Despite — perhaps because of — its apocalyptic tenor, 2020 was the year SFF finally came of age in Pakistan. The Lahore and Islamabad Literary Festivals, the Desi Collective, the Salam Award, and The Last Word gave SF prominent space in their lineup of panels (unprecedented at LLF and ILF). Writers and critics such as Aamer Hussein and Muneeza Shamsie lauded and enthusiastically supported desi SF initiatives in the Indian subcontinent. I myself was fortunate to speak on some of the above panels as well as at Armadillocon, and with creative writing students at IBA, Karachi. Several new Pakistani/Pakistani-origin SF writers sold stories internationally. Kehkashan Khalid, Bina Shah, Haris Durrani, and I will have stories in The Gollancz Anthology of South Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol II edited by Tarun Saint, and Faraz Talat’s debut novel Seventy-Four was published by Folio Books (Pakistan) with blurbs by Muhammad Hanif and Kim Stanley Robinson.
Because 2020 wasn’t crazy enough, I decided to make it crazier for myself: I committed to bringing out my debut collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan as a one-print run illustrated hardcover through KITAB (Pvt) Ltd. Midnight doorways has a gorgeous cover and seven lovely black-and-white illustrations and will be out in February 2021. A total of nine Pakistani artists were involved in this project. Eight of them are women.
2020 was the year I got agented. I’m now represented by Markus Hoffmann of Regal Hoffmann & Associates. So, hopefully, all the little and big rights issues I have been juggling between clinic and hospital rounds can now be safely triaged through Markus who is wonderful and passionate about my work.
Finally: It feels a bit uncomfortable to write this (especially since on the day job front 2020 was difficult), but this surreal year has, creatively, been my most productive in a decade. I published five new stories, including a novelette, and a grand total of six articles, including one in Al-Jazeera.
The following are my award-eligible stories from 2020.
Lady Cataract Comes to the Mosque
A pandemic-adjacent weird story, it ‘places virality into a female form, this time as the blind Lady Cataract stalking the sleep of Dreamers in a cyberpunk/magical realism take on a viral infection (Tor). Read for Free. You can also listen to me read it here.
Folie à deux, or The Ticking Hourglass
Based on the true account of the a notorious Pakistani serial killer, this story is a reimagining of his would-be televised execution. You can buy it as part of the anthology Final Cuts edited by Ellen Datlow.
My first story solicited by an academic institution, it is about “a miraculous city of mystery, which suddenly appears in the middle of modern Lahore, Pakistan” (yunchtime.net) and was published as part of the Us in Flux series at the Center for Science & Imagination at Arizona State University. I’m told it has echoes of Borges, which is quite nice to hear. Read for free.
City of Red Midnight: A Hikayat
Last year Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler brought breathtaking fairy tales to the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop. Kelly said something to the effect of some writers writing fairy tale-adjacent stories rather than retellings, and that ignited an idea in my head: While I’d written some jinn stories that re-interpreted the mythology of jinns (The Ticking Hourglass is one) I hadn’t seriously delved into fairy tale retellings. Why not try and re-contextualize fairy tales from my childhood, from my part of the world? I thought.
Thus was born this nested feminist retelling of Maruf the Mochi from A Thousand and One Nights, which involves tricksters, powerful queens, and a hidden city. Read for free.
Beyond These Stars Other Tribulations of Love
Readers of the great Urdu poet Iqbal will recognize the title as a riff on his famous couplet. Beyond These Stars … is an interstellar story about a star-traveler and his dementia-afflicted mother — my first space travel story. Read for free.
Illustrated by Elena Lacey.
I hope next year is kinder to all and that it marks the beginning of a far better decade. Here’s to 2021.