About the possibilities offered by speculative fiction

Let’s talk about barking! After being launched in 2008, it is now in the 17th year. How did it change in the context of who and what you publish? The Book of Anti-Caste Science Fiction (Courtesy Blaft) Rashmi: We brought the first volume of Tamil Pulp fiction because we strongly believed this book should exist. We hoped that there would be more than a reasonable number of people like us who would also like to read it. Since then, the titles we brought are books that we really want to read – it was the driving catalyst that made things bloom in Bark’s Petri dish. Rakesh: When we started, Rashmi and I were frustrated about what felt like a suffocating one of the Indian writing available in English bookstores. It seemed like everything was about delicate sad women, with mangoes and sari boundaries on the covers. Although these books still exist, things have opened a lot – there are more writing in different genres, more translations, more experiments. But I don’t think our ethos has changed much; We still want to publish books that feel different and surprising. How did a platform like Kickstarter help you as a small independent press? Since this campaign was more than three times the goal, did you expect such an enthusiastic response? Rakesh: Kickstarter was wonderful, especially to get our books in the hands of international readers; People from all over the world find it easy to support us there. We have maintained our goal as the amount we would enable to achieve the minimum production costs. I did, however, expect us to meet it easily – there was a lot of interest early; In addition, there were more than 40 contributors, all of which had networks of friends and family and fans. But I didn’t expect that to exceed the target by so much! Rashmi: We are very grateful to everyone who supported this campaign. We were completely blown away about the support this book project received. India Publishing is a loud beating business, you do not have the infrastructure or fiscal bandwidth that Legacy Publishing Houses should keep various manuscripts in development. This book could only have been devised by a crowdfunded model. We also want to make books that have excellent printing and design production quality. We can also realize those aspects thanks to the ACSF supporters. Rakesh K (courtesy of barking) Why ‘Anti-Kaste’ Speculative Fiction? How did you envisage the collection in the planning phases? Rakesh: For me, it was just this: If you do a caste census of Indian writers published in English, you will find that it is something like 70% Brahmins and 20% other “Higher Caste” writers. And in genres like science fiction, it’s more like 99%. Many of these writers do an excellent job, but it is just completely non-representative of the population, which is only 20% or 30% upper cupboards. It looks a lot of unhealthy, you know? Like the imagination of most of the country, it is weakened. What possibilities offer speculative fiction as a genre that may not be the case for realism? Can you please expand the line on how “it is a powerful way to think critically and ask important questions about our world”? Rashmi: I am no expert in speculative fiction. But if I try to articulate what the genre means to me at this time, it is that it can reload the absurdity of the injustice and imbalance of our daily existence. Realism is also not an umbrella term that covers everyone’s polite experience, isn’t it? I think Spec Fic gives a writer who is trying to make sense of these absurdities the possibility of building up a layered story – fantasy on horror with science fiction at the base, perhaps double -collapse, perhaps with part of the camp. How did you decide on the contributors and how to gain contributions? Were there specific challenges to get submissions? Rakesh: We had a rough target page count. RT Samuel had a network of writers’ friends who were very active in academic or artistic spaces against caste and grouped contributions from the group. I did a lot of research hunting for writers in other languages ​​and hooked it with translators. Those pieces made up about ¾ of the page target; Then we have our open call with a plan to fill the rest of the pages with submissions. In terms of challenges: All the submissions we received from the open call were written in English. What was good, but I would very much like to include more translations. The book especially has nothing from Hindi. I can’t believe that there is no one who writes cool speculative fiction under 400 million Dalit/Bahujan/Adivasi Hindi speakers. They must be there; We just didn’t find them. Courtesy barking how was the editorial process? How did you divide the work and labor between your three? Were there specialized tasks for each of you? Rakesh: RT Samuel did a lot of the commissioning and had the final say about what went in and what didn’t. I did a lot of the work-with-translators. Rashmi was eager to include comics. It is commendable that the bundle of contributions that have been translated from other languages ​​as well as multimedia pieces. What was the thought process behind the decision and affected how you considered “speculative fiction”? Rakesh: We have always been interested in genre fiction in Indian languages ​​-after all, we introduced our business with a collection of Tamil pulp stories. Genelgens differ in different languages, the tropics differ, the whole idea of ​​what can be imaginative fiction is different. In many ways, the way in which these stories are written and presented also print the possibility of the possibility with its content. Can you please comment on this aspect? RT Samuel: Bark has always had a very strong visual language and also prioritized the story about mediums, so this project was no different. And genre-wise SF also always had a tradition of breaking new ground in terms of art, graphic novels, film (both animated and live-action). It’s just a part of the canon, so to speak. RT Samuel (with permission barking) How has contributors and readers respond to the volume so far? And what next? Did you start thinking about a follow -up or a similar bundle? Rakesh: As stretching goals for the Kickstarter, we decided to bring out two collections – a book with short stories by father Uthaman, translated from Malayalam by Mridula Makkuni, and the full book Parivrajak by Gautamiputra Kamble, translated from Marathi by Sirus J Libero. No plans for a successor yet, but hopefully soon! Areeb Ahmad is a freelance writer and literary critic in Delhi. He is @bankrupt_bookworm on Instagram.