Article’s

The current paper examines the critical reception of Rimi B. Chatterjee’s first novel, Signal Red (2005), which was a near-future narrative of India written primarily at a fictional Indian defence research centre called the ‘Centre.’ Through an examination of Science and Technology Studies, Gender Criticism, and Postcolonial Science Fiction, the present study demonstrates that Chatterjee utilizes a fictionalized tool known as “Signal Red” glass and its nano-powder derivatives to make a larger point regarding secrecy, complicity, and the domestic cost of a militarized scientific research program. The present study demonstrates how Chatterjee’s three major characters, the scientist Gopal Chandran; his wife Vidura; and the visiting sociologist Anuprabha, were positioned along a continuum of proximity to and distance from state secrecy, and how their positioning relates to gendered spaces inside the Center’s isolated campus. The present study places Chatterjee’s novel within the growing number of post-liberalization Indian SF novels and examines where this work fits within Chatterjee’s larger trajectory toward overtly dystopian and climate-focused SF.