The Decadence of Humanity: Double Dose of Dystopias
Science Fiction has been successful in instigating imaginary futures for humanity. The two most distinctive features include utopia and dystopia. Utopia refers to a perfect society, whereas dystopia refers to a social order without the value of human life in a general sense. It is an invented world in which ominous tendencies of our present social, political, and technological order are projected into a catastrophic society in the future.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1952), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986), and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) are regarded as some of the finest examples of dystopian science fiction.
It is time to delve into the first two dystopian classics, Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
William [আরো পড়ুন]
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Writer – Douglas Adams
Year – 1979
Country- United Kingdom
Genre – Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Comedy
Our life is nothing but a strange series of phenomena. Sometimes it makes sense, and the rest of the time, it doesn’t. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is serious, but mostly it is meaningless because in the end, nothing really happens, we are stuck in an infinite loop of birth-life-dual life-death-afterlife-hell-heaven-reincarnation-moksha or nothing at all, and we question about the meaning of life or life itself.
Are you confused? Are you feeling “ What the hell is going on over here ?”
This is the beauty of absurd literature and obviously the world of Douglas Adams’ “ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Galaxy”, where the protagonist Arthur wakes up in the morning only to discover two things, firstly his house is going to be demolished by a bulldozer [আরো পড়ুন]
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Book Review of Gautam Bhatia’s The Wall
Gautam Bhatia is a well-known figure in the world of science fiction as the editor of award-winning magazine Strange Horizons. While reviewing The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Volume 2, I came across an amazing space opera story, The List’ by Mr. Bhatia about the homogenization of a human society. Thus, the debut novel of Gautam Bhatia ‘The Wall’ was the obvious choice to feed the hunger of a science fiction reader.
Let us see whether The Wall has lived up to the expectation.
The author takes his own sweet time to tell this saga of revolution in a farfetched land of Sumer. The book comes up with a map (have a close look) which shows a city surrounded by a wall. The Sumerian society is matriarchal in nature and quite liberal when it comes to homosexual relationships but the citizens might face issues with free speech and free thinking. [আরো পড়ুন]
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রিভিউ: অ্যানালগ ভার্চুয়াল
অ্যানালগ ভার্চুয়াল
প্রকাশক: হ্যাচেট ইন্ডিয়া
লেখক: লাবণ্য লক্ষ্মীনারায়ণ
ভাষা: ইংরেজি
ধারা: সাইবারপাঙ্ক
আপনাকে এমন এক ভবিষ্যতে স্বাগত জানাই যেখানে জাতপাত বা ধর্মের কোনো ভূমিকা নেই, বরং যোগ্যতাই হল জীবনধারনের একমাত্র মাপকাঠি। এখানে উৎপাদনশীলতা আর ক্ষমতা সমার্থক এবং ক্ষমতা না থাকলে আপনি শেষ। লেখক লাবণ্য লক্ষ্মীনারায়ণ পুঙ্খানুপুঙ্খভাবে [আরো পড়ুন]
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Review: Analog Virtual
Analog Virtual
Publisher : Hachette India
Author : Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Language : English
Genre : Cyberpunk
Welcome to the future where caste, creed and religion are not important but merit is the sole criteria of life because productivity is power and without power you are doomed. The author has finely developed a world built on the ideology of your contribution to the society or to be specifically a capitalistic society owned by Bell Corp, the one which controls everything and everyone.
The food, clothing, social media, art, recreation, leisure and your choice of birth ( delivery procedure) is under the radar of Big Brother, not the Orwellian Oceania but in the Apex City erstwhile Bangalore.
The world of Apex city has been developed through a series of short stories with reappearance of few characters. The beauty of the book lies in the unified sense of diverse short stories interconnected by the fact that all dwell in the dystopian world owned by Bell Corporation.
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