Science Fiction in Colonial India, 18351905

Five Stories of Speculation, Resistance and Rebellion

Edited by Mary Ellis Gibson

Publication date:

30 March 2019

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783088638

"Science Fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905" shows, for the first time, how science fiction writing developed in India years before the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. The five stories presented in this collection, in their cultural and political contexts, help form a new picture of English language writing in India and a new understanding of the connections among science fiction, modernity and empire. [NP] Speculative fiction developed early in India in part because the intrinsic dysfunction and violence of colonialism encouraged writers there to project alternative futures, whether utopian or dystopic. The stories in "Science Fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905," created by Indian and British writers, responded to the intellectual ferment and political instabilities of colonial India. They add an important dimension to our understanding of Victorian empire, science fiction and speculative fictional narratives. They provide new examples of the imperial and the anti-imperial imaginations at work.

Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The Junction of the Oceans: A Tale of the Year 2098, Henry Meredith Parker (1796?–1868); 2. 1980, H. H. Goodeve (1807–84); 3. A Journal of 48 Hours of the Year 1945, Kylas Chunder Dutt (1817–59); 4. The Republic of Orissá: A Page from the Annals of the Twentieth Century, Shoshee Chunder Dutt (1824–85); 5. Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880?–1932); Appendix: Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937); Runaway Cyclone, Translated by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay; Index.

“These rare stories, never before collected in a single volume, speak as much of the utopian strain in the ideologies of rulers and ruled as of the idea of ‘modern science’ when mediated by the experience of life in a subjugated civilization.”
—Swapan Chakravorty, Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, Presidency University, India