Science Fiction Question for an Indologist (fwd)

[Dominik Wujastyk]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 11:52:21 -0500 (EST)
From: John Robert Gardner <John.Robert.Gardner at east.sun.com>
Reply-To: John Robert Gardner <John.Robert.Gardner at east.sun.com>
Subject: Science Fiction Question for an Indologist (fwd)
Cc: Juergen.Mehlhop at Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE


Greetings:

Please consider responding to the query below (querant is cc'd above), one
could of course argue the notion of various tales from ancient times as
not unlike Sci Fi, or that Dayanand Saraswati gave a science take on the
RV (atman-bomb, etc.), but I'm curious if someone has any input on the
following:

<snip>
In our western culture, we sometimes ignore inventions made in the Eastern
World. A typical question for quiz shows is who invented the book printing
technology aiming at Johannes Guttenberg, ignoring that in China they had
book printing already 500 years earlier and they were printing in colour
as Guttenberg had printed his first book.

So far, I thought that the first science fiction novel ever was
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly. Lately I have been told that this actually
is not true, there should have been a woman in India who wrote some
science fiction earlier, some kind of robots doing housework should play a
role in this. Have you ever heard of this, and if so, can you tell me who
the author was?
</snip>

thanks,

jr
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|
John Robert Gardner
Enterprise Management Architecture Group
Sun Microsystems Inc.,
MailStop UBUR02-306
1 Network Drive
Burlington, MA  01803-0903              |  "Failure is not an option"
                                        |
Ph. 781-442-0692                        |  Eugene Crantz
Fax 781-442-1539                        |  NASA
e-mail  john.robert.gardner at sun.com
-----------------------------------
http://vedavid.org/diss/
http://vedavid.org/xml/docs/


------------- End Forwarded Message -------------


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|
John Robert Gardner
Enterprise Management Architecture Group
Sun Microsystems Inc.,
MailStop UBUR02-306
1 Network Drive
Burlington, MA  01803-0903              |  "Failure is not an option"
                                        |
Ph. 781-442-0692                        |  Eugene Crantz
Fax 781-442-1539                        |  NASA
e-mail  john.robert.gardner at sun.com
-----------------------------------
http://vedavid.org/diss/
http://vedavid.org/xml/docs/