Words for Worlds: Issue 87

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first Words for Worlds issue of 2025!

A quick update on the IF anthology of Indian SF, which I’m editing along with Westland: the first round of review (double-blind) is done (there were 233 submissions!), and we should be sending out the shortlist emails quite soon. Because of the volume of submissions, it was physically impossible to provide individual feedback (I did want to!), but I will be putting out an editor’s letter indicating some of the broad themes and trends that I noticed while reading the submissions.

Updates on THE SENTENCE: I think one thing that every SF writer waits for is the Locus review of their book! So, the new year brought with it a delightful gift in Abigail Nussbaum’s lovely review of THE SENTENCE in Locus’ January 2025 issue. The review (presently accessible to subscribers, or if you buy the magazine, which you totally should) - which will be up on Locus’ website late in the month - describes the novel as possible the first example of a “fantasy-world legal thriller,” and has a few other nice things to say.

It also ends by expressing a hope that the book will be picked up by a US/UK publisher, so that it is available in that part of the world. Obviously, a hope that I share; from the new year, I’ve begun re-querying the novel, so let’s see where that goes. In the meantime, if you know an agent or publisher who may be interested, please do send them in this direction!

For folks in Chandigarh (and other parts of the tri-city): on Thursday, at 5 PM, I will be in conversation about the novel, at Bahrisons Bookshop. Drop by if you’re around!

Lastly, while I’m not too big on bestseller lists, THE SENTENCE featured on Champaca’s list of fiction bestsellers for December (I’m sure the launch event with Aakar Patel had something to do with it), and that feels particularly nice given that Champaca is the only Indian bookshop I’ve seen that has a shelf dedicated to Indian SF.

(And it also confirms my belief about Bangalore being the best SF-reading city in the country. ;p )

Remember, if you haven’t picked up your copy of THE SENTENCE yet, you can (preferably) get it at your local bookshop, but if not, then here.

What I’m Reading

In the tradition of Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life and James Bridle’s Ways of Being, this was another fantastic piece of expository writing. The Light Eaters presents the cutting-edge of plant research: while resisting anthropomorphism, it takes us through recent discoveries around plant memory, plant vision, plant sensation, plant communication, and much more (in fact, parts of it were more interesting precisely because I’d previously read Merlin Sheldrake, and could therefore make sense of the portions on fungi and the mycelial network). Like the best books in the genre, it really expands - and in some ways alters - one’s understanding about concepts such as identity, sentience, and intelligence. And hopefully helps one to become consciously more humane!

A few years ago, I’d watched Life is Wonderful, a film about the Rivonia trial. Reading this book felt like reliving that experience, but with a slightly different focus. While Life is Wonderful is primarily about the trial and the accused, Rivonia’s Children shifts between three white families that were intimately involved in the struggle against apartheid (Harold Wolpe, Rusty Bernstein, Bram Fischer), but ultimately comes to focus most on the life and death of Bram Fischer. Fischer’s story is, of course, incredible material - after all, he literally sacrificed his life in the struggle - and Frankel does full justice to it. There are moments when, as you read, your eyes fill with tears unbidden, and at the very end, when Frankel gives us this quote: “the meaning of life is not something to be discovered, but a choice that you make every day” - you just have to put the book down and breathe for a while. It is never easy to read about subjects such as apartheid, but what the best books do so well is to both bring out the nobility of the struggle while also taking an unsentimental look at the price that was paid. Rivonia’s Children does both.

Today I went to Punjab Book Centre, Chandigarh’s best independent bookshop, and an absolute treasure-house. I’d once been here in 2009, when the bookshop had a massive stack of Soviet books - Mir, Raduga, Progress, the works (anyone who grew up in India in the 1990s will immediately know what I’m talking about!). It was there that I had found Yuri Trifonov’s The Impatient Ones - a novel about the Russian narodniks - which completely changed my life (incidentally, the Prologue of THE SENTENCE is loosely based on the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, which I first read in that book).

Sixteen years on, the stock has obviously shrunk (as there’s nothing to replenish it), but it’s still there - these books must be forty years old now, given that the USSR fell in 1989! And there’s new left-wing stock which I don’t actually think you’ll find in other bookshops (see below, a part of today’s haul). So if you’re ever in Chandigarh, do not miss this jewel of a bookshop!

The Indian Scene

New fiction this week in the first 2025 issue of Tasavvurnama, edited by Archita Mittra.

A couple of reviews. In Locus, Indian reviews Indian: here is Archita Mittra on Appupen and Laurent Daudet’s Dream Machine (have you got your copy of the graphic novel yet?).

Also, congrats to Chaitanya Murali, whose story in Kaleidotrope has been featured in Charles Payseur’s review of short fiction for Locus (check out the story here).

What’s Happening at Strange Horizons

One of our favourite bits of the new year’s issue is Strange Horizons’ reviewers writing about what they read in 2024. Here’s the first instalment: you will find a treasure-house of recommendations in here.

Recommendations Corner

Our New Delhi SF Book Club is reading Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic We this month, so I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend this anthology that came out last year (the centenary of We, actually): a set of short stories responding to We. You’ll find a lot to like here, and there are two of my absolute favourites: Sofia Samatar and Adrian Tchaikovsky.