The Subverse

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In this six episode mini-series, we talk to six South Asian sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction writers, tracing their ideas from conception to execution. Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of abuse, and the depiction of traumatic events. Listener discretion is advised. Today, we talk to Kuzhali Manickavel, author, editor and columnist. Kuzhali’s short fiction is beautiful, bizarre and haunting in the best way.Her short story collections Things We Found During the Autopsy and Insects Are Just Like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings are wonderful mix of themes spanning genres.  She has also written chapter books like 'How to Love Mathematical Objects' and ‘Eating Sugar, Telling Lies’. Kuzhali has written for Granta, Strange Horizons, Agni, Subtropics, Michigan Quarterly Review and DIAGRAM. We discuss her love of scary movies, the reality of unresolved trauma, using dark humour, and everyday horrors.  Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.  

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In this six episode mini-series, we talk to six South Asian sci fi, fantasy and speculative fiction writers, tracing their ideas from conception to execution. Today, we’re in conversation with SB Divya, author, editor and engineer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of sci-fi and speculative fiction. Divya’s work is a fascinating mix of her professional and personal backgrounds, with great science and even better storylines. Her debut novella, Runtime, was nominated for a Nebula award and her first novel Machinehood also received Hugo and Nebula nominations. She has been recognized for her work on the Escape Pod and her short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies.  Stay tuned for a conversation about the books that she grew up with, how being an editor helped her as a writer, privacy, healthcare and religion in sci-fi.  You can follow Divya on Twitter at @divyastweets Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In this six episode mini-series, we talk to six South Asian sci fi, fantasy and speculative fiction writers, tracing their ideas from conception to execution. In this episode, we’re talking to one of India’s best known Sci-fi and fantasy authors, Samit Basu. An incredibly versatile writer, Samit’s work has spanned mediums, with comic books,  film scripts and children’s and YA novels. Samit’s first novel, the Simoquin Prophecies, was published in 2003, when he was just 23. It evolved into the bestselling Gameworld Trilogy.  His latest novel, The City Inside was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020.  We chat with Samit about how he got started as a writer, his refusal to be bound by genre, and the not-so-distant future depicted in his novel.  Follow Samit on Twitter at @samitbasu. Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In this six episode mini-series, we talk to six South Asian sci fi, fantasy and speculative fiction writers, tracing their ideas from conception to execution. In this episode, we speak to Lavanya Lakshminarayan, award winning author and games designer. Her work is interesting, layered and tackles some really hard topics with ease. We discuss the books that set her on her writing journey, the importance of literary representation, access to technology, and the extremes of productivity culture. Lavanya’s debut novel ‘Analog/Virtual and other simulations of your future' netted her the Times of India AutHer award  and a Valley of Words Award in 2021. She was also a Locus Award finalist and made the longlist for the British Science Fiction Association Awards. Her short fiction has been featured in anthologies like A Flash of Silver-Green, Third-eye and the Gollancz book of south asian science fiction. You can follow Lavanya and learn more about her work on Twitter at lavanya_ln.  Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes. 

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In this six episode mini-series, we talk to six South Asian sci fi, fantasy and speculative fiction writers, tracing their ideas from conception to execution. We begin the series with author, storyteller and Twitter sensation, Shiv Ramdas. Shiv's work explores serious and often historical themes in nuanced and deft ways. His debut work, India’s first mainstream Cyberpunk novel, Domechild was released in 2013. Shiv’s short fiction has been featured in Slate, Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Podcastle, and more. In 2020, he was nominated for a Hugo, a Nebula and an Ignyte Award.  In this episode, Anjali and Shiv discuss Shiv's influences, AI, magic, and his work-in-progress paranormal PI novel.  You can follow Shiv Ramdas on Twitter where he’s @nameshiv  Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.  

At Dark ‘n’ Light we’re deeply interested in stories and the people behind them, and our podcast The Subverse is a fortnightly journey into weird and wonderful conversations with creators and thinkers.  Our new six part mini-series Arcx is all about literary inspiration, tracing its roots from conception to execution. We aim to arrive at the root of that inspiration, and find the spark that ignited ideas. We seek to peel away layers of perception, memory, and impressions  to find the story, line, characters or even a word that inspired a writer to set forth on their journey. Join us over the course of the next six episodes as we uncover what writers loved, what they hated, and what prompted them to tell their own stories  as we dissect art, influences, the process of writing, and what shaped it all.  The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

Susan Mathews interviews Catarina de Albuquerque, Chief Executive Officer of Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), a global partnership which has positioned SWA as a vital contributor to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6. In a wide-ranging conversation, they speak of what human rights as a discourse brings to water and sanitation, the realities on the ground, and the backdrop in which the General Assembly recognised not only water as a right, but sanitation also in 2010. Together, they are vital for reducing the global burden of disease and improving the health, education, and economic productivity of populations. Susan and Catarina also discuss the need to link the right to water with water injustices, particularly the politics of water governance and equity. If not connected to social  movements, the right to water risks being an empty signifier. Commercialisation, privatisation, and the commodification of water have resulted in a situation in which those who can pay for water have it readily, leaving many without affordable, or accessible water sources. We spoke at length about inequalities, with her outlining issues around access to water and how gender, caste, class, and disability determine access to water . Women often suffer the most from water scarcity, given that the responsibility of collecting water, and managing this scarce resource to meet diverse household needs rests with them. We also touched upon how the existing legal arena and human rights discourse may not allow for discussions around existential questions, focusing our gaze on narrow, human frames.  Catarina de Albuquerque was previously the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on safe drinking water and sanitation, appointed by the Human Rights Council in 2008. In 2010, she played a pivotal role in the recognition of water and sanitation as human rights by the United Nations General Assembly. Her work also helped ensure that the rights to water and sanitation were incorporated into the language of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.

From Asia’s mountain core flows ten great rivers that run through 16 countries, serving a fifth of humanity. The struggle for water in modern history is a global story, but nowhere has the search for water shaped or sustained as much human life as in India and China. In this episode, Susan Mathews speaks to Sunil Amrith, historian and writer, about his book Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have Shaped South Asia’s History published in 2018. Unruly Waters tells the story of how the schemes of empire-builders, the visions of freedom fighters, the designs of engineers, and the cumulative actions of hundreds of millions of people across generations, have transformed Asia’s waters over the past 200 years. In the conversation, we also cover some of our parched histories, and the histories of the empire. The catastrophes of the late nineteenth century left many people—Indian economists, British administrators, water engineers and humanitarian reformers—with an acute anxiety about climate and water. Climate was at the heart of a new ecology of fear’, something we also face in our contemporary contexts: old and new anxieties and fears. How does reading these parched histories equip us now, or can they? In this wide-ranging conversation, we also speak about hydro-colonialism, the many names of rain, signs of hope, and taking from Zadie Smith, how there is a sense of loss that climate change brings with it. We also examine our relationship with animals, trees, our kinship, our duty of care, elements now animating environmental history, and his own scholarship. Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. His books include Crossing the Bay of Bengal (2013), and Unruly Waters (2018). He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and has recently been awarded the A.H. Heineken Prize for History (2022).  The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.  

In this episode, Susan talks to Sharanya Manivannan, who writes and illustrates fiction, poetry, and non-fiction for children and adults.  Sharanya's two most recent books are the graphic novel, Incantations Over Water, and the picture book, Mermaids In The Moonlight. Sharanya grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia and currently lives in India. Ila is the mermaid protagonist in her two recent books, and the stories are set in Mattakalappu (Batticaloa), on the northeastern shore of Sri Lanka. We are introduced to a lagoon teeming with magic. For those who live there, the idea of fish-tailed women is not out of the realm of possibility. And yet, while these mermaids appear as motifs throughout the lagoon, their stories have been erased. In these books, Sharanya breathes new life into these tales and other accounts of mermaids from all over the world, challenging the often eurocentric focus of these myths. Ila’s journey extends through the war on the island and the silence of those years, and the tsunami of 2004, when “the water stripped back like linen to reveal its bed and afterwards, beings that would resist record lay stranded briefly.” It is the capaciousness of water, and the hybrid and fluid body of the mermaid that really offers us a beautiful escape in these books. It gives us a whole new world, a whole subverse for us to partake in. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.  

In this episode, Susan Mathews talks to Nandini Oza about archiving oral histories around the struggles against dam projects in the Narmada River valley. The former President of Oral History Association of India (2020-22), Nandini is a researcher, writer, chronicler, and an archivist.  For over a decade, she was an activist with the powerful people’s movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). In 2004, Nandini began recording the oral histories of prominent leaders and activists of the NBA, both local and from outside the Narmada valley and of impacted women and men belonging to adivasi, farming, and other natural resource-dependent communities. The Narmada is India’s longest west-flowing river, and it makes its way through the three western states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is the terminal dam on the river in Gujarat, and is part of the Narmada Valley Development Plan (NVDP) which includes 30 big, 135 medium, and 3000 small dams on the river and its tributaries. For Nandini, oral history is people’s history—the history of the marginalised and exploited, narrated in their own voice, which is often actively suppressed by mainstream history. Even in people’s movements, when history is written, it often focuses on the key issues, programs and strategies, or on known faces, and the people who form the backbone of the resistance and their battles do not find a place of prominence. These interviews also help us understand how turning a free-flowing river into a reservoir of stagnant water by building a mega dam destroys the very way of life of people who belong to one of the oldest river valley civilizations. The Subverse is the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.