Thread by @theBekku, What?? You don't want to read SF/F by dead white problematic men? [...]

What?? You don't want to read SF/F by dead white problematic men? Cool. You'd rather read stories by one of our own?? Cool-er! Because i've got you covered, with this here thread on some fine recent-ish short fiction by Indian writers you can read online right now...
#IndianSF

From the one-&-only Vandana Singh, this title story from her latest collection, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories explores new concepts in machine design/function by way of an engineering exam...
https://www.tor.com/2015/04/29/ambiguity-machines-an-examination-vandana-singh/ #IndianSF

Ambiguity Machines: An Examination

This tale is an unusual take on an engineering exam that explores new concepts in machine design and function. All new machine discoveries must be investigated and classified. This is the story o…

https://www.tor.com/2015/04/29/ambiguity-machines-an-examination-vandana-singh/

The Song Between Worlds – from Devourers-author @IndrapramitDas, who just won a Shirley Jackson award – is about a 'musical' encounter, between a privileged earth-born space tourist and a Martian shepherd
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/indra-das-short-story-song-between-worlds.html #IndianSF

What Will It Be Like to Vacation on Mars? Author Indra Das Discovers the Hazards and Beauty of...

The author of the award-winning The Devourers looks at Mars in the far future, when visitors and permanent residents experience very different Red Planets.

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/indra-das-short-story-song-between-worlds.html

From the author of Domechild, @nameshiv comes 'And Now His Lordship is Laughing', a gutting tale of revenge with a grandmother dollmaker & set against the backdrop of the 1943 Bengal famine. Nebula/Hugo nominated.
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/and-now-his-lordship-is-laughing/ #IndianSF

And Now His Lordship Is Laughing

He’s still dancing away happily even as the doll kicks its feet in perfect unison with his. Apa watches them both, her heart now sowing fields without a thought for the reaping.

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/and-now-his-lordship-is-laughing/

The gripping title story from @divyastweets' fabulous 2019 collection, Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and other Possible Situations. Keep an eye out for her upcoming debut novel, Machinehood.
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/contingency-plans-apocalypse/ #IndianSF

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse - Uncanny Magazine

My apocalypse doesn’t ride on horseback or raise the dead or add suns to the sky. It arrives by tank and drone, the strict report of automatic weapons, the spying eyes of neighbors. It seeks my...

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/contingency-plans-apocalypse/

An act of compassion puts an Indian circus artist in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power in @miminality's novelette, His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light: https://www.tor.com/2019/01/23/his-footsteps-through-darkness-and-light-mimi-mondal/ #IndianSF

His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light

An act of compassion puts a trapeze master in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power.

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/23/his-footsteps-through-darkness-and-light-mimi-mondal/

Written in the form of a bibliography, @her_nibsen's Nebula/Hugo-nominated, Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island, is a great horror story with f/f cannibal romance http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/ten-excerpts-from-an-annotated-bibliography-on-the-cannibal-women-of-ratnabar-island/ #IndianSF

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island - Nightmare...

“There are few tales as tragic as that of the denizens of Ratnabar Island. When a British expedition made landfall on its shores in 1891, they did so armed to the teeth, braced for the same hostile...

http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/ten-excerpts-from-an-annotated-bibliography-on-the-cannibal-women-of-ratnabar-island/

More horror? weird fiction? Then read @flightofsand's title story from his newest collection, Come Tomorrow & Other Tales of Bangalore Terror. A fabulous ghost story that includes a ghost's story. The ghost btw is Blr's famous naaLe ba bhoota... https://annatambour.net/ComeTomorrow-JayaprakashSathyamurthy.htm #IndianSF

Magic, memory & dreams all collide in @prashatsa's tale of resistance and culture, In Seven Dreams of a Valley
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/seven-dreams-of-a-valley/ #IndianSF

Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Seven Dreams of a Valley by Prashanth Srivatsa

I urged the men to pack their belongings and abandon the village. But the boy who had become a man laughed and said that he had never met anyone who, when a fire began to burn, advised to walk...

http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/seven-dreams-of-a-valley/

One of my ALL-TIME favourite short stories, Pandal Food by @samitbasu. First published in Fantasy For Good antho. Read this story set against the backdrop of Durga Puja, you'll never look at a pandal the same way again, or 'pandal food'.
https://www.readersdigest.in/culturescape/story-pandal-food-124423 #IndianSF

Pandal Food

This is Calcutta, during the pujas. Of course thousands of people have shown up to worship the goddess. All right, not worship the goddess, worship each other, and food ...

https://www.readersdigest.in/culturescape/story-pandal-food-124423

'Things that Happened While We Waited for Our Magical Grandmother to Die – No. 39'. What a title. This Kuzhali Manickavel story concerns itself with three children in a sprawling house with a mind of its own
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/things-that-happened-while-we-waited-for-our-magical-grandmother-to-die-no-39/ #IndianSF

Things That Happened While We Waited For Our Magical Grandmother to Die—No. 39

When we were young, we would always get lost in the house. Quietly but suddenly, we would find ourselves in rooms or corridors that had not been there before. Unfamiliar clothing hung on chairs or …

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/things-that-happened-while-we-waited-for-our-magical-grandmother-to-die-no-39/

A hapless stray dog is hooked up with neural implants and used in a scientific experiment to train an artificial neural network in Shankar Gopalakrishnan’s 'The Right Way to be Sad'
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-right-way-to-be-sad/ #IndianSF

The Right Way To Be Sad

They were not the kind of dreams that you’d expect a dog to have. The dreams he’d had before the men came had been doggy dreams. The dreams he had after they grabbed him, though, these dreams were …

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-right-way-to-be-sad/

Not recent, but a must-read. By the legend Jayant Narlikar, The Adventure is perhaps one of the very few alternate history stories from India (avlbl in English) & also one that imagines an India that's never been colonised. https://mithilareview.com/narlikar_04_16/ #IndianSF

The Adventure by Jayant Vishnu Narlikar | Mithila Review

Date : July 19, 1986. Time: 7.36 p.m. That was when it happened. At that precise moment of time, Professor Gangadharpant Gaitonde collided with a truck and apparently vanished into thin air. But let...

https://mithilareview.com/narlikar_04_16/

In @shal_srinivasan's urban infrastructure story Road: A Fairytale, the protagonist is a most unusual one. Also, proper Bangalore feels (obvs)
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/road-a-fairytale/ #IndianSF

Road: A Fairytale

Here I am, it thought, and then, immediately: How I hate everyone.

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/road-a-fairytale/

Excerpts from two short stories from Magical Women, the fabulous all-women feminist SF anthology ed by @suku06.
The Rakshasi’s Rose Garden: https://theselkie.co.uk/the-rakshasis-rose-garden/

The Girl Who Haunted Death by @deepblueruin https://scroll.in/article/958473/read-at-home-in-this-fantasy-story-death-visits-a-young-woman-who-has-accosted-him-in-the-past #IndianSF

Read at home: In this fantasy story, ‘Death’ visits a young woman who has accosted him in the past

An excerpt from the story The Girl Who Haunted Death by Nikita Deshpande, from ‘Magical Women’, edited by Sukanya Venkatraghavan.

https://theselkie.co.uk/the-rakshasis-rose-garden/

Not recent at all, but timeless. Amongst the first feminist SF stories anywhere in the world, this 1905 classic (yes, 115 years ago), Sultana's Dream imagines a happy country Ladyland ruled by women (hence happy), with all the men shut indoors
https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html #IndianSF

a story that's eerily relevant to current times. also, 'don’t go with strange beautiful women you meet alone on the road is a maxim of all B-grade horror. A haunting tale this, Tesu by @gaachburi here: https://www.himalmag.com/tesu-short-story-competition-2019/ #IndianSF

Tesu - Himal Southasian

Shortlisted in the Himal Short Story Competition 2019.

https://www.himalmag.com/tesu-short-story-competition-2019/

Future Fiction from FirstPost, a rare instance when a news site published SF. Aliens, life after death, tech-dystopias & more. Stories by @suhitkelkar, @abhaiyengar & Analog/Virtual author @lavanya_ln ( https://www.firstpost.com/long-reads/analogvirtual-4282381.html) et al. Full series here: https://www.firstpost.com/tag/futurefiction

Analog/Virtual - Firstpost

In a new world where productivity is prized, under-performers are subjected to a strange form of punishment | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

https://www.firstpost.com/long-reads/analogvirtual-4282381.html

ok. there's a lot of love i see coming in for Indian SF/F. truly gladdens the heart. if you're interested in digging deeper, do follow this other thread that collects some articles from @factordaily's #NWWonFD sf column about sf from/about India https://twitter.com/theBekku/status/1115572683427606530?s=20 #IndianSF

https://twitter.com/theBekku/status/1115572683427606530?s=20

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