Marginally Indian: Indian Sci-Fi and Gore’s ‘Marginally Human’

With mainstream global fantasy and sci-fi arguably dominated by Western authors, what perspectives do Indian writers bring in? 

Since it would be too ambitious to try and discuss all of Indian fantasy and science fiction in one go, a piecemeal approach will have to suffice. In that vein, to start answering this question, I’ll focus on two Indian sci-fi novels that envisage the life of human societies in the future: Vidyut Gore’s “Marginally Human” (2021) and Prayaag Akbar’s “Leila” (2017), which has also been adapted by Netflix. 

One reply to the question posed at the start of this article is obvious and intellectually rather lazy – a Western author’s sci-fi novel or a Western sci-fi movie often takes place in the West (the movie “District 9” ridiculed this tendency). Even if such a story is not set in, say, the United States as we know it now, the political entities it presents usually closely resemble Western constructs (think “Star Trek”). 

We would thus expect a non-Western sci-fi to be written with different lenses. This is indeed true for both Akbar’s and Gore’s novels, but it is also an assumption one could reach without reading many non-Western authors. What else, then, do these novels bring into the picture?

Both Gore’s “Marginally Human” and Akbar’s “Leila” present a vision of the future in which the degradation of the environment has greatly deepened and humanity is forced to live in pockets of strictly-controlled habitation. Curiously, in both novels, these take the form of domes. In “Leila,” living outside these zones exposes human settlements to rising heat and pollution; in “Marginally Human,” the territories outside the domes are referred to as a “wasteland” and also less habitable, due to the past wars.

In both cases, the story takes place in an India of the future. It is hard not to see the changing conditions of our world today, particularly in a country like India, as a source of inspiration for such literary visions. However, in both novels these catastrophic changes have been global. 

Moreover, both novels reveal a particular sensibility to economic and social divisions. In both, there are communities living on the verge of, or perhaps even beyond the limits of, what many inhabitants of these future words would consider civilization – outside the domes. Again, it is easy to compare these visions with India of today, where village life, slums, and pockets of tribal populations are facing a hard coexistence with growing cities and industrial progress. Indeed, in the India of today the differences between living in a tribal village and a metropolis like Delhi or Mumbai could as well be already considered science fiction. In both novels, the life within the domes themselves is also strictly divided between the enclosures of the rich and the crowded zones for the general population.

Here, however, these general similarities end and differences begin – including the difference in how much each novel draws on contemporary Indian social and political life. “Leila” is a dystopian tale with a dark vision of the future similar to, for instance, that seen in “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell. Thus, the novel presents the Earth as facing not only inadvertent environmental decay but also the decline of political life into totalitarianism.

Moreover, in “Leila,” this vision of the authoritarian government, filled with references to the current Hindu right of India, also blends with a rigid caste system. The domes are divided into residential zones for particular castes and radical forces are trying to enforce purity of blood. Again, it is not hard to perceive the future societies as envisaged in Akbar’s “Leila” as an extension and enhancement of the most radical and negative aspects of today’s urban life in India.

This is where “Marginally Human” takes a completely different trajectory, however. The novel presents a vision of the future where our planet survived centuries of war, though with only a fraction of the population left. Not much is said about what these conflicts were fought over, but it is mentioned that they were caused by old divisions (country versus country, religion versus religion). This long and bloody churn led to these divisions being wiped out. Thus, while the divisions between the elites and the masses are profound in “Marginally Human,” caste or ethnic purity as such are not mentioned as socio-political factors. 

In this sense, “Marginally Human” presents a more radically futuristic, and still a more positive, vision. The world seems broken and humanity is decimated, but it also crossed over old social and political boundaries and entered a path of remarkable technological, and biotechnological, progress. Thanks to the technology of symbionts, humans are virtually immortal, and some even possess powers like telepathy or teleportation. This is wholly unlike “Leila,” which sees the humans of the future as still human, with their worst vices actually multiplied by the lack of resources. 

“Marginally Human” asks whether the humans of the future will still be humans at all once progress crosses certain physical boundaries. This way, “Marginally Human” is much more similar in its discourse to novels such as “Dune” or “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (both have cinematic versions; the second is known as “Blade Runner”). In a world like this, the fact that we are still in India matters little – “Marginally Human” is in this way only marginally Indian.

Finally, one could point out that both “Leila” and “Marginally Human” lack a certain “imperial,” state-centered approach. One could argue that many novels written by Western authors have not just a West-like state as part of their vision, but that this state, or states, play a central role in the plot. This is true for some of the most popular sci-fi series such as “Expanse,” “Foundation,” or “Dune.” One could say that both in “Leila” and in “Marginally Human,” the plot is more tightly focused on individual needs and challenges, not the ambitions of whole states, noble houses, or elites. “Leila” is centered on a mother’s search for her daughter. Similarly, one of the turning points of “Marginally Human” is the kidnapping of one of two siblings, prompting the older sister to look for the younger.

However, I think this would be stretching the “non-Western perspective” too far. In both “Leila” and “Marginally Human,” politics do play a role, even though they do not reach the level of an epic conflict of states, or their future forms. It wouldn’t also be hard to find Western sci-fi works which, like these two novels, are not focused on the “imperial” level of human endeavors. Similarly, it would be deeply unfair toward Western authors to assume that non-Western authors somehow find it easier to center their plot on simple, human needs, away from grand conflicts. 

Thus, we should avoid both extremes – either assuming that being a non-Western author plays a central role in how one crafts their sci-fi world, or assuming that this background hardly plays any role. “Leila” happens to be an example of the first type of a novel, while “Marginally Human” is an instance of the latter, but a great many other novels are certainly positioned in various points across this spectrum.