If you’re looking for science fiction writers in Bengaluru, one of the default stops is Lavanya Lakshminarayan, one of only two Indians ever nominated for the prestigious Arthur C Clarke award. Having made waves with her debut novel, The Ten Percent Thief, and broken unique ground with Interstellar Megachef, Lakshminarayan has written her first sequel in the Flavour Hacker series, which begins with Interstellar Megachef.

Lakshminarayan previously described some of the thoughts behind Interstellar Megachef in a conversation with indianexpress.com, where she said, “One of the things I missed terribly (during the Covid lockdown) was social connection, and a lot of the time that is expressed through sharing food with people… what emerged to me is a picture where the history of humanity is fundamentally rooted around food. If our history is tied up with the history of food, the natural extension was that the future of humanity would also be intricately woven around food.”

However, with Intergalactic Feast, Lakshminarayan had to approach these themes in a certain way to create an effective sequel—as she puts it—in a world where both real life and the writer have moved ahead.

Lakshminarayan recalled the experience of revisiting old characters in her writing, “The characters on the page, they demand a certain aesthetic sensibility from you, which hearkens back to who you were when you started writing the first book. So it’s this delightful contradiction where the characters in the world have also grown while you were away and not working on the sequel. But when you do return, you’ve got to meet them on their own terms….it’s a fascinating and challenging experience.”

Lakshminarayan also explained that a sequel must stand on its own merits, without chasing the “lightning in a bottle” that might have been behind the first book in the series. She said, “I feel like a sequel, while it relies on, I would say, a certain spirit upon which the first book was written or a first film or any of, you know, any form of art, really. It picks up where it left off, but it also needs to be its own artefact, if you will. It needs to stand on its own two feet. It needs to address ideas that are unique to it.”

‘Futuristic versions of dosas and vadas’

There is also a lingering Bangalorean spirit in this series. While The Ten Percent Thief was explicitly set in a future dystopian version of the city, the Flavour Hacker series retains the city’s influence despite being set on a distant alien planet. Lakshminarayan said, “While the series might be set in the far future and on a different planet, a lot of the characters in the world that I’ve built have a lot of roots in South Indian culture and specifically drawing upon Bangalore because this is where I’ve grown up and lived most of my life…. A lot of the food that (one of the main characters) makes includes, you know, dosas and vadas…..futuristic versions of this, of course, but wholly inspired by the fact that she does come from a region that is inspired by South India. And that is inspired by my relationship to South Indian food.”

Looking back at how her writing has evolved over the years, Lakshminarayan said, “I think at its core, I still retain a sense of the satirical, of the playful, possibly a little bit of whimsy, dark humour, but the manner in which it’s expressed, I think that changes…… It’s also a product of what my characters demand on the page and what each book separately asks me to do off it. So I would say I’m constantly growing and changing in different directions. But I think at the core, I still like exploring ideas from a certain point of view that’s probably satirical, slightly dark, slightly acerbic.”

As for her own writing future, Lakshminarayan is taking some breathing room to review some ideas that have come up over the past five years and the three books she has written.