SCIENCE FICTION is usually celebrated for the glimpses it offers into the future. The crispest definition of science fiction is to call it a literature of "what if?" Due to the protean nature of the genre, it embraces everything from crude interplanetary romances to sophisticated psychological drama. It has been universally acknowledged as the most popular form of fiction for young people and exists in diverse forms, challenging any kind of rigid categorisation. "It attempts to present realities which are different from those we know", says critic Christopher Evans. "The imagined future, the altered present and the past in which history was different!" Science fiction writers have been perpetually interested in possibilities and potentials. In his preface to the anthology of short stories written by Sujatha Rangarajan, a major Tamil writer, the author admits that as a subgenre, science fiction has not been widely practised by Tamil writers. However, Su...