India is mutating – and its Science Fiction with it. Star Warriors of the Modern Raj is a critical catalogue of contemporary India’s anglophone SF, a path-breaking work that flits between texts, vantage points and frameworks. An alternative to a Eurocentric perspective of SF, this study avoids essentialising definitions and delves into how the world of SF (text) intersects with that of the writer/reader. Fusing paradigms of Science Fiction Studies, South Asian Studies and Postcolonial Studies, among others, the book explicates how India and its SF negotiate one another. It evolves a ‘transMIT thesis’ to analyse how mythology (M), ideology (I) and technology (T) contour Indian SF and its fictional reimaginings. This study identifies the manifestations of divine beings within SF as differing epistemological categories, locates the modes of marginalisation within Indian popular imagination as altars of alterity, before proceeding to analyse how newer technologies engage with socio-political anxieties in and through SF. Interested in learning about Science Fiction and South Asia? Click on the link below to read Mithila Review interview with Sami Ahmad Khan where he discusses his upcoming volume Star Warriors of the Modern Raj. https://mithilareview.com/ahmad_03_21/

This study draws from postcolonial theory, science fiction criticism, utopian studies, genre theory, Western and Indian philosophy and history to propose that Indian science fiction functions at the intersection of Indian and Western cultures. The author deploys a diachronic and comparative approach in examining the multilingual science fiction traditions of India to trace the overarching generic evolutions, which he complements with an analysis of specific patterns of hybridity in the genre’s formal and thematic elements – time, space, characters and the epistemologies that build the worlds in Indian science fiction. The work explores the larger patterns and connections visible despite the linguistic and cultural diversities of Indian science fiction traditions.

Essays on speculative/science fiction explore the futures that feed our most cherished fantasies and terrifying nightmares, while helping diverse communities devise new survival strategies for a tough millennium. The explosion in speculative/science fiction (SF) across different media from the late twentieth century to the present has compelled those in the field of SF studies to rethink the community’s identity, orientation, and stakes. In this edited collection, more than forty writers, critics, game designers, scholars, and activists explore core SF texts, with an eye toward a future in which corporations dominate both the means of production and the means of distribution and governments rely on powerful surveillance and carceral technologies. The essays, international in scope, demonstrate the diversity of SF through a balance of popular mass-market novels, comics, films, games, TV shows, creepypastas, and more niche works. SF works explored range from Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, 2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal, Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman, Watchmen and X-Men comics, and the Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin, and the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson. In an era in which ecological disaster and global pandemics regularly expose and intensify deep political-economic inequalities, what futures has SF anticipated? What survival strategies has it provided us? Can it help us to deal with, and grow beyond, the inequalities and injustices of our times? Unlike other books of speculative/science fiction criticism, Uneven Futures uses a think piece format to make its critical insights engaging to a wide audience. The essays inspire visions of better possible futures—drawing on feminist, queer, and global speculative engagements with Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro- and African futurisms—while imparting important lessons for political organizing in the present. Contributors: Ben Abraham, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Brent Ryan Bellamy, Gerry Canavan, Andrew Ferguson, Fabio Fernandes, Dexter Gabriel, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Sean Guynes, Ouissal Harize, David M. Higgins, Veronica Hollinger, Allanah Hunt, Nicola Hunte, Nathaniel Isaacson, Ayana Jamieson, Darshana Jayemanne, Gwyneth Jones, Brendan Keogh, Sami Ahmad Khan, Cameron Kunzelman, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Isiah Lavender III, Caryn Lesuma, Karen Lord, Sarah Marrs, Farah Mendlesohn, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Hugh Charles O’Connell, B. Pladek, John Rieder, Lysa Rivera, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Shaviro, Rebekah Sheldon, Alison Sperling, Alfredo Suppia, Bogi Takács, Taryne Jade Taylor, Sherryl Vint, Kirin Wachter-Grene, Ida Yoshinaga.

Science fiction as a vital bridge between technoscience and culture, an early warning system, a method for imagining differently. In the new millennium, science fiction has moved from the margins to the mainstream. At the same time, it has undergone massive transformations. No longer can it be derided as indigestible technobabble or escapist trash or a white man’s playground—not that it ever really was. Sf is rich and diverse, serious, and fun. A vital bridge between technoscience and culture, it is an early warning system, a method for imagining differently, and a way of experiencing our increasingly science-fictional world. It is the vernacular of the 21st century. This Is Not A Science Fiction Textbook brings together leading sf scholars, including some of the most exciting new critical voices, to introduce the genre for the general reader. Its first part outlines some key ideas used to think about sf, such as Estrangement, Extrapolation, and Alterity. Its second part maps some of the genre’s global history, from the Enlightenment and European colonialism to Indigenous and African Futurisms. Its third part surveys sf at the turn of the 2020s, organised by concepts, movements and new academic disciplines, from Afrofuturism and Animal Studies to Queer Theory and the Weird—and each chapter, whether it is on Climate Fiction or Neurodiversity, is accompanied by an introduction to a major contemporary novel and film.

How is science fiction from the Arab and Muslim world different than mainstream science fiction from the West? What distinctive and original contributions can it make? Why is it so often neglected in critical considerations of the genre? While other books have explored these questions, all have been from foreign academic voices. Instead, this book examines the nature, genesis, and history of Arabic and Muslim science fiction, as well as the challenges faced by its authors, in the authors' own words. These authors share their stories and struggles with censors, recalcitrant publishers, critics, the book market, and the literary establishment. Their uphill efforts, with critical contributions from academics, translators, and literary activists, will enlighten the sci-fi enthusiast and fill a gap in the history of science fiction. Topics covered range from culture shock to conflicts between tradition and modernity, proactive roles for female heroines, blind imitation of storytelling techniques, and language games.

Nominated, 2023 Teaching Literature Book Award Indian Science Fiction has evolved over the years and can be seen making a mark for itself on the global scene. Dalit speculative fiction writer and editor Mimi Mondal is the first SF writer from India to have been nominated for the prestigious Hugo award. In fact, Indian SF addresses themes such as global climate change. Debates around G.C.C are not just limited to science fiction but also permeate in critical discussions on SF. This volume seeks to examine the different ways by which Indian SF narratives construct possible national futures. For this looking forward necessarily germinates from the current positional concerns of the nation. While some work has been done on Indian SF, there is still a perceptible lack of an academic rigor invested into the genre; primarily, perhaps, because of not only its relative unpopularity in India, but also its employment of futuristic sights. Towards the same, among other things, it proposes to study the growth and evolution of science fiction in India as a literary genre which accommodates the duality of the national consciousness as it simultaneously gazes ahead towards the future and glances back at the past. In other words, the book will explore how the tensions generated by the seemingly conflicting forces of tradition and modernity within the Indian historical landscape are realized through characteristic tropes of SF storytelling. It also intends to look at the interplay between the spatio-temporal coordinates of the nation and the SF narratives produced within to see, firstly, how one bears upon the other and, secondly, how processes of governance find relational structures with such narratives. Through these, the volume wishes to interrogate how postcolonial futures promise to articulate a more representative and nuanced picture of a contemporary reality that is rooted in a distinct cultural and colonial past.

The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms delivers a new, inclusive examination of science fiction, from close analyses of single texts to large-scale movements, providing readers with decolonized models of the future, including print, media, race, gender, and social justice. This comprehensive overview of the field explores representations of possible futures arising from non-Western cultures and ethnic histories that disrupt the “imperial gaze”. In four parts, The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms considers the look of futures from the margins, foregrounding the issues of Indigenous groups, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and any people whose stakes in the global order of envisioning futures are generally constrained due to the mechanics of our contemporary world. The book extends current discussions in the area, looking at cutting-edge developments in the discipline of science fiction and diverse futurisms as a whole. Offering a dynamic mix of approaches and expansive perspectives, this volume will appeal to academics and researchers seeking to orient their own interventions into broader contexts.