Word Count: 2207 | Reading Time: 8 min
Salām and a very warm welcome to this little spec-fic-y corner of the literary internet. I’m new here at Tasavvur, maybe or maybe not like you. I’m also rather nervous, truth be told. A couple of months ago—sometime in October, to be exact—during a particularly impulsive and rare, extroverted moment, I decided to answer a query and write a review/roundup blog of South Asian speculative fiction for my friends. The general idea was to try and track most of what is newly available every quarter, review what has been read, and, at the very least, shine some spotlight over what has been published even if not yet been read.
Excited for the opportunity, I jumped right in, starting a thoroughly detailed, to-be color-coded spreadsheet that very night to begin tracking my readings. And oh, it was a true delight, both the spreadsheet and the reading. The nervousness trickled in when I sat down to write this because, as my friends will vouch for it, I tend to forget myself and babble when I talk about stories. Thus, what’s about to proceed is essentially a gush fest.
In this issue, we’ll be covering two novellas and five short stories from Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Kaleidotrop, Apparition Lit, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, all published in the last quarter of this year. However, it is important to note that this is by no means a complete or comprehensive list. South Asia is an incredibly vast and diverse region, and while we have tried to include as many stories as possible, we’re aware that the chances of having overlooked many spaces are very much real. Moreover, given the time constraints, we have to work with what we’ve got. Henceforth, we hope you will grant us a little grace as we find our footing.
Without further ado, here’s a roundup of South Asian speculative fiction stories published between October and December 2024.
Novellas
Fractal Karma by Arula Ratnakar – Clarkesworld, Issue #217
Complex, aspiring, chilling. Mathematics meets philosophy meets psychedelics meets government exploitation meets exploration of existence and karma. The story of a morally-grey woman caught up in a self-sabotaging spiral of guilt and grief who ends up getting involved in a sketchy, mind-linking secret experiment. There are so many layers in there, the novella packs a punch that leaves you reeling.
A hard science fiction suspense, the plot is a complex nexus of layers, the characters real and flawed. Ratnakar makes you feel for Leela, her confusion and fears and regrets and biases and desperate attempts to run away from it all and curtail her loneliness. What works well for the slowly-becoming-more-complex narrative is the resonance of these emotions throughout, which amplifies the chilling effect of the ultimate decision at the end.
Some of my favorite parts of the novella are the sections that take place within the mind-linked constructions. The narrative flows seamlessly between present and past, memory and delusion. There’s a heady quality to those trips, simultaneously cautious and curious and compulsive, which in turn are also very much the individual sentiments of our linked group. There’s almost a subtle pattern to it. You read about the mathematical concepts of the loop—intricately woven into the plot with really cool diagrams—and then are thrown inside it. But each time, the familiar has been changed just so.
“…with each alteration, something feels different about her existence. An almost imperceptible blurring to what makes her Leela…”
These trips allow you to do both, feel for Leela as well as ponder upon your own beliefs of consciousness and the way it emerges. So, while you’re slowly guided towards the ending and even, somewhat, come to expect it, the reality of it breaks your heart and chills you nonetheless. It makes you question: when given the choice between a “delusional catharsis” and painful, guilty reality, which would you choose? I know I will be reading this tale many times over again.
Antyesti for a Dead Ganesha, Part 1 & 2 by Ashok K. Banker – Lightspeed, Issue #174
Crime drama meets science fiction in this incredible novella about a long-dead detective once again temporarily resurrected inside a corpse to investigate the murder of an illegally manufactured clone of an Indian god. Writing that sentence alone produces so many streaks in my brain, it is remarkable that I can talk about this story in any coherent manner. There are simply too many layers here to unfold in a single sitting without turning this into an essay but I will try my best. Hmm, let’s see. There’s technology, mythology, class, caste, economic and social inequality, to name a few. Privileged people live segregated lives up in the air but there’s a fantastical forest on contaminated earth that is alive and interconnected in all its forms. Overarchingly, there’re the underlying themes of life and death, both as a reality and metaphor. What values does one hold dear in a world where the powerful can keep you ensnared not only in your lifetime but also after death?
“Dead, but sustained biologically for such time as when your services might be required again. To be resurrected at that time and given an assignment.”
Moreover, how does one even define life when all of it, the air you breathe, the colors you see, the sounds you hear, the thoughts you think, are processed and augmented to feed you a reality deemed appropriate at someone else’s behest? Constantly monitored, filtered, choreographed, and “curated.”
The sense of wonder that is the tech expansion of Mumbai of 2094 competes with the sense of despair at the inevitable patterns of power structures at any given time. The future feels familiar in that sense, and mundane dances with the macabre. Neel’s nostalgia for his own happier past is interspersed by the memories stored in the dead brain of the body he currently occupies. Simmering in there is the anger at what’s been done to him alongside heart-wrenching reminiscences of the peaceful dreamless void. But despite it all, hope lingers.
“…Neel thinks back to the brief hour or two he spent in the city below. He remembers the sights, the smells, the sounds, the life.
He wishes he had had time to eat while down there.
Perhaps next time.”
Short Stories
Of Black Town’s Monster by Chaitanya Murali – Kaleidotrope, Autumn 2024
It is 1695 in India and the Company’s red-jacketed British soldiers roam about freely with guns. Running rampant in this cruel, unjust, and segregated world is the menace of a monster who comes alive in the dark to rip people apart. Together, a young boy and girl must plot to take this threat down and mark the beginning of a rebellion. I simply love the atmosphere that Murali creates, combining the horrifying realities of colonization with the existential dread of a literal monster slaughtering people. The stakes are incredibly high, the prose embellished with notes of grief and anger that linger in a world where civilian lives are held hostage and used for political and personal gain by powers that be, no thought spared for the innocent lives ruined.
“Now, it is time for their honor to take over.
To shoot an unarmed man in the back.
…I will not be subject to their honor any longer.”
It is emotionally charged and highly dramatic, the stealth and dread very well done. The reader gets immersed in the feeling of being trapped in a system far beyond your reach, the inescapable despair of wanting to challenge something so much bigger than yourself, and the quest, the hope to try nonetheless.
Black Wine From the Slopes of Dawn by Rajiv Moté – Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #417
Poignant, at times uncomfortable, and simply brilliant, I think of this story as an epic high fantasy Christmas Carol in necromancer’s land.
“What grew here on the opposite Slopes of Dawn, buffered by soil and stone, reaching for the wan sunlight, was not so much deadly as strange.”
The pirate Marelio journeys to the necromancer’s dark country (I need a map of that land, please!) to purchase the mysterious black wine as a gift for a woman named Tankrit. However, the simple enough task leads to a wine-tasting event which opens up Marelio to altercations with his past, present, and future. The landscape is ominously intriguing, the narrative emotional. There were several points where I had to simply stop and stare at a wall before going back to reread a line or four.
“At what point did one man become the next version of himself, the next bead on the string? Would he even know?”
Moté creates a world that is simultaneously familiar as it is new and so vast, I wanted to be left alone to roam all lanes at leisure. And it appears some of my wishes have been answered because there are a few more standalone but connected shorts set in the same world. You can read more about them on Moté’s blog here. I’m also very excited to reveal that we have in this issue a new Moté original. The Kraken Waketh is available to read now.
Technicolour Bath by Raahem Alvi – Clarkesworld, Issue #218
“Sumaira saw photos of her brain scan that night. Some part of her gray matter, at a molecular level, was pixelated. The resolution. The resolution killed a part of her.”
Ruthless, heartbreaking, and, frankly, scary. Scary in the sense that it made me see the possibility of such a tech—and its inevitable subscription models—existing. A world, or well, technically, a time, where human consciousness can be effectively scanned, mapped, charted, and transferred into cloud storage. An animated 3D reconstruction of your loved ones, a new kind of undead who rise to coded life in virtual portions whose effectiveness is dependent on how much you can pay.
Alvi takes you on a journey that makes you live the wreckage of this segmented life and death, both as a recipient of this process and their loved one. It makes you wonder about grief, joy, isolation, memory, and consciousness, both the sum of their parts and the whole. Most of all, it makes you wonder about love. What becomes of it when the person you felt it for exists only in the form of digital data? What becomes of the person? And what becomes of you?
“Love is in the air. And below the feet sits a great drawing abyss.”
There’s a tragic hopelessness that stays, a desperation that claws. But life goes on, and so do you.
“Together again they would be colors.”
Our Last Evening in a Moon-Struck City by Madeeha Reza – Apparition Lit, Issue # 2: Harbinger
Oh, this was beautiful, evocative and devastating. A tale of two siblings, rooted in remorse and grief, set in the historic city of Bengal. There’s an air of impending doom to this short, the loud gong of a new upcoming catastrophe floating in the air. Woven through this fantastical tapestry of, as the title suggests, the moon falling, are layers upon layers of family history.
Reza knits a world that is as vast as it is deeply personal, a picturesque city laden with travelers yet brimming with loneliness. The ghosts of the past can be seen swimming in the present, and the present is about to have its future washed away. A tale that will stay with me.
“No one can outrun the tides.”
Driver by Sameem Siddiqui – Clarkesworld, Issue # 219
“It is a good day for a coalescence.”
A truly delightful read. It starts relatively simply and even, dare I say, somewhat familiarly. A driver employed in a cab service is on his way to pick up a new passenger and begins lamenting the way people treat him while he drives them around. The routine predictability of the narrative feels like a long drive on a well-known road. The meandering anecdotes of the driver’s childhood, life and past employment keep one engaged so thoroughly, it comes as a swift shock when the new cryptic-speaking passenger starts with his mind-reading tricks.
Siddiqui paints a picture so seemingly regular in appearance, you are at first lulled into its mundane comfort and then jerked upright halfway through. The air of strangeness, once slowly exposed, never truly leaves. The revelation at the end makes the entire arrangement of the narrative even more enjoyable.
Spec-Fic Spotlight: New Releases We’re Excited to Read
There’s a long list of new releases our team’s really excited to get into soon, including:
The Lotus Empire, by Tasha Suri
Interstellar Megachef, by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
The Sentence, by Gautam Bhatia
Fledgling, by S. K. Ali
Heir, by Sabaa Tahir
Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, anthology edited by Indrapramit Das
Lastly, our wonderful editor for this issue, Archita Mittra, has two new stories out: The House Guest, in the Luna Station Quarterly, Issue 60, and Happily Ever After, in the Blaft Book of Anti-Castle SF.
That marks the end of our first ever review/roundup blog of South Asian speculative fiction. We’ll see you again next quarter with more stories.
Until then, happy reading!