Biopeculiar: Gigi Ganguly’s climate sci-fi honours nature and condemns humans

The short stories touches everything from climate change to the detective genre to lyrical prose

Image source: Westland.

I grew up reading fantasy where the protagonist could be a witch, a wielder of magic, a demigod saving the day. Those tales, blending reality with fantasy, shaped my childhood. So when I stumbled upon Gigi Ganguly’s speculative short-fiction collection Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World (Rs 399, Westland), it seemed like a return to that cherished world.

Ganguly brings something really special to the table, conjuring tales that honour the natural world while shining a light on the shadows we have created. The first story ‘Head in the Clouds’ is about an old man who is a cloud herder, someone searching for lost souls — mclouds, rain, thunder, ist — to bring them back to their world of the skies. His child-like obsession, without hope of rewards, harkens to a less materialist and industrial world.

‘Call for Kelp’ satirises real-world issues like climate change by depicting a world where animals cope with human-induced destruction. It highlights the elemental purity of the natural world, in contrast to the complexity of human nature. ‘Toothache’ champions nature’s strength and resilience, using the tiger as a symbol for déjà vu, dreams and fantasy.

‘Corvid Inspector’, a dark mystery, fails to strike a chord as it toggles between real-world parallels and fantasy in a way that doesn’t quite come together seamlessly. Instead, ‘Forest of Plenty’, with its contemplation on decay and regeneration, is a fine example of how speculative fiction can weave anxieties over an uncertain future into a framework of hope and possibility. Ganguly has a way with words — her prose is lyrical and manages to pack in richness within the book’s slim frame.