Joshua Fagan Columbia University Abstract Though the futurist work of H.G. Wells boldly imagines a future beyond the narrow insularity and single-minded devotion to selfish profit that he loathed in his Victorian milieu, his images of the future remain tinged by anxious fears of societal degeneration. His famous The Time Machine relies on a rigid…
Dr. Rajkumar Bera Assistant Professor, Midnapore City College, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal Abstract Neal Stephenson’s classic science fiction Snow Crash endeavours to map out the paradigm of modern scientific world where the characters try to find more freedom but more they are controlled by the power of internet, religion and modern systematic cybernetic world. The…
Goutam Majhi, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya Abstract: Science Fiction, abbreviated as Sci-Fi, falls within the literary genre of Speculative Fiction. Works of Sci-Fi amalgamate scientific thought and prognostic foresight. In the current Anthropocene epoch, which is also termed ‘Capitalocene’, humans are causing the cataclysmic degradation of the environment by bioengineering the…
Soham Guha Writer Abstract The golden age of science fiction came with the birth of magazines in the 1940s, especially Galaxy, Astounding, and Analog. A magazine not only creates a stable writer and reader pool but also establishes effective communication between them as a medium of genre evolution. In Bengali, it began with Adrish Bardhan’s…
John Charles Ryan Adjunct Associate Professor, Southern Cross University, Australia Abstract This article undertakes a comparative phytocritical reading of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse, recipient of the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word For World Is Forest, winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novella and finalist for…
Hemalatha Kannan M.A., University of Madras Abstract This paper examines the implications of the concepts of parallel universe, multiverse and time travel for our understanding of the nature of reality. It argues that these concepts raise important questions about the nature of reality, fate, free will, and causality. Additionally, the paper explores how science fiction…
Swarnendu Dam Visiting Professor, Sister Nivedita University Abstract: Doris Lessing, in The Memoirs of a Survivor, presents a dystopian future where society has broken down due to the Crisis. My paper explores the possibility of reading Memoirs as a visionary fiction by analyzing (1) how spirituality can bring the necessary equilibrium or harmony in…
Darko Suvin F.R.S.C. Emeritus, McGill University, Montréal QC, Canada [dsuvin@gmail.com, Lucca, Italy] On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors of the later times of…
Niladri Mahapatra Sate Aided College Teacher, Dept. of English, Bhatter College, Dantan, Dr. Subhadeep Paul is an Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Literature, Language and Cultural Studies, Bankura University, West Bengal. He has co-edited Anxieties, Influences & After: Critical Responses to Postcolonialism & Neocolonialism (Worldview Publishers, in association with Wimbledon Press, UK, 2009),…
Niladri Mahapatra & Akasdip Dey State Aided College Teachers, Dept. of English, Bhatter College Dantan Science fiction, known as a popular genre by the consensus of many opinions, is originally a touchstone that represents a cognitive dissonance by throwing all the readers in conundrum which creates a clash between fiction and truth. So, science fiction…