Anil Menon on sf, India, & their interplay

Quotes from his interview with Charles Tan at SF Signal:

1. Why sf?: "the play of ideas, the awareness that technology is doing something huge to us as a species."
2. "Kelly Link taught me to take sentences seriously; she'd pick a harmless looking sentence in the story and then she'd chip away at it, chip away at it, until suddenly, out of nowhere, a completely unexpected possibility would stand revealed."
3. On desi fiction: "the old oral folktales and mythologies are a different matter. The treatment of fact and fiction in these tales is distinctly postmodern. Thus a story could be about a prince who marries his own left half, but discovers that it still doesn't rule out marital conflict. Or a story could talk-- not metaphorically, but literally-- about a story's need to be told. Or a story could consider the problem of how the Creator could tell a story if everything He spoke turned into living truth. This ancient fascination with language and reality...".
4. "Traditionally, Indian spec-fic had a rather didactic tone (parents are still under the impression it's purpose is to improve marks in science exams)".