Own maps/imagined terrain : the emergence of science fiction in India

The emergence of science fiction (sf) in Bengal in India is situated within the historical boundaries and intersections that mark a certain conjuncture with the arrival and subsequent entrenchment of colonial-Enlightenment science. This paper traces the specific responses to this form of science, and the appearance of sf as a narrative mode embodying a certain kind of ambivalence, that negotiates a space, an imagined territory, within the framework of colonial science. An analysis of a few early sf writings in Bengal, which outline the narrative trajectories evolving in Indian sf, locates this ambivalence.