Great news for lovers of Urdu Literature, Khurshid Iqbal, a critic and researcher from India, has a masters thesis on Science Fiction in Urdu Literature. The text itself is in the Urdu language but I am hoping that an English translation would be available in the near future. It starts with an overview of what constitutes Science Fiction and gives a brief overview of Science Fiction in the West before covering Science Fiction in Urdu. The thesis covers everything from short stories, novels, radio productions and even movies. The discussion about movies in Urdu in the dissertation is somewhat questionable since most of these are from Bollywood and evoke the Urdu-Hindi controversy i.e., are the movies like Mr. India Hindi movies or Urdu movies. It appears that the authors seems to sidestep the debate and includes the Bollywood movies as examples of Science Fiction in Urdu. That said, it is a good resource for people who want to get a good introduction to Urdu literature with Science Fiction undertones and currents. Here is the link to the thesis: Urdu Mein Science Fiction ki Riwayat

Izhar Asar (1929-2011) was an Urdu Science Fiction author from India. At the time of the partition of India he moved from what later became Pakistan to India. It was a rare move since most of the movement of Muslims was in the other direction. Starting from 1950s onwards he wrote a number of Science Fiction novels. In 1953 he wrote a short story Mashinon ki Baghaawat (Rebellion of the machines) that imagines a scenario where machines rebel against humans because some humans tell them to do immoral actions. His first science fiction novel Aadhi Zindagi was published in 1955. La-shareek (the non-participant) was his collection of Science Fiction short stories. In the 50s or 60s he also wrote a poem entitled Dinosaur.

Jim Walker has an excellent article on Urdu Science Fiction at the Science Fiction foundation which mentions the following Science Fiction novels in Urdu.

• Ishtiaq Ahmed’s Machini Makhlooq  (Mechanical Creatures) 1986
• Agha Ashraf’s Ba’ghi Computer (The Rebel Computer) 1988.
• A Hameed has also written a number of Science Fiction Novels.