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In postcolonial studies there are two main strands of argument concerning the legacies and effects of cultural imperialism on science fiction as a literary genre. The first strand presents a critical reading of Western science fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a genre that is deeply embedded in the discourses and ideologies of colonialism and imperialism (Rieder, 2008; Kerslake, 2007). The second strand presents a critical reading of the writing back of postcolonial authors, stressing the subversive elements of both science and fiction and their power to undermine dominant narratives of cultural imperialism and (neo)colonialism (Chambers, 2003; Hoagland and Sarwal, 2010; Langer, 2011; Smith, 2012; Varughese, 2013 and 2017). In this article I focus on a piece of colonial-era science fiction from a non-Western writer: Jagadish Chandra Bose’s short story “Runaway Cyclone”. First published in 1896 and republished in an extended version by the author in 1921, I analyse how Bose’s story combines elements of science fiction and magical realism. I then argue that Bose turns the narrative tropes of Western science fiction on their head and thus undermines Western science as an epistemological tool of imperial control. Reading “Runaway Cyclone” alongside Bose’s non-fictional accounts on science in colonised India will then reveal a philosophy of science that embraces Western science and Indian philosophy, which in turn can be read as a politics of science that is in effect anticolonial.

The senses play a crucial role in the poetry of Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), both on the level of theme and on the level of aesthetics. Throughout this essay, I show how Naidu creates multisensorial sensescapes that evoke the Indian aesthetic principle of rasa, which literally translates into English as 'juice, essence, or taste' and which, in the context of aesthetic theory, denotes the emotive essence of and response to a piece of art. The early twentieth century saw a revival of classical Indian aesthetics, including rasa. Translating this ancient Indian aesthetic principle into modern poetry in English, Naidu harks back to a pre-colonial cultural idea(l) in order to form a national identity that is independent of the coloniser's political and cultural imperialism.

This book examines the meanings, uses, and agency of voice, noise, sound, and sound technologies across Asia. Including a series of wide-ranging and interdisciplinary case studies, the book reveals sound as central to the experience of modernity in Asia and as essential to the understanding of the historical processes of cultural, social, political, and economic transformation throughout the long twentieth century. Presenting a broad range of topics - from the changing sounds of the Kyoto kimono making industry to radio in late colonial India - the book explores how the study of Asian sound cultures offers greater insight into historical accounts of local and global transformation. Challenging us to rethink and reassemble important categories in sound studies, this book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of sound studies, Asian studies, history, postcolonial studies, and media studies.

This essay serves as an introduction to a special section on the senses in late colonial India. Participating in the act of decolonising sensory studies, this collection explores the intersections between post-colonial studies and sensory studies by paying particular attention to the sensorium of the colonised. In the historical and geographical context of colonial South Asia, the senses are embedded in acts of distinction across race, caste, class, and bodily and gender hierarchies. The collection intervenes by paying attention to the relationship between power and sense perception as it finds register in media, scientific practices and literature of the period. Across the section, we suggest that making sense of empire is also to make sense of the sensory regimes of empire that have resonances in the contemporary.

On 6 June 1901, Jagadis Chandra Bose read a paper at the Royal Society in London, entitled ‘On Electric Response of Inorganic Substances’. Bose showed that external stimuli, such as poison or electricity, have a similar effect on living tissue, such as plants or muscle, and inorganic matter, such as iron oxide or tin. Bose recorded response curves for muscle, plant, and metal and was thus able to show parallels between the living and the non-living. This was not only revolutionary, but also unacceptable to parts of his audience. At this talk, Bose encountered two difficulties: firstly, in upsetting traditional disciplinary boundaries between physics and physiology, he, the physicist, undermined the authority of the physiologists who were present. Consequently, they attacked Bose’s findings on the grounds of the second difficulty, namely the common prejudice against Indians according to which the Indian mind, in its pursuit of metaphysic ideals, was unsuited to scientific thoughts and practices. The physiologists thus confounded Bose’s theory of unity between the living and the non-living with a theological bias according to which they believed that Bose could only have arrived at his results because of his predisposition for mysticism rather than by carefully executed experiments. They failed to see that both could be true: for Bose, the intuition to search for a unifying principle between the living and the non-living and the scientific rigour with which he strove to prove it were not mutually exclusive, but, in fact, mutually dependant.