Emails from the future, Part 1

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Rati Mehrotra

spam-imageI get a lot of spam emails. I delete literally hundreds of them every day. A boring and thankless task until I decided to have some fun with them. What will spam in the future look like? Very similar to spam today, I think. After all, human nature isn’t going to change any time soon…

Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Science fiction and fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Blog Hop: Writing Process – #thisishowwedo

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Rati Mehrotra

Fellow ScribeWench and award-winning historical fiction writer Lesleyanne Ryan has tagged me in a blog hop to discuss my writing process. Something to bring me out of my hibernation – why is it so darn cold out there? You’re in Canada, silly. But – there’ve been windchills of -30 C this time! It’s good for the ecology, wimp.

Okay, having got the weather out of the way, on to my writing process: Continue reading →

Posted in Science fiction and fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Trees of Delhi

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Rati Mehrotra

One of the things I enjoy about being in Delhi in January – apart from comparing the daily temperature with Toronto or St John’s, haha – is walking in the parks and seeing my favorite trees. Some trees have been around five or six hundred years. Like old friends they stay the same, though everything around us changes. Continue reading →

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Letting the geek out at SFContario

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

SFContarioI just spent a fantastic weekend at Toronto’s annual Science Fiction Convention, SFContario. The panels ranged from the technical (climate change, anyone?) to the delightfully absurd (Huggy snakes, anyone?). I’ve listed some highlights below of a few of the panels I managed to attend. As always, so much interesting stuff going on at once that you wish you could clone yourself. One clone for the sober technical discussions, one for the readings and one for the concerts and the improv. This is a great convention and I recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in or near Toronto during mid-November 2014. Continue reading →

Posted in Books and media, Science, Science fiction and fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Another Indie Bookstore bites the dust

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

steven-templeSteven Temple Books, the last holdout of Booksellers’ Row in Queen West, Toronto, is shutting down after nearly 40 years in business. Another victim of the combination of higher rents and lower sales: a result of the changing landscape in books and publishing. So sad. It’s a lovely, musty store, on the second floor of an old building on Queen Street West. I popped over there yesterday to take advantage of the sale, and could barely drag myself away. Think piles of tottering books. Rare, out-of-print versions. Smell of old paper, the look of full-color illustrations, the feel of cloth-bound books – red, mauve, green. Signed copies of your old favorites. I picked up a lovely hard-cover copy of The Compass Rose – a 1982 collection of short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. Continue reading →

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Off to the Red Planet

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

pslv-c25-24Today India launched its first rocket to Mars. The Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan, aims to reach Mars orbit by September 2014. I know, I know, still a long way to go before sending a manned mission and discovering little green men, but I still cheer at the news. ISRO can be right proud today. Only the United States, Europe and Russia have succeeded in sending probes that have orbited  or landed on Mars. In fact, 23 out of 40 missions to Mars have failed. So here’s hoping Mangalyaan fulfills its destiny and meets Mars next year. Mangalyaan carries five scientific payloads to observe the Martian surface, atmosphere and exosphere. You can read all about it here. Continue reading →

Posted in Books and media, Science, Science fiction and fantasy | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Virtual Dreams: science or science fiction?

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

Nuit Blanche – Toronto’s annual sunset-to-sunrise art festival, gets crazier every year. I love it. This time, I allowed myself to be blindfolded by the Darkists, cycled on the Human Sweat Generator, pulled the legs of a giant spider balloon, and wandered the labyrinth of Ai Weiwei’s Forever Bicycles – an art installation featuring 3,144 interconnected bicycles.

virtual-brainBut, weirdest of all, I got to see the Dreamery. My Virtual Dream featured a dome with twenty Dreamers plugged into special headsets. The headsets apparently relayed their brain activity to a Virtual Brain, which translated it into animations and sounds, projected out to the audience. The effect was surreal. Continue reading →

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Celebrating non-violence in a violent world

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

Today is Gandhi Jayanti, the 144th birth anniversary of a man who is variously called Bapu, the Father of the Indian nation, and ‘Mahatma’, or Great Soul. No matter what epithet we give to him, he remains one of the most unique and courageous voices of the twentieth century. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize between 1937 and 1948, and the fact that he did not receive it is an indictment of the Nobel Committee. Continue reading →

Posted in Books and media, Life and all that stuff, Writing | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

I’m reading Oryx and Crake. Like anything by Margaret Attwood, brilliant and disturbing. What an amazing writer. Did you know she has an account on Wattpad? Last year she wrote an op-ed in support of the world’s largest online community for writers.

10 million monthly visitors – and Margaret Atwood – cannot be wrong. I created an account and added to the 5 million stories already out there.

The River of Forgetfulness is a short story set in an underground city on the moon. A young woman goes out on a date, and gets rather more than she bargained for. If you’re interested in reading it, click here.

As always, feel free to comment!

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra | Comments Off on Writing on Wattpad: The River of Forgetfulness

Looking for beta readers for a middle grade fantasy

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Rati Mehrotra

I’m looking for beta readers for my middle grade fantasy novel. 40,000 words of second draft and I need a second, third and fourth pair of eyes. I’ve already edited it once but I’d love some feedback on the story and the characters.

What is a beta reader?
Think of yourself as a pre-reader, someone who is going to read with a critical eye prior to the release of the book. You’re going to tell me if I’m going in the right direction. Do you care for the characters? Do you want to read more? Are you (horrors) bored? Continue reading →

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