A Galaxy of Fantastic Fiction from Bengal

Even before there was ‘science fiction’, Bengalis were already using imagined futures as weapons of revolt. A student of Hindu College dreamt of overthrowing the British Raj in 1945. A republic was founded on the ashes of empire. A scientist tamed a cyclone with a bottle of hair oil. Nationalism as alternative history. Anti-colonial satire in comical machines. Feminist utopias that declared war on patriarchy itself. While the West’s future meant rockets and aliens, Bengal’s future meant liberation—freedom from empire, from capital, from every form of normalised oppression. Across 150 years, gathered here in translation for the first time, these stories present that future.