BOOK OF THE MONTH: MAY 2018

Book        : Travails with the Alien 
Editor      : Sandip Ray
Publisher : HarperCollins
Pages        : 213
Price         : Rs 699
ISBN        : 10: 9352779150
 
Whose spacecraft loses its way on its intergalactic travels and lands in a small village in rural Bengal. The film, based on a story that Ray wrote himself, was to be made into a Hollywood film in 1967 (and its Bengali version called Avatar!) with Peter Sellers playing an Indian. But it never got made owing to a shifty associate producer who seemed to have been cheating Ray.
 
Satyajit Ray was a master of science fiction writing. Through his Professor Shonku stories and other fiction and non-fiction pieces, he explored the genre from various angles. In the 1960s, Ray wrote a screenplay for what would have been the first-of-its-kind sci-fi film to be made in India. It was called The Alien and was based on his own short story 'Bonkubabur Bandhu'.
 
On being prompted by Arthur C. Clarke, who found the screenplay promising, Ray sent the script to Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, who agreed to back it, and Peter Sellers was approached to play a prominent role. Then started the 'Ordeals of the Alien' as Ray calls it, and more shockingly, some fifteen years later, Ray watched Steven Spielberg's film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and realized these bore uncanny resemblances to his script.
 
The book includes Ray's detailed essay on the project with the full script of The Alien, as well as the original short story on which the screenplay was based. These, presented alongside correspondence between Ray Hollywood producers who showed interest make this book a rare and compelling read on science fiction, cinema and the art of adaptation.

Review Courtesy: https://harperbroadcast.com