When I was fourteen, my parents decided to move me to a Christian school. Back then the medium of instruction for most Sri Lankan students was their mother tongue. For me, it was Tamil. Although I, like every other Sri Lankan student, studied English as a subject from the third grade in school, we were far from fluent. I could read and write haltingly, but could not speak, or understand spoken English. In my previous school, like in the vast majority of Sri Lankan schools back then, speaking in English was unheard of. But for everyone in the new school, English was pretty much the natural language. I was totally out of my element and needed to pick up English fast.
My father said “the best way to learn a language is to read something you really love in that language.” He loved spy stories. So he gave me his copy of le Carre’s “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” I wasn’t quite into spy stories. Although I really loved reading (in Tamil), I hated reading that le Carre book. Nevertheless, I managed to finish it, even though it took ages. Then I decided to read Science Fiction. The primary reason was Arthur C. Clarke, the legendary SF writer, who had made Sri Lanka his home. One read about him in the newspapers from time to time. So unlike le Carre’s spy stories, I had something to connect me to SF. Within a few months, I read everything by Clarke I could lay my hands on (Thanks to the British Council and the American Center libraries in town). Soon, I moved on to other SF writers, like Asimov and Le Guin and so on. I loved every moment of it. In the process, I picked up enough English to (barely) survive in my new school.
All the leading SF writers back then were British or American. From time to time, Arthur C. Clarke would introduce a Sri Lankan character or place in his stories, with a Sinhala or Tamil name. That was exhilarating. But I could never imagine a top SF writer emerging from the ranks for Sri Lankan writers. Some South Asian writers, notably Sujatha who was an electronics engineer by profession, did attempt to write SF stories in Tamil. But they were far from world class.
Fast forward to 2024, a Sri Lankan writer, Vajra Chandrasekara won the 2024 Nebula Award for Best SF Novel (and was shortlisted for the Hugo). Nebula and Hugo are the two top awards for the genre. Take a look at the list of Nebula winners for Best Novel and it is like a rollcall for giants in the field — not only Clarke and Asimov but also household names like Burroughs, Doctorow, Gibson, Vonnegut, and many others. The teenage me couldn’t even have contemplated the possibility that a Sri Lankan would one day be recognized as the world’s best SF writer!
But it is not just Vajra. Sri Lanka appears to have become a hive of SF activity with many top writers emerging. The bench strength for a tiny nation is impressive and, very heartening.
SF, like many other things, is no longer dominated by Americans and Europeans. The best SF I have ever read is Cixin Liu’s trilogy, “The Remembrance of Earth’s Past.” The scale of Liu’s imagination is staggering. All good SF writers weave in real science. But traditional SF writers do it with physics or chemistry or biology. Liu, being a computer engineer, weaves in computer science as well. If you are a computer scientist, you would love this trilogy. But Liu’s masterpiece is more than just SF. The stunning imagination, and in places, the exquisite prose, can rival the best literature in any genre. Here is an example. In the second book, the main character Luo Ji, a sociologist and astronomer, is asked by his girlfriend, a writer of children’s fiction, to “create an angel based entirely on your dream of feminine perfection” and write a novel as a birthday present. What follows is a beautiful sequence where Luo Ji goes through the process of imagining such an angel. Interestingly, when I told a Chinese-speaking former student how exquisite this sequence was, he thought the credit must go to the English translator because, he said, while everyone in China appreciates Liu’s imagination, he was not known for writing compelling prose! The Washington post review of the Netflix adaptation of the Three Body Problem (part 1 of the trilogy), said “‘3 Body Problem’ is a great drama (and decent sci-fi).” It is certainly great drama on par with other great dramas (but it is also great sci-fi). If you haven’t read the book or watched its adaptation, I recommend it strongly.
Last summer, I decided to translate Vajra’s short story “The Translator, at Low Tide” (finalist for the 2021 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award). It was just published in Kalachuvadu, a leading Tamil literary magazine. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall. When I figure out how I can make the translation publicly accessible, I will post an update here.
Update: Here is a PDF of the translated story that appeared in Kalachuvadu.
Another update: Vajra has made the full-text PDF available on his website, with permission from the publisher.
The teenage me would have been incredulous (and chuffed to bits) if he was told that one day he would translate a short story by a Sri Lankan Nebula winner and that it would appear in a top Tamil literary magazine like Kalachuvadu!
