Assamese SF Short Stories & Contribution of Dinesh Chandra Goswami : An Analysis

Hariprasad Baruah penned ‘Birasatiyar Desh’ (The land of Birasatiya’), a story in the 7th issue of 8th volume of ‘Awahan’, an Assamese monthly in 1937. The smell of science fiction was somehow prevailed in the story. Again, in 1938, in ‘Awahan’, Nagendra Narayan Choudhury, patron of the Assamese monthly, published his story ‘Rasayan’, which is termed by many a critic as the first Assamese SF(or, we can say SF story). Dinesh Chandra Goswami, Santanoo Tamuly, A. K. Ziyauddin Ahmed, Kshiradhar Baruah, Bandita Phukon, Abhijit Sarma Baruah, Rathindra Nath Goswami, Bhaskar Thakuria, Jayanta Kumar Goswami, Manabendra Kumar Baruah, Amulya Kumar Hazarika etc. are some others who have been enriching the genre of SF stories in Assamese with their contribution. Dinesh Chandra Goswami has penned about a hundred of SF stories in Assamese so far being the writer of the maximum no. of SF stories in the language, those are included in his seven story collections excluding the translated one. Not only regarding no. of stories he has written in this genre, but also in terms of vividness of the subjects, contents as well as forms of the stories concerned; without him, the world of Assamese SF stories(or for the sense, total Assamese SF literature) even can’t be imagined. By penning these stories, Goswami has been able to enrich the modern Assamese SF world and to give the Assamese literature a dignified place in the arena of national literature.