Lavanya Lakshminarayan is joining us today to talk about her novel, Interstellar MegaChef. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Stepping off a long-haul star freighter from Earth, Saras Kaveri has one bag of clothes, her little flying robot Kili… and an invitation to compete in the galaxy’s most watched, most prestigious cooking show. Interstellar MegaChef is the showcase of the planet Primus’s austere, carefully synthesised cuisine. Until now, no-one from Earth–where they’re so incredibly primitive they still cook with fire–has ever graced its flowmetal cookstations before, or smiled awkwardly for its buzzing drone-cams.Corporate prodigy Serenity Ko, inventor of the smash-hit sim SoundSpace, has just got messily drunk at a floating bar, narrowly escaped an angry mob and been put on two weeks’ mandatory leave to rest and get her work-life balance back. Perfect time to start a new project! And she’s got just the idea: a sim for food. Now she just needs someone to teach her how to cook.A chance meeting in the back of a flying cab has Saras and Serenity Ko working together on a new technology that could change the future of food–and both their lives–forever…
What’s Lavanya’s favorite bit?
Interstellar MegaChef is set on the planet Primus, over two-thousand years in the future. It features an interstellar cooking show, and a pair of morally-grey queer protagonists–the Earthling chef Saraswati ‘Saras’ Kaveri and the Primian whiz-kid and sim-designer Serenity Ko, both of whom have wild ambitions to leave their mark on the future of food. There’s a clash of food cultures, a deep dive into the diaspora experience and cultural imperialism, family, found families, and more. All of it is narrated through relationships with food.
Brewing this novel from its key ingredients—a queernorm universe, distinct culinary cultures, rival chefs, meddling diplomats, alternative post-human societies, non-human intelligent beings, an adorable robot sidekick—was a cooking experiment in joy. I researched the history of food, experimented in my kitchen, tasted my way around the world, and developed a newfound appreciation for food and food cultures through the entire process.
Food is political and personal. It unites us over holidays and celebrations, with traditional recipes handed down through the generations; it divides us, becoming a channel through which one can stereotype and discriminate against the “other.” Food is whimsical, an avenue for creativity and self-expression. It’s necessary for survival. It’s a privilege—food poverty and world hunger are issues we still haven’t solved for. Food has transformed civilizations across time—cooking with fire, the agricultural revolution, spice trade leading to human exploration… what we put on a plate can define who we are.
As I stirred these thoughts together, baked my ideas in batches, and plotted with glee, I wound up chasing Saras and Ko across the planet Primus, discovering what food meant to them… and witnessing how food transformed their relationship with each other.
Now, I had plans for Saras and Ko. They did not care for my plans. A fictional Primian dessert named the Berry-anna led my devious protagonists to throw my plans right out the window.
And watching them disregard my recipe for their future was my favorite bit about writing this novel.
Saras and Ko first meet in the back of a flying cab when Ko escapes a riot she unwittingly helped start. Saras happens to be in the neighbourhood and comes to the rescue. She’s subjected to Ko’s worst self—a drunken hot mess with no filter. Neither of them manages to impress the other, and they’re glad to be rid of each other…
Until, to their mutual dismay, they run into each other again at the Uru & Beyond Marketplace.
Ko’s at the market to learn about Primian food through the experience of eating it. She intends to study the subtle differences between three distinctly served portions of the Berry-anna—a classic Primian dessert—in order to expand her understanding of flavor. Ko can’t find her way around the kitchen to save her life, but needs to understand flavor so she can build her most ambitious project yet: a food sim. Meanwhile, Saras has been volunteering at an experimental pop-up kitchen at the marketplace, trying to build a career as a chef on Primus.
When a hostile media frenzy turns up at the pop-up to harass Saras, she flees into a warren of alleyways, only to bump into Ko, lurking in the dark to escape the unwanted attention of a paramour (and quasi-stalker) she’s trying to end a fling with.
Ko offers to help Saras escape the marketplace unidentified, and Saras thinks it’s only fair to repay her. She offers to help Ko learn how to differentiate between the Berry-annas, guiding Ko through an exploration of flavor with her expert palate.
This is the point in the drafting of the novel when all hell broke loose. Remember how I said I had plans for Saras and Ko?
Well, Saras and Ko dove right into their delectable little Primian desserts, and as they shared the experience of eating a meal together for the first time, they took matters into their own hands.
To my mounting horror (I had to change all my plans), and ultimately, to my delight (who doesn’t want the characters they’ve created to come alive of their own accord?), the two characters I’d set up to have a fairly antagonistic relationship with each other for the better part of an entire series decided that they were going to find themselves sizzling in unresolved sexual tension each time they were in the same room together, especially if there was food around. Feelings like rainbow sprinkles all over the place.
The words wrote themselves. Like so:
“Serenity Ko watched Saraswati delicately sniff, then try each individual component on the plate–all of which she was hoping Saraswati would name for her. She closed her eyes each time, covering her mouth delicately while she chewed and swirled them around her tongue. Then she dug in with her hands, scooped up a generous portion of the dessert, and popped it into her mouth. She tilted her head back and exhaled.
Saraswati swallowed, then looked straight into Serenity Ko’s eyes. ‘Delicious,’ she said.
The breath caught in her throat, and Serenity Ko forced herself to make words. ‘It’s supposed to be.’
‘You haven’t touched yours.’ Saraswati dove back in for more.
‘Yeah, better get started,’ Serenity Ko said, wishing there was more air in the outdoors.”
Food transformed who Saras and Ko were going to be around each other while I bore witness. That moment of surprise, the sheer unexpected delight of discovering that food was changing not just the characters and world in my book, but the way I was writing them on a wholly unplanned, subconscious level, sparking off the start of something beautiful, was more meta than anything I could have imagined as a creator. I let Saras and Ko take the lead, speak for themselves, and tell their own stories.
Writing, like cooking, is larger than life. Sometimes, you have to throw the recipe book away and let your characters follow their hearts.
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BIO:
Lavanya Lakshminarayan is the multi-award winning author of The Ten Percent Thief and Interstellar MegaChef. She’s the first Indian woman to be nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and is a Locus Award finalist. She’s also the first science fiction writer to win the Times of India AutHer Award and the Valley of Words Award, both prestigious literary awards in India.
She’s occasionally a game designer, and has built worlds for Zynga Inc.’s FarmVille franchise, Mafia Wars, and other games. She lives in India, and is currently working on her next novel.
