(Image Source: The Guardian)
Priyanka Joseph interviews Mohsin Hamid over at Cafe America in MFA and the subject of Science Fiction comes up and Hamid makes an excellent point about representation in Science Fiction:
CA: So about future themes you want to explore: I was really excited when I read the science-fiction piece you wrote for the Financial Times. Have you always been a reader of science fiction? Where did the piece come from creatively?
MH: When I was younger I was a reader of sci-fi, then in the middle for a good twenty years there was a time I didn’t read sci-fi at all, till about three years ago. But I’ve always liked watching sci-fi. I’m a big fan in that sense. The problem I’ve had with reading sci-fi is that the prose is so often clumsy. Lately I’ve been reading more, and I think that it’s interesting because we have a lot of science-fiction today that is not fully sci-fi, you know, just a little off center, and I thought what about full-blown science-fiction with aliens and action? And I was drawn to it, because I can’t remember reading any South Asian, or African or Latin American science fiction. I’m sure it’s out there, but it’s not much. I mean, why are we abandoning our collective literary imagining of futuristic scenarios to people from just a handful of countries or identities? It seems like such an odd thing to have happened. So, I’m very interested in that— I don’t know if it will work, but I’m very interested in doing a sci-fi novel that isn’t understated at all about being set in the future.