Covers of Translations of Classic Sci-Fi into Urdu
I have been wondering about the earliest translations of Western Sci-Fi into Urdu and as luck would have it Rashid Ashraf is familiar with some of the title. Here are a few that he shared with me. Many thanks to Rashid Ashraf for providing the covers.
100 Years of Science Fiction in the Islamic World
Here is a talk that I gave a couple of weeks ago on the very brief history of Science Fiction in the Islamic World.
RUR in Ottoman Turkish
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) is ascience fiction play written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek which is the source of the word Robot. The play imagines synthetic people called roboti (robots) who are created to work for humans but eventually rebel which leads to the extenction of humans. R.U.R wasContinue Reading
Abd al-Nasser Mujalli's Geography of Water
Geography of Water (Jugrafiyat al-Ma) is a science fiction ecological novel by the Yemeni author Abd al-Nasser Mujalli. The novel’s premise is that water starts disappearing from Earth and an alien race from another planet behind the disappearance. The aliens are mad because their planet (the white planet) is beingContinue Reading
SFRA Cancelled
A number of Science Fiction Cons that are being cancelled is increasing. The latest one to succumb to Coronavirus is SFRA (Science Fiction Research Association). I was looking forward to the conference, hoping to attend my first SFRA conference is 2020. However this won’t happen this year. Let’s all hopeContinue Reading
A Sci-Fi short by Mohsin Hamid in Financial Times
(Image Source: Financial Times) The award winning British-Pakistani novelist, Mohsin Hamid, published a short story on an Alien Invasion in Financial Times which was quite well received. Here is an excerpt from the story: A hot wind rattles the roof of our shanty. Corrugated metal bucks up and down, scrabbling againstContinue Reading
‘Muslim’ Magic in Medieval Malta
While there is no such thing as Magic in Islam, through out history people from Muslim cultures have esoteric things which have been described as magic by outsiders. (Muslim scholars universally consider Magic to be haram (Forbidden) in Islam.) In the medieval era Muslims in Europe were sometimes accused of practicingContinue Reading
Ali Pourahmad’s Short Sci-Fi Movies
Ali Pourahmad is a director and writer based in Iran who has directed a number of short Science Fiction movies. He not only directs but also writes the story line for his short movies which have a high element of CGI animation. Here is a summary of some of theContinue Reading
Egyptian Society for Science Fiction
I had the good fortune to meet the President of Egyptian Society for Science Fiction Dr. Hosam El-Zembely and its member Emad Aysha in Nasr City (a suburb of Cairo) at their headquarters last week. The Egyptian Society for Science Fiction (جمعية المصرية لأدب الخيال العلمي) is a Science FictionContinue Reading
Punjabi Star Wars!
Here is a preview of some of the artworks that we will be featuring in the inaugural issue of our Sci-Fi magazine. It is reimagine of Star Wars as a Punjabi folk tale with R2D2 and C3PO dressed in traditional Punjabi attire. This work is a collaboration between our editor and BabarContinue Reading