Interstellar Megachef
Flavour Hacker Book One
By Lavanya Lakshminarayanan
Number of pages 463
Publisher – Harper Fiction
Blurb from Amazon
Looking for your one shot to rise to the ‘top of the pots’ in the cutthroat world of interstellar cuisine? Look no further-you might have what it takes to be an INTERSTELLAR MEGACHEF!
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 synthesized cuisine. 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. Until now.
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…

My review
Saras Kaveri is an Earthling who has received an invitation to compete in the galaxy’s prestigious cooking show, The Interstellar Megachef.
It’s on planet Primus where they consider Earthlings as primitive beings. Serenity Ko on Primus has named herself so and is the inventor of SoundSpace. Due to her drunken misbehavior at a public event, she has been asked to go on leave. She thinks of putting her “break” to good use. Create a sim for food. Enter – Saras Kaveri. The two of them work together on a new technology to change the future of food, and perhaps their lives forever.
I found this book unlike any I’ve read before. It is original and there is a whole vocabulary of terms in the author’s process of worldbuilding. However, I found it a bit overwhelming what with the huge cast of characters and terms.
I liked the fact that she introduced Tamil words into the vocabulary and the new world. ( Maasa, Kili, etc.) This might be even more bewildering for those who do not know Tamil. Also, this book is part one of a trilogy. Part 1 itself contains 463 pages. Taking elements from our human existence on earth and selectively building a world on outer space in fiction is no mean feat, and while the author has done that with élan, readers new to this genre might be a little lost and trying to find their bearings.
Author Bio from Amazon
LAVANYA LAKSHMINARAYAN has been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award. Lavanya Lakshminarayan is the award-winning author of Analog/ Virtual: And Other Simulations of Your Future, featured on Tor.com’s Best Books of 2021 list. She’s a Locus Award finalist and is the first science-fiction writer to win the Times of India AutHer Award and the Valley of Words Award, and has also been nominated for the BSFA Award.
Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Someone In Time, The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (Vol. 2) and Apex Magazine’s International Futurists Special Issue. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and German.
She’s occasionally a game designer, and has built worlds for Zynga Inc.’s FarmVille franchise, Mafia Wars, and other games. For more, follow her on Twitter/X: @lavanya_ln and Instagram: @lavanya.ln
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2 Responses
Nice to see science fiction from Indian authors is taking off. Will definitely read
Happy Reading! Let me know your thoughts once you read it.