Gautam Bhatia’s presence looms large within the landscape of contemporary science fiction in India; his novels suffuse the Speculative Fiction (SF) imagination with contexts closer to home. As the author of the Sumer Duology, he explores issues of citizenship, belonging, and free will. His latest novel, The Sentence, continues the tradition of exploring urgent socio-political concerns through the tropes of dystopian fiction. 

In this talk, Bhatia explores the intersections of law, justice, and speculative storytelling. He will be reflecting on his wide-ranging body of work as well as his efforts to create a canon of Indian science fiction. The talk will also touch upon his significant contribution to popularising Indian SF through acts of public review and curation, such as editing an upcoming anthology, hosting a Delhi-based reading group, and being a regular commentator on the genre. 

About the Speaker

Gautam Bhatia is an Indian science fiction writer whose novel The Sentence was published in 2024.

He is the author of the SF Duology, The Wall and The Horizon, both of which featured on Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading Lists in 2021 (Best Debut Novel) and 2022 (Best Science Fiction Novel). The Wall was a finalist for the 2021 Valley of Words Best English Language Novel Prize. Bhatia was long-listed for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer at both the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), and the 2022 WorldCon.

Bhatia is also the coordinating editor of Strange Horizons, a weekly online magazine of fantasy and science fiction, which won the British Fantasy Award in 2021, and has been a finalist for the Hugo Awards every year since 2013. In 2022, he was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for his work with the magazine.

His reviews and essays on science fiction and fantasy have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Hindustan Times, Scroll, and The Wire.

In his spare time, he is a lawyer.