Bangla science fiction

Bangla Science Fiction is a rich part of Bengali literature. Although it is not as established as other genres in the Bengali language, it is gaining popularity among Bengali readers, especially in Bangladesh.
Earliest writers
Bengali writers wrote various science fiction works in the 19th and early 20th centuries during the British Raj, before the partition of India. Isaac Asimov’s assertion that "true science fiction could not really exist until people understood the rationalism of science and began to use it with respect in their stories" is true for the earliest science fiction written in the Bengali language.
The earliest notable Bengali science fiction was Jagadananda Roy's Shukra Bhraman (Travels to Venus), published in 1879. This story is of particular interest to literary historians, as it described an interstellar journey to another planet; its description of the alien creatures that are seen in Uranus used an evolutionary theory similar to the origins of man: "They resembled our apes to a large extent. Their bodies were covered with dense black fur. Their heads were larger in comparison with their bodies, limbs sported long nails and they were completely naked." This story was published a decade before H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) in which Wells describes the aliens from Mars..
Other notable science fiction writers of West Bengal include: Lila Majumdar, Sunil Ganguly, Kinnor Ray, Abhijnan Roychowdhury, Anish Deb, Shirshendu Mukherjee, Said Mustafa Siraj, Samarjit Kor, Swapan Banarjee and Somoresh Majumder.
Bangla science fiction was given a magic realism worldview by the Hungryalist writers Malay Roy Choudhury in his novel Kuharbhumey Nishidishi and Jinnatulbilader Rupkatha, and by Basudeb Dasgupta in his short story collection Randhanshala.
Portraying of Characters in Bangla Science Fiction
Most Bangla science fiction authors use different characters for different stories, building them up in different forms according to the theme of the story. The stories by Muhammed Zafar Iqbal sometimes repeat names but never used the same character in more than one story.
Qazi Shahnur Hussain, the elder son of Qazi Anwar Hussain and grandson of Qazi Motahar Hussain, wrote a science fiction series named "Chotomama Series". These are the adventures of a young Bangladeshi scientist Rumi Chotomama and his nephew.
Satyajit Ray, on the contrary, wrote most of his science fiction works with the participation of the fictional character Professor Shanku or Trilokeshwar Shanku. Shanku is portrayed as an aged man with proficiency in 72 different languages who has invented quite a number of useful things. Shanku used to be regularly accompanied by other fictional characters like scientists Jeremy Saunders and Hermann Krol, the completely non-scientific neighbour Mr. Abinash, the servant Prahlad and the beloved cat Newton.

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