The Last Timesmith

Book excerpt: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress meets Dark Matter in this new-age Asian science fiction inspired by the birth of Bangladesh. What is the meaning of time if history is nothing but memories in making? T. wakes up on the battlefield, stripped of memory. The reason is not amnesia, but a new world located in another time and place. This world resembles T.’s own world but is yet distinct. This world is crushing beneath the ruthless oppression, apartheid segregation, and biased discrimination of The Empire. And yet, amidst overpowerings untruth and autocracy, the seeds of rebellion sprout forth. Ashitopol, The last Timesmith, holds the key to many raging possibilities and questions. T.’s resolve, his conscience, courage, and integrity faces the ultimate test. Only time can tell if this world, and all the others around it in the multiverse, can embrace freedom. From the Back Cover: The Cheetahs now control the Lowland with iron-fists. They have made Time a taboo. T. wakes up in a battlefield with retrograde amnesia. Despite the familiarity of the landscape, he feels this is not his world. The answers lie with the last Timesmith, Ashitopol, and his daughter, Dita. A rebellion bleeds through the Cheetah’s iron-fists. T. finds himself in this confluence of destinies where his choices will either shatter realities and timelines, or create them anew. In the tryst with Time and space, what will T. choose? About the Author: Dipen Bhattacharya born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, followed by a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of New Hampshire, USA, in 1990. He was a researcher at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA, and later joined the High Energy Astrophysics Group at the University of California, Riverside. During his years in research, he flew high altitude research balloons with telescopes to look for gamma rays from such cosmic objects as active galaxies and neutron stars. He worked with NASA’s gamma-ray satellites and detected gamma-rays from active galaxy NGC 253; one of Dipen’s research projects with supernova remnants in our galaxy has been used by astrophysicists to model cosmic ray particles in our galaxy. As a Fulbright Fellow, he taught physics at BRAC University, Dhaka. Currently, he is a professor of physics at Moreno Valley College in California. Dipen is actively connected with environmental and scientific outreach groups in Bangladesh and has published a book that details the geological history of the Bengal Delta. To date, he has published eight works of fiction in Bengali: four novels and four short-story collections. The social dynamics of imagined future societies—interwoven with scientific principles—feature in his work, often set in Bengal. About the Translator: Born in Kolkata, India, in the year 2000, Chirayata Chakrabarty is a graduate from English and Foreign Languages University in Cultural Studies. She also dabbles with music in her free time, a passion that was birthed by the pandemic, with uploads on both YouTube and Spotify under the stage name, Purna. Guided by her passion in literature and language, she started translating Bengali short stories, as a practice, in 2018. She has since tried to grow as a translator, as well as a song-writer and poet—a growth that she has sought since she was old enough to think.