Lavanya Lakshminarayan – författare

Nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway. This is how all things begin.Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent – the Virtual elite – and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.The system has no flaws. Until the elusive “Ten Percent Thief” steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual, The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.

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 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…

Max goes worldwide! London's Maxwell Towers have long been under the control of Max - an all-seeing AI intent on punishing wrongdoers and wicked tenants by sending them to the Thirteenth Floor, where unspeakable horrors come to life. Now, Max's coding has been embedded in computer systems all over the world, and there is no escape from his nightmarish reign. Featuring thirteen brand-new stories by A. K. Benedict, Angela Slatter, Mason Cross, Una McCormack, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Thana Niveau, James Lovegrove, Derek Farrell, MK Hardy, John Llewellyn Probert, Martyn Waites, Aubrey Wood, and James Goss.

FEAST boggles the mind, delivers a sucker-punch to the senses, and launches food into the far future. It blends rich, evocative memories with impossible dreams. Just add water! It has been three months since Saraswati Kaveri and Serenity Ko won Interstellar MegaChef with their groundbreaking new food simulation, Feast. But victory is only the beginning. Saras is busy promoting their invention as the public face of Feast, while Ko keeps fighting battles to steer its development at XP Inc. And then there’s the kiss. They’ve decided to just be friends for now, at least until the sim’s impending launch, but the memory of that heady night hangs over them. And sometimes it seems the whole galaxy is lined up against them. Saraswati’s secret past is coming under scrutiny, while old rivals are running smear campaigns against her. The cookery world is divided over Feast, proclaiming it a bold new invention and a betrayal of the chef’s art by turns. And others see Feast’s darker potential—not as an experience, but as a weapon...