Book excerpt: Rebellious cellphones. Lustful holograms. A tourist vampire with a taste for spicy Indian blood. A conference of galactic gods. In twenty-five exhilarating stories, Manjula Padmanabhan brings her trademark twist to familiar reality, dreaming up inventive futures and capturing today's world with equal flair. From bejewelled party guests suddenly stripped naked to a teenager who steals time, from mosquitoes that infect people with Gandhian pacifism to a dystopia where everyone breathes canned air, this remarkable collection poses urgent questions: what does it mean to live in a society, and this one in particular? Where are we headed, and do we even want to get there? At once funny, provocative and profound, Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities is science fiction served up with a dab of ghee and a sprinkling of dark matter that will hold you captive till the very last page.