Science fiction has a tendency to leapfrog into the future; to anticipate what time may yet bring to pass or what the past could be if created anew. Exotic speculation is the name of the game. These especially curated stories are no different; melding fact and fantasy to present an extravaganza of choices. The kernel at the heart of each story is fact embroidered with threads drawn from the myriad realms of science so that the readers enter a bewitched wonderland replete with déjà vu and amazement at the unexpected.

Sukanya Datta is former Chief Scientist at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. She acquired her doctorate in Zoology from the University of Calcutta but chose to enter the field of science communication. She is one of the few women science fiction writers of India. Her work has been showcased in the Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (Vol II).

Apart from her popular science titles, Dr Datta has published one children's fantasy; five collections of science fiction stories with more on the way and co-authored an encyclopedia of S&T.

Dr Datta has served as Resource person for All India Radio, National Book Trust, India, Publications Division and Vigyan Prasar.

Story writing came to me as a way to temporarily escape un-escapable situations in which life specializes. Each of these stories came to me at a time of crisis or when I desperately wished to be someplace else. The stories did not simply create an escape route but during the time that it took to give them a digital existence, these drew me into a warm cocoon where only I existed alongside the words cascading via the mouse onto the computer screen. Grief, sorrow, resentment, agitation, anger...nothing else existed except the story that wanted to be born. Time ceased to exist for me. Perhaps I experienced what Salvadore Dali painted as a melting clock!

It is with immense gratitude that I acknowledge this surreal blessing that is mine. I have an imaginary oasis to which I can always escape. Yet I do not know the path to this oasis. The stories take me by the hand and lead me to it.

The stories, for as long as they come, will continue to cushion and to sustain me. I had proof of this during the Covid-lockdown days; a fact that fills me with the hope that this blessing will continue to sustain me till the end of my days.