SOURCE: “Science-Fiction Novel Intrigues but Falls Short,” in Christian Science Monitor, January 8, 1998, p. 12.

In the following review, Rosenberg argues that although The Calcutta Chromosome is an excellent fiction novel, it fails as a science-fiction novel due to its lack of scientific concreteness.

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-born writer and anthropologist who writes “fabulist,” or science fiction. He considers this genre part of the literary mainstream—one that encompasses such varied works as the 2,000-year-old Babylonian epic, Gilgamesh, replete with mythic elements, and the recent movie Groundhog Day, where time is severed from cause and effect.

His latest novel, The Calcutta Chromosome, begins in the not-too-distant future, where Antar, a low-level functionary using his computer to sort through information, discovers the trace of someone he met briefly in 1995, L. Murugan, who then disappeared.

Murugan was obsessed with the life of Ronald Ross, winner of a 1902 Nobel Prize for discovering...