apart from the leading names in children’s fantasy literature, contemporary, cutting-edge spec-fic is not widely available in India at all. But these problems, while very real now, will hopefully disappear, thanks largely to the Internet, over the next few years. As conditions stand now, though, it is very likely that if there is a genuine wave of Indian/South Asian speculative writing over the next few years, it will be led by the diaspora. Of course, the question that comes before this is whether writers in the Indian diaspora are writing speculative fiction in large numbers in the first place.

Mary Anne Mohanraj, US-based writer and founder of the Speculative Literature Foundation:
“Most South Asian/diaspora authors I encounter seem more concerned with writing mainstream ‘literary’ fiction. In part this is simply where their interests lie — in part, I wonder whether some of the leanings in that directions come out of a desire for respectability. Making your living as a writer is generally not one of the acceptable career tracks for an ambitious South Asian, and it may be that many authors are
afraid to venture into sf/f for fear of even more mockery from the relatives. But that’s pure speculation on my part — it may be just that most South Asian/diaspora authors didn’t grow up reading and loving spec fic, and so it doesn’t occur to them to try writing it.”

”Cecilia Tan and I tried to pitch an Asian companion volume to _Dark Matter_ (an anthology of speculative fiction from the African diaspora) some years ago, and were told that the publisher didn’t think there was a sufficient market for it. Maybe in a few years…”

But hopes of a wave of SFF writing from the diaspora aren’t entirely speculation even at this point. Already, a few writers living in the US like Vandana Singh and Anil Menon have established their presence in the SF community, getting short stories published in leading genre magazines, and in the process of finishing their first speculative fiction novels.

SFF author Vandana Singh, author of the Younguncle series of children’s books:
“I think there is definitely an interest in seeing something new. Unfortunately Americans in general are sadly uninformed about India and what little they know is often caricatured and stereotyped beyond recognition. In addition there are a lot of Western SF writers who have used Indian characters or settings in their stories, sometimes honestly and sometimes with a hostility that harks back to the old colonial British hack writers of penny-dreadfuls. An Indian SFF writer thus has to overcome all these stereotypes. One of the things that helps is that writers of colour in North America are getting together across ethnicities — African-Americans, South Asians — forming groups like the Carl Brandon Society that gives out its own rewards to people or writings that focus on issues of race — or publishing anthologies like So Long Been Dreaming that are being treated seriously by SFF critics and academics alike. So I think there is a lot of hope and new interest, now, in expanding the boundaries of SFF. We have more and more Indian names popping up. For instance there is Anil Menon — remember his name, you will see it again! And emerging others who are going to Clarion workshops, working away at their stories, getting ready to see their names in print. “
“It is true that in the West the SFF culture has developed an enormous fan base and also great support for new, emerging and established writers, through conventions and writers’ workshops. There is no reason why these things cannot be organized in India, where we already have traditions like the literary mehfil. Even in the US conventions and workshops arose as ideas dreamed up by penniless writers (probably over coffee at 3 am), evolving from a very small scale to epic proportions (the last Worldcon I attended in Boston had at least 5000 participants). I think we have to start small, with writers getting together in neighborhoods and localities and giving honest critiques of each others’ works. The next steps may include launching small-press magazines or ezines for publishing outstanding works, holding conventions, doing readings at bookstores to popularize SF and generating fan newsletters. “
“We can consider Japanese SF as an example. Now Americans generally think the world revolves around them, and unfortunately this is mostly true of American SFF writers and editors as well. But lately I’ve been hearing more and more about Japanese SF in US publications, and of American SF writers going to Japanese SF conventions. (The next Worldcon is in Japan, by the way.) I am no expert on the history of Japanese SF but I really think that creating their own subculture of SF helped put the Japanese on the world SF map. There is no reason why Indians can’t do this as well. Now, with the publication of the international SF magazine Internova (from Germany) there is a real interest among SF writers around the world (particularly Europe) to find SF from all over the globe and publish it. I have heard of SF from Croatia and Argentina, from China and Sri Lanka. Each SF community enriches the whole. “

Indian-origin US-based SFF writer Anil Menon, is optimistic about the future of South Asian SFF:

“If it wanted to, Indian SFF could kick some major ass. Indians (south-asians) are born storytellers. The earliest speculative fiction — Jataka tales — was home grown. We have the talent, we have the untold stories and we have an audience — mostly young and mostly female — sick of reading about cowboys in outer space. But we’re like the elephant who doesn’t realize its an elephant. So we politely wait for American or British editors to develop a taste for SFF with an Indian flavor. That’s not going to happen any time soon.”

”But it doesn’t matter. The way I see it, the future used to happen exclusively in the US. It doesn’t any more. The focus has shifted. The future has been democratized. Look at what the Japanese did with Manga. Suddenly, Superman is a 60 year old dude with a weird penchant for wearing his underwear on the outside. We’ve as much a shot at manufacturing the future as do the Americans. And we can probably do it cheaper too.”

”What’s to prevent us from building websites like Strange Horizons, which are entirely volunteer and donation driven? Why can’t we start small print-on-demand publishing houses? In the US, there’s a lot of resistance to publishing innovations, and for good reason: they could lose their shirts. But heck, we are already broke; what do *we* have to lose? Why can’t we have our own Clarion India, conferences and awards?”

”I’m not saying that we shouldn’t address western audiences. Of course we must. But sometimes it seems to me that we’re like the dude who went sailing around the world when the pot of gold lay right in his backyard.”

On breaking into the SF community and getting his stories into print:
“ It’s been a lot easier than I had expected. In my case, Clarion West turned out to be the big break. I met a lot of writers and editors in the six week program, got a lot of tips, and my writing improved. But there was/is no secret handshake. I remember that Charles de Lint, who was one of our instructors in 2004, was so impressed with a student’s story, he sent along a recommendation when she submitted it to Fantasy & Science Fiction. It still got rejected. It’s almost a cliche that the key to good writing is rewriting. But equally important, a successful submission is usually a resubmission.”
“There’s definitely a lot of interest. I’ve found my “Indian stories” move a lot faster than the “ethnically neutral” ones. What I find in most contemporary stories though is that the Indian-ness, if present, tends to be an exotic touch; a character may have an Indian name, but she/he could just as well be Irish-Eskimo.”
Thomas Abraham, president, Penguin Books India:

On the probability of the diaspora leading an Indian SFF wave:

“I don’t see why not. And not just the diaspora but from here. Leaving aside conferences, access is pretty much available to everything else. And even going with the notion that flights of imagination are still inevitably rooted someway to cultural influences; we’re now (at least in urban India) definitely tech advanced for SF and have a mythology that’s definitely richer than Celtic folklore to be able to produce world class fantasy. The problem is we need a basic readership here, which I think will be available over the next 10 years. All those Potter and Alfred Kropp readers will hopefully graduate into reading SFF.”
On Indian SFF writers needing to piggyback on Indian themes:
“Not as a generalization, but if they don’t, they have to labour against the prejudice that “there’s nothing new here; this is essentially a western universe”. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation. It would be far easier to position their work as rooted in their own cultural contexts and try to break through on the exotica platform. But conversely they would probably come up with the objection from agents that this is too culturally alien to succeed in the west. But that’s now. Increasingly these barriers are being wiped out and hopefully in ten years it won’t matter.”

Critic, writer and prolific blogger (The Mumpsimus) Matthew Cheney:

“I think we’re already seeing some exhaustion in the SF field with the typical props and models of writing, and so U.S. and British writers are looking elsewhere for ideas. Also, we live in a world where it’s much easier to encounter people from outside our own countries, and to gain information about places other than our own, and many readers hunger for it. Some of it may just be the attraction of exoticism, but I think the success of
books like Tobias Buckell’s “Crystal Rain”, which mixes a variety of influences in a traditional SF adventure story, or Ian MacDonald’s “River of Gods”, which is more specifically Indian, bodes well for the future, because such books show writers trying to bring an honest sensibility about non-Western or post-colonial cultures into their work,
and to do so in as honest a way as possible

Ashok Banker, the best-known name in Indian SFF worldwide:

“We should be writing about our culture, our mythology, our people, right? But then you look around at the US genre scene today: There are fantasy novels with characters named after Indian characters, set in places like Hastinapura and Ayodhya! There are references to Indian myth, legend, history everywhere! You can hardly read a genre novel today without encountering multi-cultural references…and I’m talking about genre fiction written by white, European or American writers.”

”By the same yardstick, why shouldn’t it be acceptable for an Indian or Asian writer to write a book using American characters or European-Celtic elements? For that matter, why should subject matter be restricted to a writer’s own culture or nationality? A good writer writes about anything he or she pleases, and should be free to do so.”

”But try stepping across the same line that western writers step across routinely and see the result. I don’t think you’ll find the acceptance you accept, and it might often have nothing to do with the quality of your writing or intrinsic strength of your book.”

Jeff VanderMeer, award-winning SFF author (Shriek, City of Saints and Madmen):

“There’s a difference between an artistic scene or movement and getting attention and publicity for that scene or movement. No one needs to rely on a diaspora to create original, innovative, and moving work. The important thing is to focus on the work and to create something powerful and important. Then, in the fullness of time, you make people come to you. This is increasingly true considering we live in an Internet age where everyone is just a click away.”

”That said, I think it is imperative that non-English speaking countries leverage the internet by creating website for the fiction of their country, with translations into English. There’s no avoiding the fact that English is the language that dominates the marketplace outside of Asia. But I do not believe you have to physically be in the US or UK to be successful. It may be harder, but it is possible. You just have to have people who are PR and market savvy in addition to people producing amazing work.”

Cheryl Morgan, writer, critic and blogger who runs online SFF magazine Emerald City:

”Editors are always looking for something new, so if you can blend South Asian culture and traditions into your writing it will help get it noticed. Ashok Banker has had some success with that. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about South Asian writing to answer the last question, but I do think that we will see more and more SF books set in “Third World” countries from now on. There’s a general view that the American Economic Empire is on the wane, and that “the future” will happen in India, China, South America and Africa. Ian McDonald’s _River of Gods_ has been a huge success – you guys should build on that.”

“Remember that Zoran Zivkovic has been very successful despite writing in Serbian and never leaving Belgrade. He just got a good translator and submitted stories to places like Interzone, and Jeff VanderMeer’s _Leviathan_ anthologies. Now he’s won a World Fantasy Award and the small presses all love him. There’s nothing particularly Serbian
about Zoran’s writing, he is just talented and has worked hard.”

Vandana Singh, writer of speculative fiction and children’s books, on the divide:
“The world of the imagination has recently (only in modern times, I think) been infantilized. The Real World is seen to be for grown-ups, and all that fairy-tale stuff for kids. This is truly sad and remarkably stupid as well, because you can see in every culture that the oldest tales have elements of magic or other-worldliness to them. Their value lies not in literal interpretations (in which case myths become nothing but unsuccessful attempts at explaining natural phenomena) but because they speak the language of the unconscious mind — the language of symbol and metaphor. They tell us about ourselves — our fears and dreams. After all, reality is such a complicated beast. If you are to hold it, understand it, you need something larger than reality to do so. Enter Imaginative Literature. “
“Speculative elements in children’s fiction has a long history even in our times — the world, however, needed the Harry Potter phenomenon to wake up to the fact. We insiders were reading Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander and others long before Rowling set pen to paper. For whatever reason Harry and his friends came at the right time to spark a massive public interest in children’s imaginative literature, and this led to a discovery on the part of the public to a literature that they had, for a very long time, ignored. Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of children’s spec fic, and that is all to the good. “

Ashok Banker, prolific SFF author, on the children’s SFF wave:
“Actually, there’s nothing ‘new’ or ‘now’ about this phenomenon. The most popular books for children for the past several decades have been SFF stories. From the LoTR books, which were essentially young adult fiction repackaged and marketed for older readers in the USA, to the Narnia series, The Dark is Rising series, and several others, the bestselling works of YA fiction have always included spec fic titles. At the same time, there’s always been a healthy mix of other genres–so, for instance, there are excellent YA books which are wholly realistic and contain zero spec fic elements, my 13-year old daughter’s favourite author is Sarah Dessen, for instance, who writes intense, realistic novels like Dreamland and The Truth About Forever that just happen to feature YA characters but are literature by any yardstick.”

”What has changed recently has been the phenomenon of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. That’s singlehandedly changed the entire publishing world, not just YA fiction. To a great extent, yes, it’s opened up the doors for a whole barrage of similar fantasy series marketed at YA, some of which is quite readable and enjoyable, while a lot of it is predictably over-marketed, over-published editorially ‘created’ crap. This is no different from, for example, the horde of ‘christian mystery’ thrillers that have exploded since the success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vince Cold–achoo!”

”The other major catalyst of the rise of spec fic in YA publishing has been film and TV. As I mentioned earlier, 25 years ago, SF fans were considered to be wierdos and eccentrics who had their head in the clouds (or outer space) and were dismissed as ‘Trekkies’ or beanies. Today, the biggest film franchises almost all have spec fic elements. It’s the biggest single genre in the movie and entertainment biz now, and it encompasses gaming, which is a multi-billion industry far bigger than even the movie biz, movies, TV, books, comics, merchandizing, toys, you name it.”

”This mass explosion has made SFF not only respectable and acceptable even to parents who might earlier have become nervous about their kids reading ‘escapist’ stuff two decades ago, it’s also made the genre tropes intimately familiar to every kid. Back then, the scene in a book or movie wherein the hero explained what a werewolf was, and how it could be killed, was a secret thrill to those of us who spent our days and nights immersed in such arcane lore…Today, every Potterhead knows what a Lycan is and how a silver bullet brings him down splat!”

In India, languages which have rich and well-established literary traditions of their own also have, as is only to be expected, extremely good children’s speculative fiction. In English, too, we have some truly wonderful children’s/Young Adult writers, most of whose books contain speculative elements – Kalpana Swaminathan, Manjula Padmanabham, Anushka Ravishankar and Vandana Singh have all produced work in recent years that’s exciting, entertaining, intelligent and not didactic or patronizing at all.
But the young reader’s open-mindedness can work both ways; while it ensures that children don’t see books as political statements, it also means that children won’t gravitate naturally towards books by Indian authors just because they are Indian – stories are all-important, and, in the wake of Pottermania, hype. The global children’s writing market is probably even more difficult to break into for foreigners than adult literary fiction, and so far Indian children’s literature hasn’t produced a champion that’s given it what IWE usually demands as a token of success, the big UK/US publishing deal that’s the best way of ensuring that an Indian book gets talked about in India. And as far as publicity for Indian children’s writing is concerned, the situation is fairly dismal – most publishers don’t put any significant amount of money in the promotion of their children’s titles, and while in an ideal world good work would find huge audiences simply by being good work, in this world most Indian children hungry to read more aren’t even aware of what’s good in new Indian children’s writing, while national news channels continue to flash updates every time JK Rowling sneezes. This is not to say even for a moment that Indian kids should read Indian writers’ books ahead of the latest big international craze, thus missing out on the wave of seriously good children’s books that have been sweeping across the world in the last decade, but just that it would be so much more pleasant if Indian children knew that there were actually books available that gave them great stories in familiar settings.

Jaya Bhattacharji, editor, Young Zubaan, on current possibilities for speculative childrens’ writing:
“Pottermania has contributed a great deal to the surge in this form of writing. Given that the Rowling phenomena has been pivotal in encouraging reading, irrespective of the size of the book, I think, a lot of children’s writers, feel that since this is probably the genre that is selling, it is the one to emulate. “
“There certainly is a market in India for this kind of fiction. I am certainly all for any genre that encourages reading and releasing the imagination. But the Indian market has to evolve its own signature/stamp of fantasy fiction. We cannot rely totally on imitating fiction that is necessarily based on a Western/Christian tradition or of even trying to yoke the two systems together. A lot of the fantasy fiction that comes from the West is in the classic form of Good vs Evil; or in the Romance tradition of being on a Quest; or in search of the Holy Grail, whatever it may be; or reliance on Greek mythology. In India, we have a huge amount of influences to rely upon, which don’t necessarily encompass the idea of a quest or the Holy Grail. Sure, we do have a strong sense of Right and Wrong; Good vs Evil, but it is tempered by the cultural melting pot that we live in, where a lot of traditions are being intermingled. So, if fantasy has to emerge in India, it has to develop its own distinctive identity. “
“The book market for children is completely unpredictable, so the current flavour of the decade is fantasy as it has a reading public, hence sales. Given the huge investments required in children’s publishing, most publishers, authors, literary agents will want/ten to be conservative and capitalise on a winning formula rather than take a risk. It is pure economic sense to promote fantasy and hence, its noticeable dominance of the market. “

Payal Dhar, YA SFF author, on Indian children’s writing:
“My biggest complaint with Indian authors writing for children is that they have a particular idea of what children *should* read and not what they *want* to read or even need to read. As a result, we get a very sanitized depiction of the world, glossing over whatever is uncomfortable. I’d like to see that change. I’d like to see a Jacqueline Wilson or Judy Blume come out of India.”

”Then again, there is a lot of very good fiction available for children, even if it is not by Indian authors. Having been a weird and withdrawn kid (and now adult!) who spends most waking hours reading, I know that anyone (children as well as grown-ups) who wants a good read just goes and gets a book that sounds interesting. They don’t say, “I will only read something by an Indian author.” On the other hand, what does sometimes matter is, you don’t find anything to identify with – yourself, your surroundings, your society. It isn’t a crippling disadvantage, though, and doesn’t spoil the fun of reading, which is the main thing.”

Jaya Bhattacharji on what she wants to see in children’s spec-fic:
Fantasy for children in India, can be set in any context, time zone etc, but it has to be well written. In the sense, that there should be good, cohesive logic to the universe that is being created. There should be details of the environment and the people and certainly not a cacophony of voices, which really don’t do much for the characters. Each character should have a distinct voice. If different traditions are to be mixed (and frankly, I am all for experimentation in literature), then it has to be done cleverly, treated lightly and presented in an interesting manner. By clever, I mean that the author should not be “showing off” their immense reading and familiarity with these other traditions, but create multi-layers and echoes in the story, that will prompt the young reader to submerge, discover and be totally entranced by the new literary creation. At the end of the day, it has to be a GOOD STORY. Also, a story well told will live for a very long time to come and not necessarily be written and created with “a” single market, fixed in time. In fact, it will then be read for many generations to come. “

The primary mindset barrier Indian speculative children’s writing needs to break is not the same one its adult counterpart. Even today, a lot of successful Indian children’s books tend to be ‘about India’ books, rather bland retellings of history and myth pushed down their throats in large quantities by parents worried about their children losing their connection with their homeland in the flood of wizards, goosebumps, American high schools and Unfortunate Events that take care of their children’s fiction demands. How quality Indian children’s fiction, speculative or otherwise, can be moved out of bookstores and into homes is unfortunately not a problem writers can deal with. But until publishers find a solution, Indian children’s writers will have to keep on writing good books that are no doubt hugely satisfying to write, but don’t allow them to afford more time to write even more hugely satisfying books.

With the publication of Sarnath Banerjee‘s Corridor two years ago, the
setting up of comics publisher Phantomville and the arrival in India
of Virgin Comics and Animation, graphic novels have been in the Indian
news fairly consistently for a while.

The term graphic novel is, of course, a controversial one at every
level – attributed to Will Eisners ground-breaking A Contract with
God (1978), though it’s the term had been around since 1964. The
phrase was created as a term to help sell comicbooks to serious
literary publishers, to distinguish serious, literary comics from more
pulp fare, building a serious artistic movement aiming, as per Eddie
Campbell’s 2004 manisfesto, “to take the form of the comic book, which
has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and
meaningful level.”

The next decade should be an extremely exciting time for the comicbook
medium in India – on the one hand, literary graphic novels, and on the
other, high-flying spec-fic comics that revisit myth, history and the
future, should make their presence felt in a very significant way both
among Indian readers and worldwide with Indian themes and settings.

Gotham Chopra, Chief Creative Officer, Virgin Comics and Animation:

“I am proud to be a part of what we think is a creative
renaissance in India. I think India in of itself will become the
dominant market for publishing and other forms of entertainment and
servicing that is certainly our goal. But there is also a richness to
our heritage and stories that we think the world will really fall for
if its package the right way with great quality.”

“As with any new business, there are a thousand new challenges every
day! I think the toughest is identifying the best and most real
opportunities amongst the million that come at us every day and
staying focused on them. Also, of course is building the right team.
I have no doubt that the right mix of creative and managerial talent
exists in India but finding them is not the easiest thing in the
world. We also only want to work with dreamers – those who share our
vision and want to be a part of something truly innovative and bold.”

“I am a sucker for mythology and have always been a history buff as
well. Of course re-inventing our great myths – the Ramayan and
Mahabharat – is a no-brainer and something we are exploring. But I’d
rather take our rich mythology and our Asian thinking and integrate
it into contemporary stories and dramas. I think we have a type of
story-telling that will increasingly find a global audience, a
richness to our characters and their backstories that roots them in a
greater sense than just themselves and propels good narratives.
In terms of things to dodge, I think super heroes in the classic
mold. The days of tights and capes seem to be passing in terms of teh
emergence if new heroes. I definitely think there is room in the
pantheon for new and dynamic characters that have powers as part of
their arsenal but I generally look away from the classic caped
crusaders as we develop new stories.”

Others are more guardedly optimistic, at least about the future of
well-done comics in India.

Sarnath Banerjee, comics writer/artist and co-founder of Phantomville:
“Historically comics reading population was quite narrow-minded,
people could make an acute demographic profile of an average comic
book reader. However that profile has changed already, at least in the
west. It has become a cultural phenomenon since the last ten years, a
lucky number of absolutely brilliant graphic novelists and a vacuumed
in the reading market created this. Pundits says it is here to say,
that is why the top three publishers in the world have developed their
own graphic line, I am talking of Penguin, Random house and Gallimard.
Other powerful words-only publishing houses have joined the band
wagon. Corporations are putting money. The comics form is crossing
over to Cinema and advertising. In short these are exciting times for
comics.”

“Unfortunately, I feel we have to wait till it gets filtered down from
the western, particularly the American market. As Phantomville, we are
trying several approaches to sell a larger number of books without
resorting to violence- multiple distributors, presentations in
Universities, word of mouth, keeping the price of book embarrassingly
low etc. yet the progress is very slow. In France the first print run
of comics is 10,000 copies even for a beginner, in India 5,000 copies
is the magic number, it means you are a bestseller.”

“This embodies the whole phenomenon of the book trade. India is an
emerging power with a vast middle class, a growing consumer economy,
but not for books. Whether comics or otherwise. However I am told that
self-help and management books are doing well.”

“One Corridor is not going to change the outlook to comics. To build a
comics culture in the country a lot of investments have to be made.
Capital has to be spent on training and shaping comics illustrators,
which is a specialised art. As you are aware that although there is
no dearth of good writers is the country comics illustrators are
almost insignificant. I know many talented writers including you,
given an opportunity will want to do and have the capacity to do
brilliant comics, but somehow are crippled by lack of visionary
illustrators”

“In a royalty-oriented publishing house this is almost impossible to
achieve, because the charges of a good illustrator is almost
astronomical, and they tend to charge by panels. Under no
circumstances would the book recover the money spent on creating it.
These are the problems faced by my peers such as Rajesh Devraj, who
conceived this idea of converting the Tamil cowboy, Quickgun Murugan,
into comics, but couldn’t justify the capital to be paid to the
illustrators. I feel your trilogy has great possibility to crossover
into comics, but who will support a project of that scale? These are
questions that bother us. Where will the money come from? Which
marketing department will accept a proposal like that?”

“Although, clearly it can’t be avoided but speculatively there should
be a five-year ban on any thing on Hanuman, for the sake of Hanuman.
And while you are at it Mahabharata and Jatakas, only for five years.
Let us explore some other stories. I feel these tales have done what
cricket has done to hockey and what Bollywood has done to other
cultural forms that could have come out of India.”

Which leads us to the question: But do ‘real’ writers, even
non-literary genre types, write for comics? Yes, of course, they do
that stuff abroad, but comicbooks are still seen as children’s fare in
India, and doesn’t SFF get enough flak even in book form? The easy
answer to this is that comicbooks for grownups have only just started
being widely available in Indian bookstores, and it’s difficult for
Indian readers to become supremely well-versed in the arts and
sciences of good new comics unless they have access to them. As more
comics are created for and by Indians, a readership seems bound to
follow, because comics do hold immense appeal for the most high-nosed
of readers.

Sarnath Banerjee elaborates:
“Comics can fit in a lot of complex ideas in a single page, they can
create atmosphere and psychological states, a theme can be explored in
all its facets and point of views. This is particularly relevant in
discussing history, sociology, anthropology, natural sciences and
emerging technologies, reproductive or otherwise.”
” Informed minds have to come together and collaborate creatively to
get to this phase. “Let’s do comics because it has simple funny
pictures that will instruct simple people on simple principles of
watershed management” is merely one way of looking at things.”

The Indian comics industry as it stands today is extremely
underdeveloped, and relies heavily on the unrelenting retelling of
classic Indian myths, the unabashed regurgitation of American
superheroes and some original comics that are funny, pacy and work for
children at an entertainment level and for adults, both in India and
among the diaspora, as memorabilia, but don’t approach in any sense
the production or stylistic qualities of contemporary international
work. One major reason for this, of course, is a lack of money in the
industry as far as creators, both writers and artists, are concerned;
this needs to change before any indigenous quality comics become
available all over the country, because the production of comics
always has been a laborious, time-consuming and difficult process. But
given the intrinsic appeal of the medium, the kind of devotion that
Indian comics, whatever their defects, inspire in their readers across
ages and countries, and the kind of attention comics have been getting
in the mainstream media, it’s not unreasonable at all to be optimistic
about the future of Indian comics.

For speculative fiction writers, this is actually more of an
opportunity than it is for writers of mainstream literary fiction, at
least in terms of finding readers – spec-fic comics are tried and
tested, drive markets in the US and in Japan, the two largest
producers of comics, and are much more likely to sell (and, thus,
attract publishers) even in India, where comics have been selling in
large quantities for about 50 years. The arrival of more comics
publishers in India, if and when it happens, should see even more
opportunities for people who can spin a good spec-fic yarn, but can’t
draw to save their lives, to see their work in visual form and
actually make that spectacular movie that runs in their head while
they’re writing with their Indian leads that Hollywood would have
rejected, and with the kind of visual effects that Bollywood couldn’t
have afforded.

Q: Penguin represents a lot of international publishers in India,
including a number of leading SFF imprints. At this point of time,
which are the most popular SFF sub-genres in India?

A: –Actually we represent just one serious SFF imprint Orbit. Penguin US has a large range (Roc & Daw) but they’re essentially US territory limited so we don’t bring them in. Bloomsbury, Faber & Puffin have a few children’s fantasy titles but that’s it. Before getting into sub genres, it’s worth noting that Orbit’s YA SFF imprint Atom failed and had to be aborted. So SFF essentially is still cult rather than mass market in India. The biggest sellers would be Jordan (10K) and Scott card (7.5K) from our lists. David Eddings, Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, Le Guin etc etc—you know the usual suspects—also do fairly well. Looking at the kind of fantasy that sells, well it’s still druids and dragons. Epic and quest fantasy I suppose. SF is still stuck with Asimov and Clarke, with Dick making an appearance in a few bookstores. Can’t really pick a single sub-genre that would rise to the top unless one includes techno-thrillers. These apart I guess it would be the space/parallel universe genre. You’ll find very little new SF available here; though Fantasy has a fair bit of new stuff.

Q: Do you think international SFF agents/publishers are receptive to the
concept of a South Asian writing genre fiction, traditionally a
Western preserve? Is there an increased interest in non-Western SFF
in a saturated Western market, and is it beginning to show?

A:–Not that I’ve noticed. There is always a kind of exotica/novelty interest and South Asian material if it grips somebody may do well. But remember Song of kali by Dan Simmons did really well and the whole Calcutta as chaos motif was one of the key differentiators. So if Simmons could do it, I don’t see we shouldn’t. But I think unlike lit-fic which took the other route, commercial genres will have to break out here first.

Q: In most countries with developed SFF markets, SFF is seen as
low-caste, compared with literary fiction – for adults, at least. Does
this prejudice hold true in India as well? If so, does it also show in
terms of book sales, or do internationally well-known SFF authors sell
as well as acclaimed mainstream literary works?

A:– I wouldn’t go so far as lowering their varna, but yes they’re definitely seen as commercial. Interestingly in the UK, they’re coming out of the closet by as simple an expedient as new jacket design. Men in tights are out. Contemporary mood image covers are in. And sales shot up because, believe it or not, people could now read these books on the tube. India is rather unique in the fact that the differential between lit-fic and comm-fic isn’t much. Vikram Seth for instance would do 25K in hardback and a new Grisham would do about 40K in pb. And yes, the blockbuster level apart, internationally acclaimed SFF writers do as well as second rung thriller writers or literary writers (about 3 to5k). And here interestingly, the commercial tag apart, SF/F is often seen as abstruse and difficult.

Q: Indians living abroad are beginning to make their mark felt in other
kinds of fiction than mainstream literary fiction today – chick-lit
being a prime example. Given that writers of South Asian origin living
outside South Asia have more access to the spec-fic market, in terms
of magazines, conferences and up-to-date reading material, do you
think it’s likely that if there is a substantial wave of Indian SFF
writing, writers from the diaspora will be playing a leading role in
its development?

A:–I don’t see why not. And not just the diaspora but from here. Leaving aside conferences, access is pretty much available to everything else. And even going with the notion that flights of imagination are still inevitably rooted someway to cultural influences; we’re now (at least in urban India) definitely tech advanced for SF and have a mythology that’s definitely richer than celtic folklore to be able to produce world class fantasy. The problem is we need a basic readership here, which I think will be available over the next 10 years. All those Potter and Alfred Kropp readers will hopefully graduate into reading SFF.

Q: Picture your own SFF universe, where the best of South Asian writing
is married to the best of SFF writing. What sort of hybrid children
would you like to see, in terms of themes, content and style?

A:–Fusion as in music is always the most difficult to get right. The probability of falling between two stools is high. The problem is essentially that a lot of good writers won’t try their hand at commercial genres because it would feel low-brow. I ‘m not too sure a hybrid would work or is even necessary. ‘Vikram Seth meets Philip K Dick’ may sound good as a blurb line but may not be great reading. And who loves mutants anyway? I’d much rather a good writer who had the imagination to write SFF, just sat down and wrote a good book. In India we would need some great storytelling to break the genre through. (see last question)

Q: Do you feel that practically speaking, writers from countries not
normally associated with spec-fic markets need to emphasize on their
own countries’ myths/folklore/history in order to provide some kind of
diversity and succeed in the international marketplace?

A: –Not as a generalization, but if they don’t, they have to labour against the prejudice that “there’s nothing new here; this is essentially a western universe”. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation. It would be far easier to position their work as rooted in their own cultural contexts and try to break through on the exotica platform. But conversely they would probably come up with the objection from agents that this is too culturally alien to succeed in the west. But that’s now. Increasingly these barriers are being wiped out and hopefully in ten years it won’t matter.

Q: While acknowledging that spec-fic isn’t monolithic and there are a
hundred different directions it’s growing in at any time, what do you
feel are the most exciting fields of work in contemporary science
fiction and fantasy? What area would you like to see more work in? And
what do you think new writers should avoid?

A:–Unfortunately I haven’t really been keeping pace and am not really qualified to comment on any of the questions. Though I think there’s some great work being done in the field of urban fantasy with terrific crossovers into the graphic novel. But the biggest hope emerges from the fact that almost all the top sellers in the children’s segment now are SF/F variants.
But coming back to my thesis that we really need to build a homegrown SFF blockbuster, I’d love to see a classic SF thriller that would sell 50K here. And staying with the marketability and the need to establish the genre by bringing in new readers, my own gut feel is that a good SFF-alternate history a la Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee is what’s needed.

Q: Are you working on a novel now? Is there anything you can reveal
about it, if so?

A: I have been intermittently working on a novel or three in the last few months. I say intermittently because my day job keeps me insanely busy, but I actually have words down for two of the novels, so it is not all in my head!

One is a fantasy about magic in the real world, but magic treated as a discipline rather than something merely supernatural in which practically anything can happen — in other words, magic as a science. It is about a group of characters, from an eleven year old girl to a 21-year-old guy, who are practicing and re-discovering ancient magic in one of many secret communities around the world. The other novel is good, old-fashioned science fiction about an Indian girl who goes to Mars to join a human colony there. The third one — the one I am so excited about, it almost makes me sick — is set in my hometown of Delhi. All three of these books might be considered Young Adult Fiction but since I read happily and indiscriminately across boundaries, I’ll leave categorization to others.

Q: The SF publishing market is hugely different from the mainstream
literary one, with a wholly separate set of publishers and agents -
which means that if there’s any glamour left to the whole ‘Indian
writing’ phenomenon, it doesn’t apply in these markets. Besides, most
SFF writers currently breaking through abroad go through the short
stories in magazines/meeting people at conferences routine before they
managed to get signed up. You’ve had spec-fic stories published in
leading magazines and anthologies, and attended conferences, which is
the best route towards getting SFF novels published in the West
(Congratulations!). Given that Indians living in India don’t have
access to conferences abroad, do you think that these inequalities are
just things that Indian SFF writers
looking to get published internationally will just have to take in
their stride, or is there anything that they can do to help their work
get seen? How important is location as a factor in the future of
Indian SFF?

A: Indian writers have to write what is in our heart and soul and gut — not what we think might sell abroad. That means being true to ourselves, irrespective of the subject matter. And because the best SFF is ultimately revolutionary, in that it forces us to see ourselves as we are and as we can be, it also means that we must examine everything, including our dearest assumptions. Indian SFF cannot help but be influenced by the great Anglo-American SFF tradition, but if we want to influence it in turn, rather than be second-rate imitators, we must forge our own views, our own imperatives, our own universes. Part of that involves reading and thinking about what the world has to offer — read Asimov, Le Guin, Calvino, Borges, Li Po, the Epic of Gilagamesh — and part of it involves what and who we are — read Premchand, the Ramayana, Ghalib, the Bhakti poets. In other words we must always be aware of and in dialogue with the great works of the non-English Indian traditions (some of which, by the way, have vibrant SF literatures) from Madhavan Kutty to Premendra Mitra and beyond.

It is true that in the West the SFF culture has developed an enormous fan base and also great support for new, emerging and established writers, through conventions and writers’ workshops. There is no reason why these things cannot be organized in India, where we already have traditions like the literary mehfil. Even in the US conventions and workshops arose as ideas dreamed up by penniless writers (probably over coffee at 3 am), evolving from a very small scale to epic proportions (the last Worldcon I attended in Boston had at least 5000 participants). I think we have to start small, with writers getting together in neighborhoods and localities and giving honest critiques of each others’ works. The next steps may include launching small-press magazines or ezines for publishing outstanding works, holding conventions, doing readings at bookstores to popularize SF and generating fan newsletters.

We can consider Japanese SF as an example. Now Americans generally think the world revolves around them, and unfortunately this is mostly true of American SFF writers and editors as well. But lately I’ve been hearing more and more about Japanese SF in US publications, and of American SF writers going to Japanese SF conventions. (The next Worldcon is in Japan, by the way.) I am no expert on the history of Japanese SF but I really think that creating their own subculture of SF helped put the Japanese on the world SF map. There is no reason why Indians can’t do this as well. Now, with the publication of the international SF magazine Internova (from Germany) there is a real interest among SF writers around the world (particularly Europe) to find SF from all over the globe and publish it. I have heard of SF from Croatia and Argentina, from China and Sri Lanka. Each SF community enriches the whole.

Q: Indians living abroad are beginning to make their mark felt in other
kinds of fiction than mainstream literary fiction today – chick-lit
being a prime example. Is there a significantly large number of
spec-fic writers among the diaspora?

A: I think we are few and far between. For the longest time I thought I was the only Indian SF writer around (apart from luminaries like Amitav Ghosh, who may not even identify himself as an SF writer). A few years ago a couple of American editors I met seemed puzzled by my existence. I was Indian — I should write about saris, incense and arranged marriages, right? What was I doing, dabbling in science fiction? Most interestingly, an Indian author I talked to seemed surprised by my description of my writing “SF from a third-world perspective.” “Do you mean you write about reincarnation?”

Anyway, from those sorry times just a few years ago to now, we have more and more Indian names popping up. For instance there is Anil Menon — remember his name, you will see it again! And emerging others who are going to Clarion workshops, working away at their stories, getting ready to see their names in print.

Q: How have publishers and agents responded to the concept of an Indian
writing SFF? Is there an increased interest in non-Western SFF in a
saturated Western market, and is it beginning to show? Are anthologies
like So Long Been Dreaming the first of many?

A: I think there is definitely an interest in seeing something new. Unfortunately Americans in general are sadly uninformed about India and what little they know is often caricatured and stereotyped beyond recognition. In addition there are a lot of Western SF writers who have used Indian characters or settings in their stories, sometimes honestly and sometimes with a hostility that harks back to the old colonial British hack writers of penny-dreadfuls. An Indian SFF writer thus has to overcome all these stereotypes. One of the things that helps is that writers of colour in North America are getting together across ethnicities — African-Americans, South Asians — forming groups like the Carl Brandon Society that gives out its own rewards to people or writings that focus on issues of race — or publishing anthologies like So Long Been Dreaming that are being treated seriously by SFF critics and academics alike.

So I think there is a lot of hope and new interest, now, in expanding the boundaries of SFF.

Q: Do you feel SF/fantasy (speculative fiction) has a future in India?
Why, either way?

A: It had better — we practically invented it — at least science fiction’s older cousin, fantasy, has a long history in India. But really I think that there is no other literature in the world, apart from speculative fiction, that deals with the way the world is changing, and with all kinds of possible futures. There is no other fiction that has the potential of telling the truth about the human condition now, even if it is against the backdrop of an invented universe. Considering how fast things are changing in the so-called third-world, what other literature can we turn to, in order to truly examine ourselves and where we are going? What other literature has the revolutionary potential of revisioning entire worlds, entire societies?

As an Indian growing up in New Delhi, I was addicted to science fiction. I grew out of it in early adulthood when I realized it was not written for me, it did not speak to me (I had not discovered Le Guin yet). I returned to it as a PhD student in the US because I literally felt alienated and wanted to read something that spoke to my condition. When I discovered writers like Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler and others, I knew there was a place in SF for me.

So imagine SF books written by Indians for the world at large, but also for Indians. Indian teenagers and young adults reading these may never grow out of reading SF, as I once did!

Q: In fiction aimed at adults, SF/fantasy tend to be seen as low-caste,
but in the world of children’s/YA publishing, the most popular books
in recent times always seem to contain speculative elements. Do you
think this is because younger people are seen to be more accepting of
non-identifiably-real-world situations, or because the children’s/YA
book market is now large enough for it to have its own rules – or is
it something different entirely?

A: The world of the imagination has recently (only in modern times, I think) been infantilized. The Real World is seen to be for grown-ups, and all that fairy-tale stuff for kids. This is truly sad and remarkably stupid as well, because you can see in every culture that the oldest tales have elements of magic or other-worldliness to them. Their value lies not in literal interpretations (in which case myths become nothing but unsuccessful attempts at explaining natural phenomena) but because they speak the language of the unconscious mind — the language of symbol and metaphor. They tell us about ourselves — our fears and dreams. After all, reality is such a complicated beast. If you are to hold it, understand it, you need something larger than reality to do so. Enter Imaginative Literature.

Speculative elements in children’s fiction has a long history even in our times — the world, however, needed the Harry Potter phenomenon to wake up to the fact. We insiders were reading Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander and others long before Rowling set pen to paper. For whatever reason Harry and his friends came at the right time to spark a massive public interest in children’s imaginative literature, and this led to a discovery on the part of the public to a literature that they had, for a very long time, ignored. Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of children’s spec fic, and that is all to the good.

So I guess what I am saying is (in my non-expert view) that there are many reasons, and I think I’ve outlined the two main ones.

Q: What sort of children’s fantasy/SF would you like to see coming out of
Indian writers in India and abroad? And what do you think writers in
the sub-genre would do best to avoid?

A: Personally I’d like to see anything that is truly imaginative, that comes from deep places inside the author’s soul. The subject and setting need not even be Indian, although it would be great if we had more books with Indian kids having adventures. (When I was a kid I used to think, for the longest time that cool things only happened to kids named Jack or Susan with blue eyes). As for what to avoid: avoid imitations, avoid pandering to stereotypes. Avoid — like the plague — writing to get published. Write what is in you, write what you cannot help writing if they chained you up and stuck you on a desert island.

Q: What particular period of Indian history do you think would make for
really engaging SFF?

A: Gosh, practically any period would be fascinating. I never realized when I was living in India that my own backyard was the most exciting place (or at least, one of the most exciting places) in the world. When I went to the US as a graduate student I realized how richly experiential life in India can be. Even a visit to the sabzi market is full of interest (going to an air-conditioned grocery store cannot compare). There is something about our part of the world — if you open your eyes and ears and heart, there are stories waiting to be plucked from the air. I grew up in Delhi. Along the lanes of my childhood, or hidden in surrounding forests, there lie the ruins of ancient and medieval kingdoms. Sher Shah Suri walked here, the Pandavas rested there. Myth and history, folklore and legend in one seamless whole, waiting for the listening ear, the seeing eye of the writer who will let these ancient tales brew in the mind, along with the modern icons and imperatives of our frenetic age — to come up with something uniquely his or hers. What are we waiting for?