As far back as I can remember, Science Fiction (SF) has always been THE literary genre which attracted me most. My first encounter with SF must have been those `Mandrake, the magician' comics, replete with Galactic Empires, weird aliens and time-travellers. Then came Ghana-da, the middle-aged eccentric storyteller created by Premendra Mitra, who had very tall tales to tell about himself. Many of these were, in reality, nothing but SF. Satyajit Ray with his `Shonku' stories appeared on my horizon a little later and occupied a prominent place as long as his stories continued to make fresh appearances in various Bangla magazines. For those not in the know, Bengali literature went through a rather serious SF phase (in the '60s and '70s) led by Adrish Bardhan who, apart from being a SF writer himself, edited 'Ashcharja' (the first SF magazine in India) and 'Fantastic' (another Bangla SF magazine).
As physics began to dominate my own existence, my fascination with SF grew. And I began to wonder about which part of an SF was really possible, if not plausible. After joining IIT-Kharagpur, I began to design a course to teach physics using science fiction. I had no idea if it would ever be accepted by the academic programs committee. But there's never any harm in dreaming, is there? Of course, the course didn't happen. Life happened instead. I left Kharagpur and the half-baked plans retreated to the depths of my file-system.
So, when Anupama Ambika of Ashoka University contacted me for the Astronomy module of their Lodha Genius Program for school students (classes IX-XII), those plans resurfaced. Here was a great opportunity to teach a bunch of youngsters some facets of Astronomy using science fiction written by some of the great masters. The idea looked good on paper. Ambika too was very enthusiastic. But there was one `little' hitch. Between our young one's preparations for her board exams and her father's travel schedule, I simply didn't have the option of spending a month in Delhi this summer. Thankfully, Sourav (Prof. Sourav Mitra, currently heading the Physics Dept. of Surendranath College, Kolkata) enthusiastically agreed to the idea and was ready to be in Delhi for the major part of the program's duration. It goes without saying that but for Sourav this wouldn't have happened.
So we picked out some 'hard' SFs, that is, stories that are basically grounded in real physics. The idea was to look at these stories and see if the events described there conform to the rules of physics. In the end, the young students did a fantastic job of taking the stories apart and performing calculations to check every statement.
In this entire project, Sourav did all the heavy lifting, ably assisted by Anantharaman Viswanathan and Umang Kumar - PhD students at Ashoka. I appeared on the scene towards the end and merely enjoyed the fruits of their labour. It was great seeing the youngsters coming up with all sorts of questions and then gently orienting them towards the 'physics'-y ones. But the most enjoyable part of my time at Ashoka was the long coffee conversations with the young resource persons of our module, with other old friends and visiting the budding Astronomy lab with Dipankar.
It has been a wonderful time spent with people who I also happen to have interesting connections with. The thread, of course, begins with Dipankar who thought of me for this activity. Then joined Sourav, who happens to be the first student of Tirthankar Roy Choudhury . Anantha is the latest PhD student of Dipankar (technically, my gurubhai). And Umang works with Suratna Das, wife of Kaushik Bhattacharya with whom I collaborated a long time ago. All in the family, folks. 
[Also, like always, Niruj Mohan Ramanujam has played his very own invisible remote part in this act. ]
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Here are the stories then.. 
1. Marooned off Vesta : Isaac Asimov, 1939.
2. Neutron Star : Larry Niven, 1966.
3. Summertime on Icarus : Arthur C. Clarke, 1967.
4. Walk in the Sun : Geoffrey Landis, 2001.
5. Cool Neighbour : Jack McDevitt & Miclael Shara, 2009.
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