Author: Salik Shah
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On Reading Anandmath and Writing Harmony
Vande Mataram. A truly powerful and pivotal speech for Mother India. As a poet and writer, this is a praise of the highest form for any work of kavya. The story of a nation, its struggle, hopes and dreams. 🇮🇳🙏https://t.co/xKI4MyhaUi — Salik Shah ✨🚀 (@salik) November 7, 2025 Yesterday, I watched Prime Minister Narendra Modi…
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Akhand Saga: Progress Report
After eight months of intensive rewriting, rethinking, and rebuilding, I’ve submitted the revised manuscript for the first book of the Akhand Saga to an amazing agent and editorial team. What began as an answer to their March feedback has transformed into something far more ambitious—and far more demanding—than I initially imagined. Harmony is an anti-colonial, genre-bending science fantasy…
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आमाको सपना | गोपाल प्रसाद रिमालपछि
आमाको सपना गोपाल प्रसाद रिमालपछि १. आमा! आमा! त्यो आउँछ र? बिहानको शीतजस्तै हिउँ र आगो भएर? “हो, बा, त्यो आउँछ। तिम्रो हिस्सी परेको हँसाइमा तिम्रो तोते बोलीमा त्यो बिहानको सूर्यझैँ आउँछ।“ आमा, त्यो आउँछ र? भन्छन् — म बोल्न हुन्न रे, खुला हिँड्नु हुन्न रे। म सुन्नु हुन्न रे। जे गर्छन् हेर्नु हुन्न रे।…
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Rhino’s Don’t Go to School
Rhinos Don’t Go to School Salik Shah The doctor had warned me not to get into any new trouble before my arm healed. Staying at home wasn’t my idea of fun at all. I liked to play tree-spotting and bird-watching in the jungle surrounding Madi. That’s how I had stumbled upon a rhino calf trying to…
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Solar Acceleration (S/acc): One World, One Grid, One Market
Solar Acceleration (s/acc) Solar Acceleration (s/acc) encapsulates the vision of building an open-source protocol to decarbonize and connect the world’s grids and energy markets. PROBLEM How can we get past closed, byzantine, greedy machines that resist, fear and stifle competition, new talent, thinking and innovation, and slow down the global clean energy transition and climate…
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After Star Trek: Inner Light | Little Blue Marble – Climate Fiction for a Changing World
Signed the contract for my poem “After Star Trek: Inner Light.” It took three years for the poem to write itself in its current form, and now it’ll appear in the gorgeous Little Blue Marble, edited and published by Katrina Archer from Canada. Like the title episode of Star Trek (which is certainly an all-time…
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Poetry: “A Personal Index of Our Times” (Strange Horizons, January 2022)
My poem “A Personal Index of Our Times” is up here on Strange Horizons (January 2022). “Salik Shah offers an abcedarium of the jinn for our global village in ‘A Personal Index of Our Times.’” — Strange Horizons Many thanks to Bogi Takács (eir bio reads: Lamda + Hugo winner) for a glowing review: Vijayalakshmi…
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Notes from Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold
So I finally managed to get through David Gerrold’s short but excellent guide to writing science fiction and fantasy: Worlds of Wonders (Writers Digest Books, 2001) / Amazon. The whole book is bookmark-worthy. Here are three excerpts: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precision. The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on…
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Interview: “Shambhala,” Tibet, and Mithila Review
Photograph: My workstation around 2015 at the time of writing “Shambhala.” Here is my interview with Juggernaut Books, which published “Shambhala” as part of a science fiction series edited by Indrapramit Das in 2016: Do you write everyday? Where and when do you write? Writing is thinking through small and hard problems for me; being…
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“Shambhala” – The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Volume 2 (Hachette, 2021)
A childhood dream comes true: my fiction debut in print! I am so excited and humbled to announce that my short story, “Shambhala,” appears in The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Volume 2 now available from Amazon and leading Indian book stores. You can order the print edition here on Amazon (India). The…