Bangalore Y2K50 is a science fiction novel taking you on an unknown journey of futuristic inventions and discoveries interspersed with scientific explanations and details pertaining to year 2050. Two scientists from Bangalore, Dr M Venkataswamy and Dr H S M Prakash have written this sci-fi novel that is set in the futuristic city of Ben which was earlier known as Bangalore. It is basically a thriller with modern gadgets of the coming decades, of advanced hyper lifestyles with highly advanced facilities like smart houses, robots, developments in space and medicine and travels to the moon.
The book takes you to an era where your children are looked after by robots where they not only look after the day-to-day needs of babies, but also do the cooking and manage the house through a set of servant robots. The other side of robots too has been described where these gadgets have a human nature with human needs and once they become afflicted with the deadliest H1N1 robot influenza virus, it results in mass panic all over the world. People living in higher zones and smart houses are forced to discard their robots and go in for human recruitments from rural areas. The ultra modern hi-fi
world has no answer for this deadly influenza.
Life in Ben city (Bangalore) has changed a lot by 2050, making it an interplanetary hub of activities where scientists shuttle between moon and the earth for mineral deposits and have also found some hidden water deposits which are more precious than diamonds. Apart from this, the book also highlights the lives of many couples amid affluence who are freed from poverty and disease and are living in smart houses where one does not have to do much. Even the lifestyle of couples living in the A and B zones of Ben city has changed where a couple can have live-in relationships with other men and women, and it is an accepted mode of life within their married status.
The ‘smart house’ in this book has a master control room that reveals through cameras placed at every nook and cranny, what is going on, who visited, were there any intruders and so on. In fact, a husband can track his wife and so can she through GPS and other tracking devices. “The arrival of the husband is seen in a corner of a big plasma screen by his wife and daughter even as they are watching and enjoying an album,” the scientists envisage and write about the life of a family in 2050.
The authors have tried to explain the ‘life in future’ through the story of a couple, Iyan and Ashwini, and their daughter Cosmora, how their lives have changed and become monotonous, segregated from other people who are still stuck in the time warp of the 20th century, living in slums and rural areas but outside the privileged zones of Ben city where this family lives. This family leaves their privileged zone to experience life in a rural setting and how zestful their experience is when they get to breathe fresh air, eat fresh food and walk in the fields surrounded by colourful blooms and trees.
On the whole, the book is interesting for its description of possible discoveries and inventions by 2050, otherwise, the storyline is disjointed and monotonous and leaves the readers wanting for better take on a science fiction that has lot of scope.