Skip to main content

Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald : Short stories set in a divided India of the future


Cyberabad Days is an absolutely fantastic collection of stories of varying length. I never thought science fiction set in India could be done so well until I read this and River of Gods.
The way Ian McDonald writes it seems that he has lived in India forever and his observations about the culture, the ways the caste system works, the preference for a male child are spot on. His prose is electric and Ian McDonald turns even spiritual discourses into absolute page turners. Indeed it is amazing that the best science fiction on India has been written by someone British.
There are seven stories in all each of them covering ample terrain.My favorites include 
1) The little goddess
A child who is annointed as a goddess gets thrust into the real world the moment her blood is spilled. She becomes a carrier of high level AIs. Absolutely brilliant.
2) Vishnu at the cat circus
Places the whole of river of gods novel into context. A tale of how a genetically re engineered Brahmin has to live his life. Must be read to be experienced.
3) The Djinn's wife
A human and an AI fall in love. Again read to experience.
4) The Dust Assassin
A tale of rivalry between the two ancient houses of Rajupatana and the Khans and how a princess is engineered to be a weapon from the time she is born.
This is how you write short fiction. I couldn't put the collection down till I had read all of them cover to cover.
An extract which I think is growing ever more pertinent in modern India.
"Economists teach India’s demographic crisis as an elegant example of market failure. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states. A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. Multiply by the three hundred million of India’s emergent class. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first-century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million, and a middle class with four times as many males as females. Market failure. Individual pursuit of self-interest damages larger society. Elegant to economists; to fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful young men like Jasbir caught in a wife-drought, catastrophic."

You can buy Cyberabad days here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An ode to Hall 1

This goes out to Hall 1, the hostel where all the 4th year students of IIT Kanpur live. Indeed this hostel serves as a meeting ground between familiar foes some of who go on to become friends. A lot of factors make Hall 1 what it is. It acquires a mythic quality right from the first year when juniors are often threatened with “Aaj raat hall 1 main chal”. The seniors who live in Hall 1 seem to have a totally different existence as compared to the rest of the campus. On a visit to the hostel in the first year all one hears is the constant swearing, and sees everyone in shorts or in suits. Legends surround Hall 1 and in our first year the stories we hear are of Hall 1 and none other. Indeed Hall 1 residents perpetuate this myth as well acting as if they are the scariest beings on the campus. Indeed the fear is such that if a fresher goes to Hall 1 they are not expected to come back. There is something about Hall 1 that separates it from the rest of the Halls. For starters, Hall 1 has
8 comments
Read more

The best of Paul Graham

Paul Graham is a startup incubator. He also happens to write essays which are really really good. In general I wish I had them read them a lot earlier. I have been reading his essays for a while now. Here are some extracts which I liked and so it begins. Addictive things have to be treated as if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're trying to stop doing. If you leave a path to it, he'll find it. And my main computer is now freed for work. If you try this trick, you'll probably be struck by how different it feels when your computer is disconnected from the Internet. It was alarming to me how foreign it felt to sit in front of a computer that could only be used for work, because that showed how much time I must have been wasting. From Disconnecting Distraction How do you avoid copying the wrong things? Copy only what you genuinely like. That would have sav
Post a Comment
Read more

Chapter 2 - Kunti learns a Mantra

Preparations for the arrival of Durvasa were in full swing. The Brahmins were busy perfecting their intonations and enunciations. (Usually they could get by with many mistakes and even chanting the wrong mantras but Durvasa and his retinue would spot it in an instant.) The preparation of the food, lodging arrangements were supervised by Kunti in name only. The king had ensured that his entire advisory was on the task and that Kunti merely knew what was going on. He was after all trying to do what was best for the kingdom. Sage Durvasa and his retinue finally arrived. They were spotted by the tower guards and information was relayed across stating that a band of safron wearing mendicants has been seen. Durvasa of course was the leader of the pack. He was the only one sporting a beard while the rest were bereft of hair from head to toe. (These brahmins never did anything by halves, either they had beards upto their feet or they had nothing, Tapasya(meditation in plain english) was th
4 comments
Read more