The “first Indian SFF genre novel” and others

I read two new books this week – Kleptomania by Manjula Padmanabhan and The Simoqin Prophecies by Samit Basu. The first is a collection of short stories – 3 of them science fiction. The second is what has been touted (by some, atleast) as the ‘first Indian sff genre novel in English’. I just finished the Prophecies – and it’s left me with a feeling of incompleteness.

A few weeks back I was at a weekend get together of old college mates in Bangalore. While talking about books in general one of said something like ‘hey have you read that Indian science fiction writer? Sumit…Sumit Basu I think his name is’. I hadn’t heard of any such writer, I said, and the matter dropped there. After getting back to Hyderabad, some googling turned up a lot of references – it’s Samit Basu, and The Simoqin Prophecies was published in 2004 (Penguin India). He is pretty well known by now, and my first taste of his writing was The Plasmoids.

After some hunting in Walden and Odyssey I got hold of the Prophecies. Normally I shy away from works of fantasy and works leaning towards fantasy – but I decided to give this a try. The blurb on the back cover was too cliched, though.

Maybe I’ve lost my bias or maybe the book is really good, but I finished it. And I like it and dislike it at the same time. I dislike it because the influences from Harry Potter are a bit too obvious and so is some of the other borrowed stuff.
I like it because I admire the author’s imaginative power of conjuring up the world where the action takes place, the easy, fast paced, no nonsense style of writing, and the humour. I like the (well) disguised parallel Earth, the city-state of Kol, which is based on Kolkata to a great extent (including Chinatown!!), the references which make you want to find out more about this world he’s thought up.

I mentioned at the beginning that it’s left me with a feeling of incompleteness – well, that’s why I’m hunting for the sequel right now :).

Samit Basu’s blog is at samitbasu.blogspot.com.

The Frankfurt book sale is still going on in Hyderabad – last time I picked up Humans (Robert J Sawyer), some anthologies, some Pohls, Shadows’ End (Sherri S. Tepper) and a 1968 hardbound edition of 2001.

While Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C41+ might not have much of a storyline, it amazes with its sheer power of prophecy. Only Gernsback could have possibly imagined all those technological breakthroughs in 1911.
This thin volume goes on for most of it's first half like a future technological encyclopedia, begins to concentrate on the more romantic interactions of the protagonist and the girl he's met as a result of a cross connected telephone, and ends with an interstellar chase. The title of the book has yet another meaning, but I won't give it away here.

By the way, the 2005 Hugo awards are at http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/pressr47.htm
Hm...I just realized I've not read a single one of them yet :(.

On the same note, I'm working on building my database of sf books again after a gap of two months. It's quite boring work, entering data, coupled with occassional curses as I realize I've bought the same book twice, or even thrice in one of my sprees, not remembering that I already have it.

Currently I'm reading Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear.

Movies I've watched recently -

1. The Black Hole - disney stuff, with atrocious dialogues sometimes. Reminded me of the more tedious parts of Star Wars. Disclaimer - I never liked Star Wars.
2. Um, thats it.
   

The Andromeda Strain is one of the best Crichton has written - but the movie (1971) seems to have an uncomfortable dependency on the book. Watching it last week gave me the impression that Crichton had written the screenplay - it's almost a page-to-frame transformation. It might be difficult to appreciate it without having read the book, but it's well made, with fast paced scenes. The technology show is of course, appropriate to the times it was made in, but apart from the bulging tube computer screens I couldn't find much else to mark as really dated.
Definitely worth a watch. At one go.

New stuff

Ancient, My Enemy, A Universe collection, Total Eclipse and Dreamfall (Joan D. Vinge) were last week's acquisitions. And...well...Ancient Evenings (Norman Mailer)....it was looking good on the shelf, so...
Tried watched a bit of Plan 9 from Outer Space, but got scared after that vampirish dead wife spreads her arms. Gave up till the weekend.