Alloys, spices and the endless search for home

Two recent works of speculative fiction explore the idea of finding home—here on Earth and away from it

- Shrabonti Bagchi

At a time when boundaries are more pervasive than ever in the world we live in, they have permeated fiction as well—especially speculative fiction, where writers get to play around with them and with the idea of home: who it belongs to, who inhabited it first, who has the right to seek it.

In Loka, US-based writer S.B. Divya’s second book in a series set in the far-future “alloy era” of humanity, a young girl must find out where she belongs and where her true home is. She was chosen, even before her birth, to live on the planet Meru, the setting of the first book in the series. Yet, Akshaya yearns for Earth—she has never set foot on it, but it feels something like home to her.

Akshaya’s mother is human. Her other parent, her “maker”, is a genderless “alloy”, a member of a post-human race created through genetic design. In this world, alloys make the rules and humans have to live harmoniously with them. Ambition and violence are frowned upon for having brought the Earth to the brink of destruction centuries ago through greed and exploitation. Alloys embody a sort of universal consciousness; think of them as gods from Hindu or Greek myth who can create “incarns” or human-like avatars of themselves.