Tag: Science Fiction

  • Links to my recent Writing

    On the cusp of November, I began writing again. The last time I wrote before this was for the SSLV launch in August. I did not write on the Bullet Journal instance either.

    This blog post is to link to the various pieces of writing I have done at the cusp of November:

    The Wire Science – When an LVM3 flies, what does it mean for India?

    I wrote this piece for The Wire Science. It was published on October 30, 2022. In the article, I argue that while the LVM3 has proven reliability, it needs to sort out production issues and needs more support from the government.

    Short Story – Return to Earth

    I started writing this story in 2018 for National Novel Writing Month. It started as a pentalogy. I hoped to publish one novel as a part of each NaNoWriMo in the future. I then decided to cut it down to a trilogy. In 2021, I decided to cut it down further to a single novel. This story has haunted me and the only way I could think of something else for NaNoWriMo 2022 was to limit it to a short story.

    Short Story – My Life is a Diwali Gift

    I wrote this story in response to a prompt. I wrote a follow-up to this story that I will publish on November 10.

    Newsletter #42

    I sent out the 42nd edition of the newsletter on November 3.

  • Back to Return to Earth

    I wrote the last Chapter of Return to Earth on November 30, 2021. Return to Earth is a re-worked version of a novel that I was attempting to write for NaNoWriMo 2021.

    Through December, 2021, I was busy with delivering work related projects before the end of the calendar year.

    In January 2022, I was following up with a distraction. A short story idea that I had hoped to write and publish by end of January 2022. The short story consumed me. I was not able to think of returning to the novel. It took a bout of COVID-19 for me to drop the idea of pursuing the short story and return to the novel.

    Another thing pushing the return to the novel, Return to Earth, was the kick-off of Cohort 2 of Long-form Writing which I had the honor of co-hosting with Hemant and Saurabh.

    I returned to writing the novel, Return to Earth, again yesterday (on February 8, 2021). This is a short but important chapter in the novel.

  • Dune (1965)

    I listened to the audiobook version of Dune, the 1965 sci-fi book written by Frank Herbert.

    I had started my Audible subscription to listen to non-fiction books that I could just not get through reading. I expanded it for reading science fiction and fantasy books which also tend to be really long. I thought that the audiobook format would be the perfect way to consume this content. Especially the older ones.

    The story is a political thriller set in a science fictional future. If you removed the frame of a futuristic planet and interplanetary rivalries, it is just political intrigue.

    I would probably watch the movie and not read the rest of the series.

  • Revati

    Revati is Zeta Piscium. It is the “star” under which my daughter was born. So, I seem to have a mental filter that catches that phrase in Twitter’s flowing timeline. Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society had posted there on the International Astronomical Union (IAU) naming a few surface features on Charon, Pluto’s moon. She had also linked to the IAU press release on the same.

    They had named a crater on Charon, Revati. The press release mentioned that the feature Revati was named after a character in the epic, Mahabharata where she was a time traveller. The excerpt is below:

    Revati Crater

    I immediately searched on Google for the story of Revati. Emily, meanwhile, emailed one of the contacts mentioned in the press release to ask the source story of the name. My Google search led to the interesting story of Revati.

    The story of Revati seems to be straight out of science fiction. She is the daughter of Kakudmi who seems to have ruled a kingdom half under the sea. Her father travels to meet Brahma to seek advice on a suitable husband for his daughter. While there, they listen to a small musical performance. At the end as Kakudmi asks Brahma to choose from a list Brahma states that most of the people suggested would be dead as as they waited there, 27 mahayugas have passed and suggested that she marry Balarama, Krishna’s brother when they return. Does this reference time dilation? When they return, humans are much smaller than them. Does this reference the evolutionary process?

    I found the best narrative of the same on another blog, along with an interesting after comment. The comment is below:

    Revati Time Traveller

    In the meanwhile, Emily got the references and this is more fascinating reading. The book is Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy by Richard L Thompson.

    I am a skeptic of the reinterpretations of past treatises using modern astronomy but am equally fascinated by these comparative studies of astronomical treatises of the present and the past and enriched by myths with science fiction elements involved.