This site is dedicated to the background work I am doing to create the Antisense Universe, a storyworld about redesigning human civilisation. In this world I am setting a number of short stories, novels, graphic shorts and novels, a feature film called Ants on a Leaf and a one-hour format TV screenplay called Antisense.
Works published so far:
Arisudan, novella, appeared in Mithila Review 15,
‘Arfabad’, short story, in Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, edited by Sarena Ullibarri et al. Albuquerque, NM: World Weaver Press, 2021.
‘Replacement’, short story, in Avatar: Indian Science Fiction, ed Tarun Saint and Francisco Verso, Future Fictions 2020.
‘A Night with the Joking Clown’, short story, The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction. Ed. Tarun Saint (Gurugram, India: Hachette India, 2019.
‘How Zigsa Found Her Way’, graphic short story, in Longform: An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, ed Sarbajit Sen et al., New Delhi: Harp Collins India, 2018.
The TV series is planned for seven seasons. They are:
(1) Climate Town. This describes how Climate Town, a UN-mandated township for climate refugees, is set up in the fictional South East Asian country of Melayu. It is run by a group of climate scientists, some of whom are also climate refugees, and it pioneers ways to change our cities to make them solve the climate emergency, not aggravate it. We are also introduced to some of the corporations whose machinations form the Big Bad of the series. It ends with a global crisis precipitated by Pradip Shankar, a doctor who is meddling with gene therapies. Newborn boys begin to die.
(2) Bitch Wars. Battle lines are drawn in Season 2, and the corporations band together to destroy not just climate town but all the people who are resisting their rule. They engineer a climate crisis which breaks modern civilisation and leaves them in charge. But a generation of girls growing up without brothers is determined to stop them. One thousand boys, the sons of the richest men in the world, are being groomed to be the sole heirs of the planet.
(3) Survivarium. Season 3 tells the story of how the resistance to their rule develops, the Survivors escape and invent the system of karma to organise their work and fix wrongs. They forsake the ideas of law and money and build the first survivarium, an underground refuge filled with the ten treasures: people, plants, animals, soil, air, water, light, love, karma and knowledge.
(4) Karma. Season 4 shows the new civilisation developing in secret, and we follow the lives of the first generation of kids to grow up in the survivariums. Meanwhile the endgame is on in hanyo town: the Robot Wars have started.
(5) Floriana. Season 5 describes how the rule of the hanyos ends, the machines get back their identities and the Survivors re-emerge to heal the Earth.
(6) Tira’s Gift. Season 6 is set five hundred years after the end of the hanyos and tells the story of Tira, an erratic genius who may have broken the world.
(7) Lightbearers Season 7 is the final book of the series, and describes how the FLorian ci;livations reintroduces men and terraforms Venus.
The founder of the first survivarium is Zigsa, who escapes from a death sentence and takes refuge in the Flaming Mountains. When the Survivors have created their world and begun living in it, they decide they must do something to help those still trapped under the rule of the hanyos. They begin sending out agents called rootkittens who carry Puzzle One of the Karma Sutra, which is a manual for building a survivarium. The rest of the Puzzles are embedded deep in the servers of the corporations. They are hidden in little jigsaw puzzles, spot-the-difference and other games the corporate servers send to their labourers to keep their minds out of trouble. But the Puzzles of the Survivors are a blueprint for escape.
The TV series pilot can be viewed on Coverfly
The Antisense wiki on this site describes the Antisense Universe, its history, systems, concepts and personalities.