Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction

By Sami Ahmad Khan

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/

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781786837646

Book preview

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Star Warriors of the Modern Raj

New Dimensions in Science Fiction

Series Editors

Professor Pawel Frelik

University of Warsaw

Professor Patrick B. Sharp

California State University, Los Angeles

Editorial Board

Grace Dillon

Portland State University

Tanya Krzywinska

Falmouth University

Isiah Lavender III

University of Georgia

Roger Luckhurst

Birkbeck University of London

John Rieder

University of Hawai’i

Star Warriors of the Modern Raj

Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction

Sami Ahmad Khan

© Sami Ahmad Khan, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.

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British Library CIP Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78683-762-2

eISBN 978-1-78683-764-6

The right of Sami Ahmad Khan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover image: Zaara Haroon @city.flea, Lotus Satellites (2020), designed with Freepik.com resource.

Barkat Zaman Khan (1952–2021) and Shaheen Anjum, abbu and mumma, this is for you.

Abbu, you left us a month before this book was to come out.

Hope you get to read it in the skies.

You are always missed.

Series Editors’ Preface

Science fiction (SF) is a global storytelling form of techno-scientific modernity which conveys distinct experiences with science, technology and society to a wide range of readers across centuries, continents and cultures. The New Dimensions in Science Fiction series aims to capture the dynamic, worldwide and media-spanning dimensions of SF storytelling and criticism by providing a venue for scholars from multiple disciplines to explore their ideas on the relations of science and society as expressed in SF.

Contents

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Part 1: SF-101

1Whoever Loses, SF Wins

2INS Forward unto Delhi

3Prayers in the Rain

Part 2: Materiality

Part 2 Prologue The Altar of Alterity: The Others of ISFE

4The Civilisational Other

5The Social Other

6The Gender(ed) Other

Part 2 Epilogue Materiality Strikes Back

Part 3: Mythology

Part 3 Prologue Hey Bhagwan, the ET has Landed!

7Aliens < Gods: Gods as Extraterrestrials (From Other Planets)

8Gods > Time: Gods as Socio-political Indictments (From Other Temporal Locations)

9Technology + Gods: Gods as Hyperintelligences (From Other Technological Axes)

10 Mythic ⇋ Scientific

Part 3 Epilogue Revenge of the Myth

Part 4: Technology

Part 4 Prologue Beat, Prey, Love 149

11 Genetic Manipulations: Genetic Engineering and Natural Selection in The Beast with Nine Billion Feet , The Butterfly Effect and ‘The Tide Turns Again’

12 Cyberistan: Digital is the New Real in Domechild , ‘Catatonic’ and ‘The Coward’

13 CBRN Warfare: Living the Apocalypse in ‘Gandhi Toxin’, ‘Exile’ and ‘Taking a Shortcut’

14 Alien Disruptions: ET ‘Conservation Laws’, ‘Peripeteia’ 180 and ‘The Tetrahedron’

15 Environmental Degradation: Global Climate Change 188 in ‘Rain’, ‘Sharing Air’ and Leila

Part 4 Epilogue The Technology Awakens 197

Part 5: Conclusion

16 ISFE: A New Hope 201

Notes

Works Cited

Glossary

Index

Author’s Note

A Swastika in a Red Dusk

It was a pleasure to learn.

A decade ago, I sat in the cheery office of the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. It was perhaps the slight stoop in my shoulders, the constant fidgeting, or the visible lines of worry etched on my forehead that made a friend, who had just walked in, ask a question I had tried to avoid all my research life.

‘Hey. Done with the PhD synopsis?’

I looked up from a pink form I was in the process of filling in and beamed a wry smile.

‘What are you working on?’

‘Indian Science Fiction.’¹

‘Ah! Sci-Fi!’ He clapped my back and gazed into the distance for a second. ‘We have such a long and glorious history of Sci-Fi. You must be covering the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, of course.’

I started.

‘The Brahmastras were nuclear weapons, right?’ He continued, ‘nuclear energy, manned flight, teleportation, you name it, our epics – and thus we ancient Indians – had it.’

‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘but is there any scientific basis…’

‘Of course!’ He responded. ‘But you will not find it here since our actual history has been distorted. How could you have had justified colonialism when those whom you were supposed to civilise had already taken the quantum leap thousands of years ago?’

‘I fail to see how …’

‘Listen, India’s real history has been rewritten by those whose agenda is served best by portraying us as mere recipients of western progress. It is a larger ploy to demean our culture.’

Silence reigned the same way that bricks – or perhaps fans of Douglas Adams – do not. After a brief conversation, my friend got up and left. His parting remark stayed with me: ‘Focus on Pushpaka. What a mindblasting invention that ancient spacecraft was!’

I had but filled in another column when I heard a curt voice call out my name. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the discussion returned to the same topic as before, much to my dismay.

‘So…sf? Cool!’ The elevator speech on my area of research had already been delivered, and the next interlocutor chirped, ‘I grew up reading Prof. Shonku. Satyajit Ray is such a master. What are your primary texts?’

‘My area of focus is English-language SF in India.’

A questioning eyebrow shot up. ‘Do we even have that?’

‘We do now. Or maybe we always did.’ With my previous conversation still running amok in my head, I managed to mumble, ‘Do you think ancient Indian epics are SF?’

‘What do you mean?’ The ceiling fan started to creak, that soon segued into a muffled groan.

‘Is the Mahabharata Science Fiction?’ I cut to the chase. ‘I was told to look into whether we could trace current scientific discoveries to Vedic India.’

‘Nope’.

I spluttered, ‘No?’

‘This is nothing but revisionism of history. Such obfuscation of facts will lead us nowhere.’

An involuntary sigh escaped my lips. ‘You don’t think …?’

‘Religions and ancient weapons are …’ the friend paused for effect, ‘no match for a good blaster at your side, yaar.’²

Minutes later, when I stumbled out of that room, I was painfully aware that my thesis was suddenly much more ‘political’ than I ever wanted it to be. The right wanted to reclaim a golden past, the left wished for a red future, and the centre did not know which colour it sought. It was going to be a long road ahead.

And it was.

* * *

India awoke – and wanted space.

There used to be a time when popular ‘western’ narratives depicted hapless Indians praying to the Taj Mahal whenever Earth was in mortal peril – at least when they were not sacrificing humans to gods (as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).³ However, by 2020, India had joined the space race (Space Force); soon, a joint international mission to Mars would feature an Indian astronaut, Group Captain Ram Arya (as in Away) – and solar-powered drones of the Indian Air Force (IAF) would fly across the globe over the next few decades, their coding executed in classical Sanskrit (Interstellar). Those would be the days of mechanical djinns in New Delhi.⁴

What you hold in your hands is a fan’s alternative to a Eurocentric perspective of SF, a beginner’s guide which avoids an essentialist understanding of the genre. It is a critical catalogue of contemporary Indian Science Fiction in English-language (ISFE) which seeks to understand why (and how) the world of the text might intersect with the world of the (twenty-first-century Indian) reader and writer. It deals with how ISFE and its topoi underscore the polyvalent socio-political anxieties of its environment and is meant as a stepping stone for further forays into the area.

Andy Sawyer writes that an ‘explicitly postcolonial science fiction not only has to be written from outside the traditional strands of Western science fiction … but explained and criticised from outside them too’ (‘Foreword’, Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World, 1–2). This undertaking stands by Sawyer’s mandate but also veers away from the fixities of ‘explicitly postcolonial’ tendencies (of ISFE). It is an unstable Einstein–Rosen–Chandrasekhar bridge that connects traditions that are always in flux. Brooks Landon, Carl Freedman, Darko Suvin, Farah Mendlesohn, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., John Rieder, Mark Bould, Paul Kincaid, Rick Altman, Roger Luckhurst and Sherryl Vint et al. exist inside this wormhole – so do Anil Menon, Bal Phondke, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Manjula Padmanabhan, Shovon Chowdhury, Suparno Banerjee, Uppinder Mehan, Vandana Singh et al. This book hints at the congruences and conflicts of global (SF) structures when transposed to India’s SF (and vice versa, since this attempt cuts both ways), and hopes such a comparison might illuminate the tussles that are waged within – and more importantly, through – ISFE.⁵

This book is neither a comprehensive literary history nor an exhaustive genre survey. It is also not an attempt to ‘legitimise’ ISFE through a sustained engagement with its aesthetics or its literariness – and eschews any such need in the first place. It is not aimed at pundits of science, stalwarts of literary criticism, doyens of SF or savants of South Asian Studies, but is meant for those who may not have had much interface with SF, in general, and Indian SF in English, in particular. It does not produce for the producers but it is also not a commercial venture in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘thesis that the field of cultural production is structured by an inverse relationship between economic and cultural capital’ (quoted in Rieder, ‘On Defining SF, or Not’, 205). Moreover, while the text may invoke theory, sometimes laying the groundwork for the pitching of a new point (and consciously yoking ideas generated in/by different contexts with an Indian text/context/theory), there is no consistent engagement with a theory or a text or a thinker over the next few hundred pages. While this book does advance the ‘IN situ Model’ as a general framework (which is used to approach ISFE), it does so more to play with its subject-matter – and question its own assumptions and structure(s) – than to lend credence to a specific methodology. It is aware that there can be no single -ism or any grand unified theory that can explain the divergences of ISFE – and hence flits across vantage points that arise out of markedly different contexts.

This enterprise is divided into five parts: introduction, materiality, mythology, technology and conclusion. The opening part deals with the locus and focus of SF/ISFE and traces its trajectory using chaos theory. Aware of how what is read as SF often depends on the orientation(s) of the establishment, it identifies the parameters of studying ISFE and the major problems which crop up while attempting it.⁶ It introduces the overall vision of the ‘IN situ Model’ and then paves the way for the exploration of the ‘transMIT thesis’ (see Chapter 2 for more details). The second part (materiality) comprehends how ISFE emerges as a suitable mode to reflect and refract the times, thereby contouring the shape of things (not?) to come. Corresponding to ‘Ideology’ in the transMIT thesis, it studies the modes of marginalisation in ISFE and identifies how the ‘Other’ is built in and by the texts. Utilising (three) ‘Grades of Otherisation’, it locates how ISFE responds to the (obsolete categories of) First World, Second World and Islam(ism), and how the constructions of alterity are contingent upon nationality (Pakistan/China/’west’), biology (cloning), religion (Islam/Islamism), politics (Communism/Capitalism), gender and/or economic others. For example, AI and cloning mirror the intermeshed caste/class equation across India. The third part (mythology/transMIT) studies the literary manifestations of divine beings in ISFE as differing epistemological categories and seeks to comprehend the reasons thereof. ISFE transcends the binaries of faith and rationality and blurs the boundaries between belief and empiricism. This results in a kind of fiction that is heavily contoured by classical Indian literature and Hindu mythology, one in which science and God become notionally co-planar. The fourth part (technology/transMIT) identifies the newer technologies which form the backbone of ISFE narratives (using Darko Suvin’s ‘novum’) and then locates how they are deployed in emerging economies.⁷ The fifth and final part concludes the volume.⁸

A quick note about how the nomenclature of this book interacts with the thesis it advocates. While the thesis (transMIT) explicated herein contains an ‘M’ (for mythology), ‘I’ (for ideology) and ‘T’ (for technology), the title of this book consciously adopts the broader term ‘materiality’ (instead of ideology). It does so in order to metaphorise the gestalten fusion of mythology, ideology and technology within India’s SF, and to foreground the relevance of such a study in our space and time.

Choosing the primary sources for this study has been a challenge. Evans, Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Gordon, Hollinger, Latham and McGuirk write in the well-curated The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction: ‘Canonisation is a difficult as well as dubious enterprise, but we hope our canon is less prescriptive than provocative’ (xi). The texts discussed here are also indicative and become ‘provocative’ rather than prescriptive. Also, this book deals solely with original ISFE works and does not cover translations from other regional languages. To cite just four: Satyajit Ray’s Prof. Shonku stories (Bangla), and works by Jayant V. Narlikar (Marathi), D. C. Goswami (Assamese) and Sujatha (Tamil) are therefore not included within its purview.⁹ However, sizeable creative and critical work has already been done on regional Indian SF – now it is time ISFE joins this grouping.

An embryonic form of this manuscript had started to aggregate during my doctoral research at JNU. The PhD thesis submitted in 2015 (Star Warriors, from which this book derives its title) and the papers I wrote over the past few years made me think more about what I had engaged with in the first place – a mauling, shrieking Dalek-R2D2-Chitti hybrid that kept on rebuilding and rebranding itself. This volume brings to bear the combined ideas of these publications and research endeavours – and thus, peppered generously across it are words/sections/concepts that were first propounded in previously published papers, articles and chapters. They now appear together in this unified volume, albeit within a different framework of the ‘transMIT thesis’ (though some reproductions do exist). The essays upon which I depend to build my arguments (further) are: ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Escape the Beast with Nine Billion Feet in Zombiestan’ from the May–June 2015 issue of Muse India and ‘The Annihilation of Cloning’ from the May–June 2018 issue; a chapter titled ‘Bollywood’s Encounters with the Third Kind’ that came out in Bollywood and Its Other(s) (2014); ‘The Others in India’s Other Futures’ from Science Fiction Studies (2016); ‘A Maoist Caliphate near India’s Borders?’ published in Mithila Review (2016); ‘Goddess Sita Mutates Indian Mythology into SF’ (2016) and ‘Dom(e)inating India’s Tomorrow(s)?’ (2019) from Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research; ‘Gods of War Toke While Riding a Vimana’ from the Museum of Science Fiction’s Journal of Science Fiction (2016); ‘Indicting Government Control, Military Industrial Complex and Rogue AI’ (2015) from Rupkatha Journal for Inter-Disciplinary Study in Humanities; ‘Sharing Air with Gandhi Toxin during Exile in 2099 AD’ from Studies in South Asian Film and Media (2015); ‘Worlds Apart: Myth, Science and Fiction in Sukanya Datta’s Short Stories’ (2019) from Indraprasth: An International Journal of Culture and Communication Studies; and a paper on myths and monsters in select Indian dystopias (under submission). I am indebted to their peer reviewers who made me see things in a new light, and to their editors for giving me the permissions to use these papers here.

I am grateful to many people for turning this dream into reality. The support of my mother (Shaheen Anjum), father (Barkat Zaman Khan), younger brother (Salman), and the entire Khan family was pivotal. Zaara Haroon, you make me believe the truth is out there.

I would like to thank all my Obi Wans at Delhi University (DU), JNU and the University of Iowa. My amazing PhD supervisors: G. J. V. Prasad and Saugata Bhaduri – this volume would not have been possible without their love and support. A debt is also owed to Dilip K. Basu and Sunil Dua from DU; Kapil Kapoor and Dhananjay Singh from JNU; Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. from DePauw and Rob Latham from California; and Philip Lutgendorf, Rick Altman and Brooks Landon from Iowa. Through their works, lectures or courses – often accessed in times and cities far away – they have been the gurus who led me down this path. Philip Lutgendorf’s comments on an earlier draft helped me better it. All mistakes in this book are my own – whatever good there may be (if it all), I owe it to them.

I would like to thank Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, who has been unwavering in his support since the heyday of my research (ever since I was a doctoral student) – and his brilliant insights have always helped me think more cogently. Suparno Banerjee, whose Other Tomorrows became a trendsetter, and gave hope to the next crop of SF researchers in India, also deserves a special mention.

I also thank the India-chapter of the SF hivemind for their engagement with SF: Abhijit Gupta, Angelie Multani, Anil Menon, Arvind Mishra, Dip Ghosh, Gautham Shenoy, Geetha B., Indrapramit Das, K. S. Purushothaman, Manjula Padmanabhan, Mainak Dhar, M. H. Srinarahari, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Rahul Rana, Samit Basu, Shovon Chowdhury, Shweta Taneja, Suchitra Mathur, Sukanya Datta, Suraj Clark Prasad, Swaralipi Nandi, Tarun Saint and Vandana Singh.

I owe a lot to the students, staff and colleagues at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, who always encouraged me to think and write more: Anup Beniwal, Ashutosh Mohan, Vivek Sachdeva and Manpreet Kang for the lively discussions on life and literature. Shuchi Sharma, Naresh Vats, Chetna Tiwari and Shubhanku Kochar for the encouragement.

The Fulbright Program and the United States India Educational Foundation, for enabling me to study in the U.S. under those I had grown up reading in India.

And I thank Patrick Sharp and Pawel Frelik, the series editors of NDSF, for having faith in this manuscript.

The awesome people at the University of Wales Press: the ever-encouraging Sarah Lewis was always an email away. Chris Richards, Bronwen Swain, Dafydd Jones, and Heather Palomino for their professionalism, helpfulness and attention to detail. The peer reviewer for the helpful feedback.

All the experts who took time out of their busy schedules to read and endorse this book – Angelie Multani, Anil Menon, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Brooks Landon, G.J.V. Prasad, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Joan Gordon, Philip Lutgendorf and Suparno Banerjee. Your encouragement is appreciated.

I am grateful to those mentioned here – and to many more.

We can get back to this book now. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had while screaming ‘Khaaaaaan’!

Sami Ahmad Khan

October 2020

New Delhi, India

Acknowledgements

This volume features previously published and unpublished ideas/articles/papers/chapters. The particulars can be found below.

‘Dom(e)inating India’s Tomorrow(s)? Global Climate Change in Select Anglophonic Narratives’. Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2019.

‘Worlds Apart: Myth, Science and Fiction in Sukanya Datta’s Short Stories’. Indraprasth: An International Journal of Culture and Communication Studies, 2019.

‘The Annihilation of Cloning: Caste and Cloning in Generation 14’. Muse India, May–June 2018.

‘The Others in India’s Other Futures’. Science Fiction Studies, 2016.

‘Goddess Sita Mutates Indian Mythology into SF: How Three (SF) Stories from Breaking the Bow Reinterpret the Ramayana’. Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2016.

‘Gods of War Toke While Riding a Vimana: Hindu Gods in Three Indian Science Fiction Novels’. MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, 2016.

‘A Maoist Caliphate near India’s Borders?’ Mithila Review, 2016.

‘Sharing Air with Gandhi Toxin during Exile in 2099 AD: Manjula Padmanabhan’s short stories’. Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 2015.

‘Escape the Beast with Nine Billion Feet in Zombiestan: How Three Indian SF Novels Combat Terrorism, Patriarchy and Capitalism’. Muse India, May–June 2015.

‘Indicting Government Control, Military Industrial Complex and Rogue AI: A Political Reading of 3 (YA) SF Stories’. Rupkatha Journal for Inter-Disciplinary Study in Humanities, 2015.

‘Red Alert: Surveying Indian Science Fiction’. Muse India, May–June 2015.

‘Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: A Critical Study of Science Fiction in Indian English (SFIE)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, 2015.

‘Bollywood’s Encounters with the Third Kind’. Bollywood and Its Other(s). Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

‘Myths, Monsters and Dystopias in India’, essay under submission since August 2019.

List of Illustrations

Figures

1The ‘IN situ Model’ comprises three theses: transMIT, antekaal and neoMONSTERS (this book focuses on the first thesis)

2The ‘transMIT thesis’ explicates how mythology, ideology/materiality and technology function within/across SF texts

3A ‘TIMography’ of ISFE: the spheres represent SF texts caught in the flux generated by the three interacting ‘forces’ (the size of the texts varies as per their ‘soul’)

Table

1ISFE’s Soul

PART 1

SF-101

¹

The Indianness of the science fiction in this country [India] is not dependent on its geographical origin but rather on the cultural and social ambience which gives it its soul.

— Bal Phondke, It Happened Tomorrow (xviii)

1

Whoever Loses, SF Wins

The cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, ‘we are all connected’)

The genre is dead; long live the genre. Science Fiction (SF) has always been a literature of ideas and a literature of change; it must, therefore, be about ideas that change. This incessant heralding – and apotheosis – of change has made SF one of the most popular genres of world literature, ever since the iconic days of Jules Verne (1828–1905) and H. G. Wells (1866–1946), popularised further by stalwarts such as Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) and Robert Heinlein (1907–1988). A genre known for its ‘adaptability’ moves across languages, cultures and mediums to further enhance its position: Doctor Who (1963), Star Trek (1966), Star Wars (1977) and Transformers (1984) are bolstered by Captain Vyom (1998), Halo (2003), Dark (2017) and The Wandering Earth (2019). Is SF, a genre which ‘possesses the critical potentiality to play a role in our own liberation’ (Freedman, 199), on its way to becoming the genre of the twenty-first century?

No wonder scholars have long tried to explicate SF’s basic character and nature, to break it down into its ‘constituent elements’. These actions have led to infinite flightpaths across the transwarp conduits: ‘constantly evolving series of actants’ (Bould and Vint, borrowing from Altman), ‘seven beauties’ (Csicsery-Ronay Jr.), ‘SF’s tendency’ (Freedman), ‘web of [family] resemblances’ and ‘braids’ (Kincaid, echoing Wittgenstein), ‘cultural history’ (Luckhurst) and ‘mythologerm’ (Chattopadhyay) are a few. The particularities of SF’s mutating dasein – the tension between what it was, what it is and what it should/could/would be – are shaped by its material realities: there can be as many kinds of SF as there can be ways of approaching science, society and culture.¹ Even without ‘Deep Thought’, SF – a quantum template whose ontology and epistemology spontaneously mutates with the environment in which it is produced, placed and consumed – becomes a way for us to truly know ourselves.

SF evolves out of pre-existing practices and modes, and responds to its distinct material and aesthetic circumstances. Every age, language and civilisation gets a slightly different definition of SF, which depends on how the idea(s) of science, society and fiction is envisaged and adhered to. Its texts ‘continually wrap imaginary and fanciful ideas in a linguistic shell that bears some measure of resemblance to a society’s understanding of science and scientific activity’ (Chattopadhyay, ‘On the Mythologerm’, 437) and are interlinked with contemporary scientific thought (Parrinder, 67). What constitutes science and how it is viewed keeps on changing with time, and SF with it: the multiverse creates infinite versions of SF – each as valid (or invalid) as the next.

The shift of science from classical to quantum haunts SF’s own historicity. Does SF adhere to the laws of classical physics or does it require a quantum (mis)comprehension? While most genres today shy away from reductive labelling (despite the presence of essentialising definitions), SF’s mutation is even more difficult to interpret. For James Gleick, ‘where chaos begins, classical science stops’ (3): where SF reigns, a new scientific (and science fictional) imagination begins, a way of thought that is imbricated within the materiality, mythology and technology of a society. Since SF injects science into fiction, what happens when we apply science to SF criticism?²

We can begin by reading SF alongside ‘chaos theory’ – which comprehends the inherent patterns within the ostensible randomness of complex systems – and the following hypotheses emerge. One, genres are no longer regarded as fixed (therefore, SF too should be freed of the constraints of any essentialising endeavours); two, SF can be read as an open and dynamical system since it obeys ‘differential equations’ over time; three, SF is a chaotic system that cannot be considered predictable despite being deterministic; four, while the present determines the future, SF’s ‘approximate present’ does not ‘approximately’ determine its future; and, five, SF as a system is hypersensitive to its initial conditions (of creation, distribution and consumption), and since India has different ‘initial conditions’ at different times, in various locations, and in diverging languages, it produces a different kind of SF (the ‘Butterfly Effect’). This categorisation is not only conscious but is also a homage to John Rieder’s five propositions from ‘On Defining SF, or Not’, which proclaim that:

1) SF is historical and mutable; 2) SF has no essence, no single unifying characteristic, and no point of origin; 3) SF is not a set of texts, but rather a way of using texts and of drawing relationships among them; 4) SF’s identity is a differentially articulated position in an historical and mutable field of genres; 5) attribution of the identity of SF to a text constitutes an active intervention in its distribution and reception. (193)

One: SF has always been about controlling or infusing chaos (or even both): ‘chaos is when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future’ (Lorenz, quoted in Danforth). Now, genres keep on changing – and the epistemology of their construction and reception with them. They are no longer considered to be immutable and their