rigins of science fiction literature date back to 1818 when Mary Shelly published Frankenstein. Regular science fiction publications did not start until the 1920s when Hugo Gernsback – considered by many to be the father of science fiction – began publishing his Amazing Stories that serialised science fiction. Shelly’s Frankenstein – in which her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, creates a monster by stitching together pieces of body and bringing those to life through a process of galvanisation, combined speculative fiction with science.

Frankenstein is regarded a major literary work of the proto-science fiction era. The invention of the commercially successful steam engine by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 and the subsequent events during the industrial revolution led to the birth of science fiction. With the emergence of factories and assembly lines, electricity and steam engine, writers speculated about a new world that could exist. Such writers extrapolated about societies in the future where humans night travel to the moon using powerful machines or venture into unchartered space of the cosmos.

Jules Verne is considered the pioneer of extraordinary travels with his Journey to the Center of the Earth (1867). Before the industrial revolution, writers used far-fetched concepts of voyages because they did not have a reference point – technology. Gonsales, the narrator in The Man in the Moone (1638) by Francis Godwin, reaches the moon while sitting on top of a giant swan that can fly across large distances. Godwin’s story was a speculative one with no reference to technology.

Gernsback’s Amazing Stories led to the birth of other science fiction and fantasy magazines of the era including Amazing Stories Quarterly (1928), Air Wonder Stories (1929), Science Wonder Stories (1929), Astounding Stories (1930), Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories (1931), Thrilling Wonder Stories (1936), Super Science Stories (1940) and Galaxy Science Fiction (1950) among others. Most of the science fiction writers from the 1920s to the 1940s published serialised stories in these science fiction magazines that were later published in book form. This created an acceptance for science fiction. Among others, its sub-genres included the colonisation of space, alien invasion, teleportation, time travel and dystopia.

The science fiction genre could not have developed in the West without the pioneering efforts of Isaac Asimov, Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke, collectively known as the Big Three in Science Fiction. They were joined by HG Wells, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, Ursula K Le Guin, Frederik Pohl, Octavia E Butler, Philip K Dick, Frank Herbert, Stanislaw Lem, Kim Stanely Robinson, CJ Cherryh, Margaret Atwood, Orson Scott Card and William Gibson, among others. Asimov’s Foundation series laid the groundwork for the writers of his time and the succeeding ones to conceive worlds other than Earth in the cosmos. Heinlein, on the other hand, brought to fore seriousness into the science fiction narratives without compromising on hard science – narratives in fiction that deal with the working of machinery, ships, gadgets, etc.

Wells brought aliens to Earth with his The War of the Worlds (1898). He also took the readers on a journey across time in The Time Machine (1895) where the narrator experiences a future in the year 802,701 that is a mirror reflection of unchecked capitalism. Arthur C Clarke’s 1968 novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, took the readers into a modern-era space station. The story includes themes like the impact of technology, the consequences of a nuclear war and space exploration.

During the last eight decades, the literary genre of science fiction and its subsequent subgenres, as explored in Western literature, have gone through an evolution. Writers have conceived future societies, extrapolated about mankind’s life on Earth and across the universe through colonisation and have delved into time travel. They have also touched upon the political and social fabric of future societies with plausible as well as far-fetched ideas. These include immortality, interstellar travel and living with aliens.

Pakistani authors’ opinions on science fiction as a literary genre and how it can be developed in the country are interesting and varied. Taha Kehar, the novelist and literary critic, says, “I firmly believe that sci-fi novels don’t necessarily have to respond to the enigmas of modern science or, for that matter, actively deviate from realist narratives. What they must do is venture into uncharted territory, and deconstruct time-honoured notions of history and deal with inconvenient truths.”

Dr Faraz Talat, a mental health professional and the author of the science fiction novella 74, views science fiction as, “any story that invites the reader to develop a deeper understanding of science, to be able to fully enjoy the story.” For Awais Khan, the award-winning author of No Honour and In The Company of Strangers, “science fiction is anything that expands the horizons of things we already know. Perhaps, that is what makes it so interesting.”

“Sci-fi writing can develop in Pakistan if there is more mainstream literary space given to local writers who have already ventured into the field.” — Sidra F Sheikh

Muhammad Ali Samejo, author of Legends of Karachi and Damaged considers science fiction “an allegory of human life and society in past, present, and future”. He adds that “it is a carefully crafted alliance between fact and possibility.” Sidra F Sheikh, author of The Light Blue Jumper, says that “Science Fiction is writing that takes the reader into new, futuristic, imaginary worlds, or at least has elements of futuristic extrapolation or advances in technology even if it is set in the real world.”

When asked about how aspiring Pakistani writers can develop their sense to write science fiction, Kehar says, “Budding sci-fi writers should always read widely within the genre to spot the commercial trends in science-fiction writing. the purpose of this exercise isn’t to emulate other writers, but to identify where the boundaries have been set and how they can be pushed further.” He says that it is not possible to “write about an alternative reality without understanding the complex realities of our world. Some of the best sci-fi novels I’ve come across draw heavily on the social dynamics of our world to cultivate fictional worlds.” He urges aspiring writers “to find ways to build a bridge between these separate realms.”

Dr Faraz says that there’s a tendency to look down at science fiction as a less “serious” form of writing; possibly because it relies on fascinating the reader with scientific exposition, rather than the quality of the prose. “An appreciation of science can improve the quality of our writing. And it’s integral to science fiction,” he says.

Awais Khan argues that “writing science fiction shouldn’t be any different from writing any other sort of fiction. First and foremost, you need to be a reader if you want to be a writer.” According to Samejo, “once they (the writers) see that there are no boundaries to what they can imagine as sci-fi, they will automatically start to realise that their outlandish ideas need to have some sense of grounding.”

“People tend to think that any genre involving world-building or imagination, such as science fiction or fantasy, is for children. Perhaps most writers feel that they won’t be taken seriously unless they write literary fiction and there is a certain snobbery attached to it,” says Sheikh.

The growth of science fiction as a literary genre has been limited in recent years. A handful of authors have come up with literary works of science fiction without any major push coming in from publishers or literary circles. There can be many reasons for this.

Kehar points out that while fantasy and sci-fi writing has been prevalent across South Asia, “these genres have been dismissed in mainstream literary discourse - a trend that has been witnessed across the world, not just in South Asia. Such perceptions are often difficult to change even if they are based on myopic and somewhat static assumptions about what these genres entail.”

“It’s simple: we’re bad at science,” says Dr Faraz. “And we’re bad at science specifically because of a culture that discourages questions.” He says that our culture of not questioning our elders and leaders, not questioning tradition, and not investigating reality has brought us farther from curiosity. “Science, and by extension science fiction, start with a question. We must allow ourselves to be dissatisfied with what we know, and start thinking creatively about how to verify, or potentially disprove, commonly held ideas. Science isn’t a formula to be memorised in an FSc textbook. It is an attitude.”

Samejo says that “it is only over the last few decades that comic book movies have started to create a new vista for Pakistani viewers, but it is still mostly superficial as people rarely watch hard sci-fi movies that affect them at a core level.” While commenting on how to develop science fiction in Pakistan, Sheikh says, “it can develop in Pakistan if there is more mainstream literary space given to local writers who have already ventured into the field.” She suggests that literary festivals and other such platforms should introduce local science fiction/ fantasy works and their authors to a broader audience and give them the recognition and encouragement that they normally reserve for literary fiction.

The writer is a fiction writer and columnist. He is the author of Divided Species, a science fiction novel set in Karachi. For more info:  www.moiwrites.com