A discussion on Fantasy & Science Fiction in India was chaired by Sudarshan Vashishtha and the discussants were Devendra Mewari, K. Murali Krishna, Minakshi Chaudhry and Sadhana Shankar. Science fiction is the most emerging and promising genre in literary writings and cinema. Fiction and fantasy often overlap but have different meanings – fantasies are what creates fiction. The fantasies developed in mind are the thought that generates the fiction, they are the blueprint for the product. Fiction means something that is not real, something that doesn’t exist, but it might be something that the future may have.
When cinema had just begun and writers were creating stories about vampires, Mahabharata characters and Frankenstein, no one believed that concepts such as these would come to life, though they aren’t alive yet, the world has progressed so much that a human can live even though they have lost certain organs, all thanks to the advancement of medical science. A lot of fiction’s inspiration is taken from science, that science doesn’t exist during the times the writers procure these ideas, it serves as an element that enables diction to be relatable.
Fiction is a field that is not limited to certain topics it has so much creative power in it, any and every thing can be revolutionised with the power of fiction. The world’s favourites such as Harry Potter, Star Trek, Marvel, DC, etc., are all fiction and these fictional ideas have influenced so many other professional fields.
The scholarly panellists brought together these ideas during the discussions and Sudershan Vashistha mentioned that the first experiences with fiction is when we’re young, we live in a dream world to be precise. The folktales and bedtime stories are what fuel our journey with fiction and then when we reach our teenage, we have the ghost stories and supernatural powers as the menu provided by fiction. The panellist shared their experience and thoughts about what fiction and what it means to them and they also spoke about the books they have written. The discussion on fiction stated that fiction is not always dystopia but also utopia, it is a beautiful product of creative thought and a lot of hard work, because think about it, something that doesn’t exist needs to be penned down and moreover, a story needs to be created with that subject or around that subject, isn’t that unreal!
