The world is not enough

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">This is for muggles. The ones whose eyebrows disappear into orbit around Tau Ceti if you label SF&F as literature (don''t call it sci-fi, please. That''s as antiquated as hi-fi). <br />This is also a Cinderella story. Long before J K Rowling found the glass slipper, and made the crossover from fantasy to mainstream with her seamless merging of the classic children''s school story with the classic sword-and-sorcery story, there was this genre sitting in the ashes.<br /><br />Looked down on by the “mainstream�, it was for kids, geeks, and the occasional weirdo. SF&F has traditionally never received an invite to the literary ball. <br /><br />But instead of waiting around for a fairy godmother, it went ahead and created its own parallel universe; spawned sub-genres like comedy, satire, crime, romance, historical, thrillers, political, and social commentary.<br /><br /> So shucks to Nobels and Bookers. For those in the know, a Hugo or a Nebula is as prestigious. For those in the know, it''s what we call ''the literature of ideas''. <br /><br />In the pre-world war years, SF believed that science would eventually catch ...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal">...up with it. Science hasn''t: no antigravity, no spaceship and sun empire. But society and politics have. ...<br /><br />...Clash of civilisations, euthanasia, artificial intelligence, gay marriage, flat worlds.<br /><br /> Oh yes! Go read Dune, which is almost entirely about the impact of an Islamic-type messiah on a backward, feudal society in a desert landscape. Did anyone say Taliban? Not then. SF writers have logically and imaginatively taken socio-political trends to their often illogical conclusions. <br /><br />Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 long before George Bush discovered Iraq or R R Patil discovered dance bars. In 1969, Ursula Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness, even then considered a classic in the right circles.<br /><br /> If you don''t ''get'' gay marriages, or the line between male bonding and homosexuality, a stint on the planet Winter may help. Connie Willis takes the feminist movement through a hilarious sub-routine with her Even the Queen, where a mother and two grandmothers ''freed'' from menstruation thanks to science...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section3"><div class="Normal">... try to convince their rebellious granddaughter that reversing the biological change is taking feminism too far.<br /><br />Catherine Asaro looks at a woman-dominated society through the eyes of the ''weaker'' male sex. <br /><br />Isaac Asimov is about the only name most people have heard of he used up a l...<br /><br />...lifetime''s scientific and academic reputation to gain respectability and dignity for his first love, SF.<br /><br />Muggles, like muggles, refuse to see the magic in the pages around them. For years-through the ''30s to the ''70s-the best work in SF and fantasy was published in shortlived magazines, with the rare oddball publisher like Del Rey and Tor risking their pages for a dream. <br /><br />The best work is still published in magazines, mostly on the net and more oddball publishers are signing up. <br /><br />And it''s years before they make it to Indian bookshelves, where English...<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section4"><div class="Normal">... fiction trends are dictated by the same junta who can''t tell a <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Calcutta Chromosome</span> from a Castafiore Emerald. <br /><br />Ask Salman Rushdie. His first book, <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Grimus</span>, totally F&SF, and his best according to some, sank without a trace. <br /><br />He had the good sense to set the magic of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Midnight''s Children</span> in a strong cultural-political-historical milieu, instead of putting his characters in...<br /><br />... another space-time dimension. <br /><br />If he''d left it at that one, he may not have had to spend a decade underground-the kind of people who issue fatwas usually don''t read SF. <br />Like Cinderella, the prince who ''rediscovered'' SF was Hollywood. By the way, this would be a good time to bone up on C S Lewis and Douglas Adams. <br /><br />Hollywood is making movies on <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Hitchiker''s</span> and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Chronicles of Narnia</span>. If you''d rather ''wait for the movie'', you can spend your time with a book on how to repair an automobile in the Namibian desert. <br /><br />Me, I got a ticket to a parallel universe, where unicorns and vampires dance with cyborgs and quasars. See you some other space-time.</div> </div>