Post-millennial “Indian Fantasy” fiction in English and the question of mythology: Writing beyond the “usual suspects”

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-474
Author(s):  
E Dawson Varughese

Focusing on two novels published in 2016, one by HarperCollins India and the other by Hachette India, this paper argues that Savage Blue by Balagopal and Dark Things by Venkatraghavan carve out a new space in post-millennial Indian speculative fiction in English, namely one that does not privilege ‘Hindu Indian mythology’ tropes. Such tropes have been espoused by a growing number of authors whose novels are anchored in Hindu Indian mythology and narratives of itihasa since the early 2000s. Banker, Tripathi, and Sanghi are generally recognized as the authors who first published in this post-millennial genre of Indian fiction in English. This discussion of the novels by Balagopal and Venkatraghavan, alongside ideas of how ‘fantasy’ as a genre has been, and continues to be defined, raises questions about how we might think about ‘Indian fantasy’ as a genre term within the domestic Indian book market and how it intersects with post-millennial Indian living, Indianness, and the popular imaginary.

Helia ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (33) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
P.S. Shindrova

SUMMARY Downy mildew caused by the fungus Plasmopara halstedii is the main disease on sunflower in Bulgaria. In recent years a number of authors have reported the occurrence of new more virulent races of the pathogen. According to other authors these races demonstrate resistance to the fungicides used up to now. This fact is rather alarming and imposes the necessity of annual researches with the aim of following the changes in the downy mildew race variability. In the period 1995-1997 downy mildew isolates were collected from the following locations: Bourgas, Boyanovo, Karnobat, Ognyanovo, Selanovtsi, Kroushari, Lovech, Koubrat, Brashlyan, Sitovo, Tervel, Targovishte, IWS “Dobroudja” and Dobrich. The samples were assessed for virulence on a set of sunflower differential - lines under greenhouse conditions. The obtained results do not reveal a great race variability of downy mildew population in Bulgaria. In the period of study two races of the pathogen were identified: race 1 which infects the differential lines without genes for resistance to the pathogen. It is distributed in all sunflower production areas of the country. The other one is race 2. It is of limited distribution and has been registered in individual fields of north-east and north-west Bulgaria. It attacks the differential lines carrying the resistance gene Pl-1.


Author(s):  
Lucia Lichnerová

The study To Publish, Make Known and Sell is based on verified existence of competition tensions between the 15th century typographers/publishers, related to the absence of functional regulatory tools of book production of the incunabula period. The increase in the number of book-printers within the relatively narrow geographical area, disregard of publishers’ privileges, the emergence of pirated reprints, as well as insufficient self-promotion on the book market through introducing novelties had concentrated typographers’ attention on devising new tools of securing their triumph in publisher’s competition – the so called book advertisements. The author has analysed 44 promotional posters of the incunabula period from several points of view and attempted to identify their design elements, which on the one hand showed signs of certain standardization, while on the other hand they were subject to personal creativity of their creator. She gives detailed overview of the circumstances of the origin, typographic design and contents of book advertisements of several kinds within the context of promoting either the existing or planned editions, of one edition or a group of books; specifically focusing on the unique types of advertising. In conclusion, the author cites the circumstances of the extinction of book advertisements related to the rise of the new promotional tool – booksellers’ catalogue and submits a bibliography of the book advertisements dating from the 15th century.


Author(s):  
Roman Szubin

The article is devoted to the search for a new space in the methodological studies on Russian literature. The author takes as its basis the method of hermeneutics  of words by Vardan Hayrapetyan. Especially the basic categories such as the world man (homo mundi), the Other and its variants: the self (rus. самость), otherness (rus. дру­гость), the alien (rus. чужесть) and two triads, which postulate two types of intellectual situations. In this regard, the author identifies the concept of the hybrid man of the hero of Russian literature in which a small person is a representative of an impersonal collective personality of the world man, home, family, ideas, etc. The author demonstrates the type of a hybrid man on the example of the protagonist of the novel by Vasily Shukshin Stepan Razin.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Sumathi R ◽  
Sutharshan V

Science fiction has proved notoriously difficult to define. It can be explained as a combination of science and technology and development in robotics in short it can be otherwise called as ‘realistic speculation about future events and a genre based on an imagined alternative to the reader's environment. It has been called a form of fantasy fiction and an historical literature. The paper goes further with two main concepts one with clash between two people of future and the other with advancement of science particularly on robotics. First is about general outline to science fiction in short a (SF) a genre cause problem because itdoes not recognize the hybrid nature of many SF works. It is more helpful to think of it as a mode or field where different genres and subgenres intersect. And then there is the issue of science. In the early decades of the 20th century, a number of writers attempted to tie this fiction to science and event to use it as a means of promoting scientific knowledge, a position which continues into what has become known as ‘hard SF’. The research article is completely based on advancement of science and its effects.


Plaridel ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-252
Author(s):  
Randy Solis

The emergence of new communications technologies has provided a new space for initiating romantic and sexual relationships among gays who perceive social and physical places to be a traditional space that largely promotes connection among heterosexuals. Now, mobile networking applications like Grindr have made it easier for gay men to “cruise” and meet other men, and are seen to lead to the increasing number of sexual partners, being exposed to risks like sexually transmitted infections (STI), among others. Thus this study, framed within the theory of Mediatization – which critically analyzes the dialectic process in which both media and communications on one hand, and culture and society on the other, mutually shape and change each other in an interactional process – explores the question: How have gays’ way of cruising, or the initiation of romantic or sexual relations (among others), in the Philippines been mediatized across history?


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Arditi

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  

In the age of information, it is no secret that the modern science is in a very difficult position. On the one hand, it has high hopes for solving the problems of modern humanity and very practical tasks. On the other hand, science shows limited potential and difficulty in carrying out the tasks. Beyond scientific theory remain such phenomena as gravity and gravitational waves and other unexplored and very useful phenomena. Obviously, the reason for these limited capabilities of modern science is its limited foundation. The foundation of science is determined by its basic axioms. If we expand the foundation of science, we will be able to build a more comprehensive, perfect and voluminous theory. In two monographs and a series of articles the author offers a system of extended axioms (with two new axioms) and a more extended theory (with eight new laws). To the great surprise of even the author, this new theory turned out to be extensive enough to cover and explain and the gravity. Moreover, the extended axioms and theory directly and naturally outlined the algorithm in the explanation of the so-called Gravity Funnels. According to the new axioms and laws, Gravity Funnels are both for suction (accelerating) and for expansion (decelerating). Expansion Gravity Funnel decelerates along its longitudinal direction as emits the matter in the transverse direction. In this way it consumes energy and generates matter. Suction Gravity Funnel accelerates along its longitudinal direction as sucks the matter in transverse direction. In this way it consumes matter and generates energy. The both of Funnels are situated in a new Space-time. The Space-time of decelerating and accelerating Funnels is packed by longitudinal vortices, in which the Space (S) is constant. It is radically different of the Space-Time where we live now. The Space-time where we live now is packed by cross vortices, where the time (T) is constant. According the new Axioms and Laws the two described Space- times are mutually orthogonal.


1975 ◽  
Vol 53 (10) ◽  
pp. 978-987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Small

A number of authors have suggested that fruit characters are important in the taxonomic delimitation of Cannabis, particularly in contrasting wild and domesticated plants on the one hand and plants of limited and pronounced intoxicant potential on the other. Variation in achenes was assessed in plants cultivated for fiber and for drug purposes, and in plants growing outside of cultivation in various areas of the world. It was found that domesticated plants have large achenes which usually lack an adhering, patterned perianth and also lack an elongated base. In contrast, achenes of uncultivated plants are much more variable, ranging from those which closely resemble the fruits of domesticated plants to ones which are small and possess an adhering perianth and an elongated base. It appears that the latter morphological syndrome is adaptive in wild plants, and it is hypothesized that the degree of development of these characters in uncultivated plants is indicative of the extent of departure or independence from the effects of domestication.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Sieber

Abstract This paper posits that the circulation of the earliest items of Chinese fiction in early modern Europe was indebted to the popularity of certain titles within the Qing-dynasty book market on the one hand and to the participation of educated Chinese in the process of purchase, selection, and translation on the other. It further argues that European translations deployed specific features of Chinese imprints in order to differentiate translations from the hugely popular pseudo-Chinese transcreations, thereby seeking to establish textual authority for a philologically grounded Chinese voice. The paper terms this convergence of conceptual, material, and social factors in producing transculturally mediated texts “biblioglossia,” in order to capture aspects of textuality neglected or obscured in standard discussions of “orientalism.”


1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Myerscough

The approximations usually made to truncate the BBGKY hierarchy for a plasma are discussed; their failure at small inter-particle separations leads to divergence of the Balescu—Lenard collision integral. A number of authors have obtained convergent kinetic equations, often by rather complicated methods.It is shown here that, if the standard truncation procedure is modified in a way which makes it less obviously inconsistent for close approaches, the standard methods maybe closely followed in deriving a convergent collision integral which agrees to dominant order with the ‘cutoff’ Balescu—Lenard integral and with the other work on the problem. In fact, the kinetic equation obtained is identical with the Balescu—Lenard equation except that the Coulomb potential is replaced by another that is non-singular at the origin. A physical interpretation of this result is suggested.


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