This is a completely rewritten version of my novel Signal Red, with new characters and scenes and a solarpunk subplot. I have deleted some of the more boring original passages, and brought the storyline into the Antisense Universe. It is now Book 1 of the series, where it belongs.

When the first version of this book came out in 2005, India was at the height of liberalisation fever. Young girls in miniskirts thronged the cities by night, cosmopolitan in one hand and Jimmy Choos in the other—or at least, that's what the novelists of that time would have you believe. Nobody wanted gloom and doom stories about a grim future India in which fascism has triumphed. It could never happen here, right? Right?

Three years previous to publishing Signal Red, I had been working at IIT Kharagpur. In 2002, the chilly shadow of that soon-to-be India fell upon our shoulders, though the rest of the country barely shivered. Some of the other faculty at the Institute expressed their fears about what they suspected would come next. They painted for me a chilling picture of the choices they would face when the shadow eventually shortened, as we always knew it would.

That shadow has now been blasted by the light of the present. In 2005 it made sense to warn people. There was still a measure of doubt about which direction the country would take. I hoped at least some people would heed my warning. This did not happen. And here we are.

The book sold out its first edition (many thanks to Penguin India and my editor, Poulomi Chatterjee) and the rights reverted to me in 2010. I put it out for free and it haunted the limbo of the internet like an unquiet ghost till about three months ago, when I decided I needed to remount the old jewel in a new setting. This new edition is also free. As a self-published book, it is ineligible for most awards and reviews and is at the mercy of word-of-mouth publicity. Please share widely if you are concerned about the future, such as it is.

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