Of Science and Screwballs: Sidra Sheikh's 'The Light Blue Jumper' doesn't deliver on its promise of good speculative fiction

This book is what you call a good idea with a really bad execution. I went into it so excitedly, primarily because I loved the cover art, but also because desi science fiction! What a rare treat! Instead, what I got was a plot so convoluted I had given up at around the halfway mark. Not because there were too many threads to take care of, but just because the absolute zaniest things kept happening.

I was suddenly compressed like I was being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste. My head felt like it would explode. As this is a very real possibility, given the history of my people, I was alarmed to say the least. To add to my woes, I had lost all feeling in my limbs.
I later realised that was the case because I had, in fact, lost all my limbs. Hence the lack of feeling was a natural consequence and not at all alarming, nor surprising, in the least.

I got the weirdest feeling that the author had tried to create the wackiness one can see in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a truly bizarre book that left me quite entertained. Unfortunately, this book did not leave me entertained at all. What it did leave me with was a steadily rising desire to just finish it already, with me regularly cursing my inability to leave a book halfway through, if only so I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

It is at this point in any review that I would attempt to explain what the plot of the story was, but honestly almost half of it went over my head, just because I simply no longer cared what was happening. I was slightly aware of the story a few pages into the book, when an alien creature met resistance fighters and unwittingly got embroiled in their mostly mad uprising efforts. This brief spell of comprehension only lasted up until, I believe, page 45, after which I gave up entirely and just kept reading for the sake of finishing the novel. If you asked me now who the IPF were, or what the objective of the puranas was supposed to be, or even what happened in the end, I literally couldn’t tell you.

Our objectives would be to discover the latest IPF weaponry and plans, identify their top leadership, and find their connection to the Puranas.

I mean. If you say so.

I was beginning to understand his game plan.

Reader, I assure you. I understood none of it.

I get that I’m making the book sound like a complete and total failure of a reading experience, but there were some funny parts, which are honestly the only reason this book managed to be okay instead of being the absolute worst. Amidst all the ridiculousness, which was by far the majority of what was going on in the book, there were scenes which made me snort. This was most definitely due to the fact that I have a very lame sense of humour, which is very in line with the jokes this book indulges in. And because I have loved the works of authors such as Douglas Adams or Tom Holt, my mind was prepared for the sort of silly, over-the-top, mostly madcap jokes that dotted the narrative.

A hush fell over the audience as the master of ceremonies spoke from the well-lit stage. “Welcome, great leaders of the Universe, our allies and our friends. As you know, we are all here for one reason and one reason alone; to promote world peace!” A groan went up from the audience, coupled with a few boos, at which he adjusted his silver bouffant and hastily continued, “By promoting new and powerful weapons!” At that there was enthusiastic applause from the audience, in which we joined heartily.

There were also some attempts, mostly weak, at world building, which I appreciated but could not get into, mostly because they felt so tacked on. Moments such as the encounters between characters belonging to different planets showed that the author had spent at least a few seconds trying to think of ways to make a new and interesting world. It was just sad that it wasn’t a full fleshed-out universe but rather a disparate set of locations that came and went with such minimal fanfare I can hardly remember any distinct qualities of even a single setting in the book. This is a rather large fail for a science fiction book, where the world the author builds, with its various cultures, clothes, languages, or even settings, is as important as the characters that live in it.

“Greetings,” I said, and extended my hand.
“Welcome to Zaaron, I mean Dephron,” he mumbled shyly, putting a pebble in it.
“Zaaronian custom?” I whispered to Dinaara.
“No, I think he wasn’t quite sure what to do with your hand.”
Then the funny creature suddenly reached out and tweaked my nose.
“That was Zaaronian custom,” Dinaara whispered back.

For a science fiction novel, there was also some science, enough to be visible but rare enough to not count. There were spaceships and retractor beams and shields, but most of it was so perfunctory so as to be redundant. Which is sad because science fiction just has so much potential! Think of the limitless possibilities. But beyond a superficial mention of travelling at warp speed or memory stealing machines, there is barely any attempt at exploring the depths of a futuristic universe. I’m not even asking for a very detailed, painstaking look at each machine’s inner workings within the story, but the sort of casual tone the story takes makes it clear that the author was hoping the humour would help gloss over its insubstantial and mostly invisible science.

“The broadcast range for Spaceradio.fm is fairly limited. We will not be able to reach the kingdoms or any planet in the outer rims.”

All of this is very sad because, just like with any other science fiction title, there were multiple possibilities of actual commentary which the author truly missed. To be fair, maybe there were some moments of smart social discourse that I neglected to pay attention to purely because I had given up having any real investment in the book’s rapidly disintegrating narrative arc. But given that there is one apparently evil power and others trying to stop whole planets from being controlled, the overall theme of the book seemed to fit into what science fiction, as a whole, tries to address: the idea of the Colonizing power, and those under its hegemony. It just didn’t do it well enough to be convincing.

We would be the leaders of the New World, a free, fair and better world for every race. With that in mind, this was but a small sacrifice made by few for the betterment of many.

And even if I had been convinced, the plot was simply too convoluted to stay invested for long. I mean, there’s wacky, and then there’s ‘you’re-trying-too-hard’, and this book definitely tumbled over headfirst into the second category. Time travel popped up. So did alternate universes. At one point there was a machine that implanted memories from one person into another. And did one of the characters randomly just turn into a spider?

I found him curled up on a sofa in an office of sorts. As I smiled through my mask, he changed into a blue spider.

I think I could have forgiven a significant part of the book’s flaws if there had been a greater amount of South Asian representation in the story, which was what had me excited in the first place. But there was barely anything to distinguish this book from any other sub-par science fiction book published in any other country. Except for some random mentions of Chicken Tikka masala, there really wasn’t anything that could make you feel like the characters were desi. Of course, one could argue that in a setting that’s literally on another planet, national identity doesn’t matter, which would have been a fair point if the world building had been so intricate so as to convince me that there was no need for any desi-ness to be visible in the first place.

I ate it without complaint, thinking wistfully of my wife’s cooking skills. If only I could get hold of some chicken tikka masala from somewhere, it would make everything palatable.

So, to summarize: not worth reading. I’d say stick to waiting until someone like Usman Tanveer Malik writes a full-length novel, because great South Asian science fiction is not to be found here. I went in with an open mind, but the urge to be snarky was too hard to resist right about the point where I realized that the rebel movement in the book was called ‘The Rebel Movement’. If really lame humour and convoluted plots are your thing, give it a go, otherwise this one can be missed.