The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction takes region's writing into new territory, but stops short of genius

In terms of the literary canons it has spawned over the last century, South Asia can be compared to a spoon chucked out of batter made up of tragedy and aspiration. Enter Gollancz, a popular sci-fi imprint that has just launched its first anthology of fiction from the region, titled The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction. “Mythology may seem a lot like SF, but I believe it’s fundamentally different — it develops out of faith and mystical beliefs rather than, say, a curiosity about the world and reality, or a mischievous desire to bend the rules that govern the Universe,” Padmanabhan says. ‘Science always loses out to Inspector Matadeen,’ it says at one point. But there are some pure SF stories too, like Sami Ahmad Khan’s 15004 that speaks of an alien invasion aboard a train in Uttar Pradesh.