Annotated for Today’s Global Digital Humans (and Aliens)
By Jayant V. Narlikar
Edited by Sami Ahmad Khan
Part of the Imagination, Annotated series
A year before Robin Cook’s Invasion (1997)—in which an alien force activates a latent biological virus in humans—and almost a decade before Liu Cixin’s The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (2008–2010)—in which humanity’s scientific progress is curtailed by an alien supercomputer’s “sophon-lock”—Jayant Vishnu Narlikar’s Virus (1996) painted a similar scenario. In his novel, a cybervirus broadcast by an advanced, extraterrestrial species invades Earth and freezes its digital infrastructure: a prelude to an alien invasion. The novel, first published in Marathi, recounts how vast radio arrays on Earth intercept a seemingly innocuous message from an unknown planet orbiting Barnard’s Star. The radio signal, sent six years prior, coalesces into a cybervirus that has the potential to cause a complete digital meltdown and lead humanity into an age of chaos—an alien first strike to prevent humanity from evolving further.
This book—a critical, annotated version of Virus, edited and revised by Sami Ahmad Khan—reissues Narlikar’s iconic novel with updated text and added dimensions. It includes detailed annotations that locate the technology of the text along the axis of contemporary scientific thought, as well as critical essays that focus on the literary, political, and sociocultural dimensions of the novel; essays on Narlikar’s role in India’s science and science fiction; an exclusive conversation with the author; bibliographical information on his works; and a bonus short story.
This book will be published by the MIT Press on November 17, 2026.
About the Editor: Sami Ahmad Khan is a writer, academic, and documentary producer currently teaching science fiction and creative writing at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is the recipient of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship, a Fulbright FLTA Grant, and a UGC-MANF Senior Research Fellowship. His books include Red Jihad, Aliens in Delhi, Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction, and The Speculative Route: Futures from South and Southwest Asia and North Africa.