Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

by Vandana Singh

In her first North American collection, Vandana Singh’s deep humanism and scientific background intersect in stories that celebrate characters who are trying to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face in this world and others.

In “Requiem”, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past.

Singh's work dives into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within, and she unblinkingly explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.

Contents:
- With Fate Conspire (2013)
- A Handful of Rice (2012)
- Peripeteia (2013)
- Lifepod (2007)
- Oblivion: A Journey (2008)
- Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra (2010)
- Are You Sannata3159? (2010)
- Indra's Web (2011)
- Ruminations in an Alien Tongue (2012)
- Sailing the Antarsa (2013)
- Cry of the Kharchal (2013)
- Wake-Rider (2014)
- Ambiguity Machines: An Examination (2015)
- Requiem (2018)

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Anthologies, Collections

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2018

About the author

Vandana Singh was born and raised in India and currently lives in the Boston area, where she is a professor of physics at Framingham State University, and a science fiction writer. Although her Ph.D. is in particle physics, in recent years she has been working on the transdisciplinary scholarship of climate change, focusing on innovative pedagogies. She has collaborated with the Center for Science and the Imagination three times, twice on climate change–related projects. Her first collaboration (a story for Project Hieroglyph) led to the start of her academic work in the area, resulting in a case study of Arctic climate change as part of a program award from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, for which she traveled to the Alaskan North Shore in 2014. She was also a participant in a re-enactment of “The Dare,” as part of the Year Without a Winter Project, and has contributed a story to the upcoming anthology (forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2018). She has been an invited panelist for the National Academy of Sciences working group on interdisciplinarity in STEM, and has taught in and/or co-led summer workshops on climate change for middle and high school teachers.

Vandana’s short fiction has been widely published to critical acclaim, and many of her stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best collections. Her North American debut is a second short story collection, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (Small Beer Press) that was No. 1 on Publisher’s Weekly’s Top Ten in Science Fiction when it came out in February 2018, and earned praise from Wired, the Washington Post, and the Seattle Times, among others. Locus Magazine’s Gary K. Wolfe refers to her as “one of the most compelling and original voices in recent SF.”

Reviews

[Aerin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently had something of a revelation about myself that's going to sound silly, but which has reframed the way I think about books and other media I consume: I don't actually care that much about plot.

I care about ideas. I care about characters. I care about theme and atmosphere. I care about the quality of the prose, the realism of the dialogue, the way a story is told. But plot? I could take it or leave it. Sure, I like to plow through a page-turner every now and then, desperate to find out what happens next, but stories that overemphasize plot at the expense of these other elements just end up feeling unsatisfying once I've turned the last page. Some stuff happened. So what?

The stories in Ambiguity Machines do not have this problem. Stuff happens, but only as a means of revealing Vandana Singh's strange and wonderful and multiplex ideas. There is so much packed densely into each of these stories, even when the characters aren't doing a whole lot, that the collection feels almost ready to collapse under its own gravity. And what a magnificent supernova it would unleash...

Singh's voice is a unique and welcome addition to American science fiction. She is a professor of physics, so her stories are always firmly based in science - even when that science is highly theoretical or downright bizarre. She is also Indian, so the characters and cultural touchpoints in her stories tend to be Indian as well - not only in terms of religion and literature, but also their general outlook on the world. And finally, she is an expatriate living in the United States, and her stories are imbued with a searing loneliness for family and a lost sense of belonging. Her characters are solitary explorers, ghosts, and survivors of genocide, forever seeking connection, understanding, or revenge.

~

Three of my favorites:

"Peripeteia" is about how the laws of the universe seem to break to pieces when you've lost someone you love - though in this case, the universe may be controlled by aliens who are just winging the laws of physics as they go, and the beloved may never have existed at all. It's beautiful and bizarre story that makes sense in the distorted logic of grief.

"Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra" is about the ghost of an eleventh century Indian writer, brought back to consciousness by a woman traveling alone from planet to planet seeking the memories of her past that were stolen from her. It's about the meaning of stories, how they make sense of our world, shape our identity, and draw people together across time. And it's told in the style of the ghost's great work, weaving multiple levels of stories and storytellers throughout the narrative, including a cameo by Singh herself. Of all the incredible stories in this collection, this one in particular deserves to win awards, to have dissertations written picking apart its shades of meaning.

"Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" is structured as a test booklet for "intrepid explorers venturing into Conceptual Machine-Space," and includes three stories about impossible machines that blur boundaries between things. An imprisoned engineer builds a machine to remix disparate elements into the face of his beloved; it works too well. A pair of lovers discover a locked churchyard with eerie, beautiful tiles that warp time. An archeologist gets drawn into an isolated community built around an artifact that merges the self with others. These stories all likewise bleed into one another, and end up packing a powerful conceptual and emotional punch.

~

Overall this is a melancholy collection, but we live in melancholy times. Singh's tone jibes with how I'm feeling about the future these days - not that we're necessarily headed for some outlandish dystopia, but that human sustainability is experiencing a prolonged deterioration that we have no demonstrated capacity to reverse. My review hasn't yet mentioned Singh's focus on climate change, but it's a running thread throughout these stories and a lingering dread in the back of my mind. I don't often get emotional reading the Acknowledgements section of a book, but Singh thanked "a so-far habitable planet of unsurpassed gorgeousness," and I just melted down.

So there's a balance Singh somehow strikes, between fascination with an ever-unfolding universe and mourning for a beautiful future that seems to slip further and further from our grasp. It's the zeitgeist of the modern day, I suppose. But if Singh believes that there may yet be some hope, as she insinuates in many of these stories, perhaps I can swallow my despair and believe her. The future is unwritten, after all, and maybe some of the wilder ideas in science fiction can chart our course.

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, so close to a 5-star collection. Every story was well told. There were a few that just weren't to my personal taste in some way, so my final rating is probably 4.5 stars for content and quality.

"With Fate Conspire" - 4.5*
"A Handful of Rice" - 4*
"Peripeteia" - 4*
"Lifepod" - 3.5*
"Oblivion" - 3*
"Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra" - 3.5*
"Are you Sannata3159?" - 3*
"Indra's Web" - 3.5*
"Ruminations in an Alien Tongue" - 4*
"Sailing the Antarsa" - 4.5*
"Cry of the Kharchal" - 3*
"Wake-Rider" - 4*
"Ambiguity Machines: An Examination" - 4*
"Requiem" - 4.5*

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always a pleasure to see a new (to me) writer at work. As in all collections, some stories work for me; others, not so much.
TOC: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?6...

*With Fate Conspire • (2013) • novelette by Vandana Singh. An illiterate woman in a future Kolkata is the only one who can see through a time-viewer to 1856. Bounced, not for me?

*A Handful of Rice • (2012) • short fiction. Singh imagines the great Mughal emperor Akbar as a deathless shaman. Sadly, I bounced off this one.

*Peripateia • (2013) • short fiction. A young woman physicist, whose girlfriend has left her, may be able to see her lifeline. Surrealistic and effective, 3.5 stars.

*Life-Pod • (2007) • short story. The author writes that her story "features a woman who finds herself on a living space-ship and must figure out, based on her fragmented memories and the “thought-clouds” of others in stasis, who she is and where she is going." Which is more than I figured out. 2.2 stars.

*Oblivion: A Journey • (2008) • short story.

*Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra • (2010) • short story. Online at http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/so...

*Are You Sannata3159? • (2010) • short fiction . The author calls it "probably the grimmest tale I’ve ever written." I'll leave it for last (if then).

*Indra's Web • (2011) • short story. A former slum outside Delhi has been rebuilt into a solar-powered village. Now, one of the solar towers has quit working, for a surprising reason. 3 stars.

*Ruminations in an Alien Tongue • (2012) • short story. Online at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...

*Sailing the Antarsa • (2013) • novelette.

*Cry of the Kharchal • (2013) • novelette. Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/singh...

*Wake-Rider • (2014) • short story. Online at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic... Now, this is more like it! An action-packed mini space-opera, and a cautionary tale. 3.8 stars.

*Ambiguity Machines: An Examination • (2015) • novelette. Online at https://www.tor.com/2015/04/29/ambigu... A young Mongolian engineer, held captive by an extremist group, is ordered to produce a superweapon. He builds a teleportation device instead, and escapes to his beloved wife. So opens this extraordinary story, a major work that you should not miss! 4.5 stars.

*Requiem • novella. First publication 2018. A software engineer from Boston visits a future Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska, where her favorite aunt was lost in a winter storm. The story has a nice, lived-in feel, but gets a little woo-woo for my taste as it progresses. 3.3 stars for me, but the WSJ's reviewer called it a "small masterpiece."

The book came due before I'd finished it, so my 3-star rating is based on what I read. A solid collection, worth checking out.

The author comments on her stories, and links some others, at http://vandana-writes.com/short-stories/
WSJ review (paywalled, scroll down): https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-...

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vandana Singh, a professor of physics, also has published several short stories in various magazines. Her style unfolds in poetic prose, with prolific use of strong scientific knowledge. Her stories remind me of Lovecraft in a modern world, and with deeper science. She also includes her Indian spirituality in her story themes.

The stories bring a calm, tranquil peace as she entertains with a powerful, original imagination.

The story that stayed with me longest, with resonance, shocked and scared me (which, admittedly is not hard to accomplish). She shows a horrific slaughterhouse that makes workers drink a drugged shake. They can’t understand they are killing live animals who feel everything, including fear and anticipation. People slip into the conveyor sometimes. The main character sneaks an iPhone in, and this leads to a terrible end. Her theme portrays the Indian belief that all life, animals and human, should be treated with dignity and respect.

Some stories read like fairy tales, which brought great enjoyment. Others were love stories, and others dark sci-fi, alien stories. She writes a wide range of themes, topics and ideas, a gifted woman.

I recommend this for sci-fi lovers who also love literary style and poetic expression.

“Who is the teller of the tale, and who the listener? We are caught in a web, a wheel of our own making. And if you, the listener from another time and space, upon whose cheek this story falls like spray thrown up by the ocean— you, the eavesdropper hearing a conversation borne by the wind, if you could walk into this story, take it away with you into your world, with its sorrows and small revelations, what would become of you? Would you also enter this circle? Would you tell me your story? Would we sit together, Suryavati, Isha, and I, with you, and feel teso within us— and weave meaning from the strands of the tale? I am Somadeva. I am a poet, a teller of tales.”

- From “Are you Sannata3159?”

[Jukaschar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story compilation is one of the best I've ever read. It's as philosophical as Lem's or Le Guin's works, which is a quality a lot of modern sci-fi lacks. I've enjoyed reading it a lot and will surely come back to this author in the future.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambiguity... the Devil's volleyball.
—Emo Phillips

I've always loved that quip, a single line which perfectly encapsulates the very thing it describes.

Vandana Singh may not be nearly as interested in making people laugh as Emo—quite the contrary, in fact, especially in elegaic stories like "Requiem," which (appropriately) appears at the very close of Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories—but she still sometimes elicits a chuckle:

She stayed up half the night, sipping tea and munching on dry crackers, thinking about Veenu and waiting for death. When death refused to oblige, she went to bed.
—"Peripeteia," p.56

Notwithstanding that one line, though, "Peripeteia" as a whole is a chilling glimpse into the unstable underpinnings of what we think of as reality, as unsettling as anything from Philip K. Dick, and as ambiguous.

Machines are supposed to be precise, though, aren't they? The very notion of an "ambiguity machine" seems contradictory—but somehow Singh makes it work. Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories is aptly named, in other words... in these stories, for the most part, Singh eschews both hard moral lines and firm genre boundaries.

These tales are doubly exotic, too, at least for a longtime reader of American SF. Singh starts from assumptions and with settings that are not just outside the traditions of English-language science fiction but beyond the reach of Newton and Einstein and most of the rest of the Dead White Males who dominate Western physics as well. (This is, in case I'm not being clear, a good thing.)

I'm not including a story-by-story recapitulation in my review this time, by the way—this time, I'd like my reactions to individual stories to remain somewhat... ambiguous. But I will make exceptions.

For example, I'm really glad I wasn't eating while reading "Are You Sannata3159?" That one's about as far away from the Devil's volleyball as possible.

On the other hand, "Indra's Web" resonated deeply with me—the word for Mahua's myconet is fractal, and I have wondered whether—even hoped that—we atomistically individual humans could one day learn and deploy similar habits of interconnection.

Singh's use of metaphor is strong and assured, soaring at times to poetic heights:

But I am not a rock. I am a person, slowly ripening in the sun of this world, like a pear on a tree. I am not hard, I am not protected by rocky layers.
Still, I cannot soar through your sky without burning.
—"Ruminations in an Alien Tongue," p.167

I was glad to encounter "Sailing to Antarsa" again, too—a story I first read in Neil Clarke's anthology The Final Frontier, where I called it "full of woo and beauty—the easy comparisons that came to my mind mixed Ursula K. Le Guin and Cordwainer Smith with... Larry Niven? You'll understand why when you read it."


If you've been paying any attention at all to the state of short-form sf in the 21st Century, then Vandana Singh's name will already be familiar to you. Her stories already show up in my reviews of a half-dozen other anthologies—and yet, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories was my first concentrated dose of her dispatches from the subcontinent.

I don't want it to be my last.

A so-far habitable planet of unsurpassed gorgeousness has also been crucial to the writing of this book.
—Acknowledgements

As a fellow inhabitant, I am exceedingly glad to be sharing said planet with Vandana Singh.

[Michelle Morrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wooo, now that was a lot of fun to read! Smart and cautiously optimistic stories from the future. I felt the underlying theme was transition, or transformation, but there were a lot of things I admired beyond that ... the passion for learning and growing came through strongly for me.

The author is originally from India and that came through also, hints of mysticism and that which lies unseen ... I know I missed some subtext and subtlety but my Indian teammates from work helped me with background and honestly, the stories made me intrigued enough that I sought out answers to my questions. ... Which is the point of the book, now that I think about it ...

Philip K Dick 2019 Nominee, this book 100% exemplifies why I read the nominees each year. When it's good, it's really, really good.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Who is the teller of the tale, and who the listener? We are caught in a web, a wheel of our own making. And if you, the listener from another time and space, upon whose cheek this story falls like spray thrown up by the ocean — you, the eavesdropper hearing a conversation borne by the wind, if you would walk into this story, take it away with you into your world, with its sorrows and small revelations, what would become of you?"

I have always been reluctant to read Indian SFF, mostly as I do not think a category like that coherently exists and a lot of stuff that could fit is playing genre-truant. All the fixation with banal myth retelling seems to have cornered most of it. In that regard, Vandana Singh's work, which had been sitting dusty before book club brought it up, was a breath of fresh air. Infusing her physics background with Hindu, sometimes Buddhist, traditions and beliefs (actually a syncretic Indian spirituality), she brings a unique genre sensibility and vision.

With variable levels of "action", her stories are introspective & contemplative, trying to ascertain humanity's place in the universe. She uses tried and tested concepts as seeds but radically reconfigures them from the ground up, whether it's capitalist dystopias or adventure quests into the unknown. It results in dense and layered stories that require patience written in poetic diction that is instantly striking. Moroever, they're underpinned by philosophies of an existential kind. There is much to find rewarding, even exciting, here. Singh ably presents us with different modes of living and existing.

These stories are actually an eclectic mix. A few of them would classify as historical fiction with scifi elements as well but the general bent is towards hard sci-fi, even if the stories themselves don't centre that. I had quite a few favourites. "Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra" is about the real historical figure refigured as the AI companion on a ship, pondering on memory. "Ruminations In An Alien Tongue" has a very interesting fragmented structure, essentially about a lost civilization, the strange tech they left behind them, and looped time. The titular story, is very Borgesian and examines the existence of three impossible machines. I definitely want to read more of Singh now.

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a synthesis between Borges and Asimov, this collection of stories contain a number of beautifully written and intricately imagined explorations of science, belonging and meaning. From the lachrymose Spanish poet whose obsession with a beautiful woman reawakens his latent creativity, to the woman whose thirst for vengeance via murder comes full circle as she realise the person she is bent on killing would welcome death as a release from the perpetual suffering of life, in many ways Singh's stories defy categorisation as they resemble a conflagration of her imagination, a combination of the precision of science with the creativity of the imagination.

In 'A Handful of Rice', which is set an alternate reality of colonial India, the narrator battles with a bellicose king whose desire to hoard knowledge leads to him outlawing the teaching of Vedic arts, leading to a violent clash between the two. In 'Are you Sannata 3159' the narrator is incarcerated for exposing a corrupt government practice whose sole avenue to the truth is an anonymous stranger who is accidentally shared this with and in 'Requiem' the narrator is attempting to uncover the mystery behind the death of her aunt. The common thread which runs through all of these stories is the sense of wonder which Singh is able to create in the world she depicts, the beautiful images she depicts and the purple patches of prose which populate her stories;

"One day I dreamed I was the light falling off the edge of a leaf, nice and straight, but for the lacy diffraction at the edge. At night I flew into the clouds, to the well of stars, and became a piece of the void, a bit of dark velvet stitched on to the sky"

A wonderful collection of stories, which fuses sci-fi with a poetic narrative style, thereby creating something truly original and beautiful. 

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another in an ever-growing list of fortuitous discoveries at the library, Ambiguity Machines is a collection of short stories written by Singh over the last decade or so. I'm not sure why I picked it up since I already had an armful of books but it was blurbed by Yoon Ha Lee (another recent find) and it was "just" short stories. If I found her work unpalatable, I could abandon it without too much investment.

The first couple of stories were good, "With Fate Conspire" and "A Handful of Rice." But Singh captured my heart (so to speak) with "Peripeteia," the third story, and her protagonist's Alien Manipulation Hypothesis: "The universe is a massive quantum-mechanical relativistic Rube Goldberg machine in continual need of adjustment by a bunch of super-intelligent aliens" (p. 58).

And the final conclusion, which I've suspected is the case myself for a few years now: "The universe is a giant quantum-mechanical relativistic Rube-Goldberg patch-work construct, knit by interactions of its constituents, changed and ever changing through these interactions.

All we ever see are shadows cast on the wall of our limited understanding, and the shadows change depending on how the beast of reality mutates, and which way you shine the light" (p. 66).

There are no clunkers in the collection, though I enjoyed some more than others:

"Lifepod" - Reminded me a bit of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis, which is not a spoiler since the story itself doesn't (if that makes any sense).

"Sailing the Antarsa" - This story is representative of a theme that runs through much of Singh's work here: How limited human perceptions of the universe are.

"Wake-Rider" - A story about fighting back against the monopolization of thought and culture. And it's representative of another aspect I found common in this collection: The stories rarely end conclusively. The hero discovers a potential cure for the nanoplague that the Euphoria Corpocracy has been using to take over human-settled space but the end leaves her in a position where she might not be able to get it back to her fellow resistance fighters.

"Requiem" - A story about the other species of the planet fighting back against our depredations. Not in a "guns and bombs," Rebels vs. Empire way or in a hopeless-gesture, William Kotzwinkle way but in a way that only a few humans begin to understand.

Highly recommended, a very strong 3.5+ stars. I've already bookmarked Singh's website/blog and I look forward to reading more of her work.

PS - There's also a strong UKL vibe in Singh's stories. Not surprising since she does credit Le Guin as a mentor in one of the blogs I've been reading. It's made me determined to definitely reread the Earthsea books, a project I was contemplating anyway.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this three days too late to nominate the stunning closer "Requiem" for the Nebulas, but not too late to nominate it for all the other awards. Gorgeous.

[Samudra · Rating 5 out of 5]

In love with this book! Each story is a vortex that sucks you into a marvelous, through often melancholy, reality where future generations of humanity are at play with an array of cosmic elements of the universe. Singh does a beautiful job of capturing both the dangers and wonders of what technology might lead to as the climate crisis looms over (or has already destroyed) Earth. She occasionally captures the struggle of working class protagonists, though could have emphasized capitalist class dynamics stronger. I very much appreciated the plethora of South Asian heroines, many of whom are queer. Here is just one of the many excerpts that I enjoyed, which is a pondering posed by the character Sujata, whose personality reminded me of Lauren Olamina from Parable of the Sower:

The universe does not need a bunch of control-freak aliens. The aliens are among us. The aliens are us.
The universe is a giant quantum-mechanical relativistic Rube-Goldenberg patchwork construct, knit by interactions of constituents, changed and ever changing through these interactions.
All we ever see are shadows cast on the wall of our limited understanding, and the shadows change depending on how the beast of reality mutates, and which way you shine the light.

[Prem · Rating 4 out of 5]

This close to 5 stars. There isn't a bad story here.
Vandana Singh writes with elan and confidence, appropriating and elevating tropes of speculative fiction and scifi, centering the stories on the human. While in a few, she tries to do a little too much and ends up somewhat scattershot, the vast majority of these stories are incredibly imaginative, ambitious, moving and written in memorable, acrobatic prose. The title story is a good representative of the book as a whole, and is a masterwork of framing the personal in the universal imagination.
A must-read.

[Ayantika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would recommend because it's most probably unlike anything you have read before. I don't usually enjoy SF and haven't explored this genre yet but I loved the historical timelines merged with dystopian fiction in most of these stories. She does a tremendous job in world-building in every story, although there were only 2 stories I would give 5 stars to. The prose is very scientifically oriented at times but I guess that's necessary given the kind of stories lol.

Tl;Dr: I know nothing about SF and yet enjoyed this collection because of its well written prose.

[Sirens]

Today, we need to talk about fantasy and science fiction.

And why they’re different.

And why I generally like one and not the other.

And what on earth any of this has to do with Vandana Singh’s Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories.

Let’s start with a confession: As a general rule—and I do mean a very broadly applied rule with a ludicrously small number of exceptions—I don’t like science fiction. I do not like your spaceships or your far-flung planets. I do not like your artificial intelligence or your aliens. I do not like your Star Wars or your Star Trek or your Guardians of the Galaxy. I do not like any of that, Sam I am.

I often find that, when we’re talking about liking or disliking entire genres, it’s perhaps helpful to throw out the very good and very bad examples. If you put N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season in the hands of someone who doesn’t like fantasy, they might well like it anyway because it’s bloody perfect. It’s so perfect that the fantasy elements— despite being wholly necessary for the entire point—are almost secondary. In so many ways, it’s a slavery book, a climate change book, a middle-aged woman’s bildungsroman book, not a fantasy book. (Yes, you and I both know it’s actually a fantasy book.) Similarly, let’s not extrapolate anything from the fact that I really did like Kameron Hurley’s sci-fi The Stars Are Legion, despite that it was terribly damp, because it’s also terribly good. While I fully recognize that sci-fi tropes are necessary for a woman to give birth to a spaceship part, for me, The Stars Are Legion is a reproductive justice book and its (very damp) science fiction trappings are secondary.

Conversely, it’s probably not helpful to draw conclusions about genres from disliking their very bad books. Bad books are bad books, whether they have aliens or not.

But when you start to look at the middle swath of books, which are neither very good nor very bad, I am much more likely to find something that I like in the fantasy books than in the science fiction books. And Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, Vandana Singh’s collection, with its foundation of myth and its execution of science, was an interesting read for me because it almost begs the question, “Well, Amy, why is it, in fact, that you don’t like science fiction anyway?”

And here, I think, is the answer: Start, again, by removing the really great books from your calculus. And by that, I mean, more often than not, those books that use the possibilities of the genre as a necessary component of the actual story they’re telling: The Stars Are Legion’s use of forced birth of spaceship parts as a furious cry for reproductive justice, for example, or Ninefox Gambit’s shoving a resurrected, renowned, murderous strategist into the head of a crashhawk to explore the value, or not, of rule-following as a form of regime change.

Put those aside. What you’re left with is a lot of stories that, whether you love them or you don’t, maybe didn’t need that particular genre to tell its story. Because stories aren’t really about unicorns or spaceships or ghosts, are they? They’re about revolution or love or self. (And we could go down a serious rabbit hole right here about what the necessary components of a story are, but I will argue into the ground that spaceships are only very rarely one of them.) But for one reason or another or a thousand, the author chose a particular genre. So regardless of whether it’s unicorns or spaceships or ghosts (or all three, whee), you’ve begged certain questions that readers think comes with them: virginity issues, say, or the physics of warp speed, or what exactly is going bump in the night. So far, still okay!

And—I swear I’m coming to the point, hang in there—here’s why I read speculative fiction, generally: It gives authors a chance to create worlds that don’t have the same bullshit as ours. I read speculative fiction for the possibility of exploring a world that is better—more fair, more just—than ours. Or that explores issues that our world has in more thoughtful, more empathetic ways. And that’s why I get mad at both science fiction and fantasy for their thoughtless defaults to white, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical people. Speculative fiction presents the opportunity to make more people human.

But here’s the thing: When we’re talking about who gets to be human in speculative fiction, science fiction fumbles that issue way more often than fantasy. Which is not to say that fantasy isn’t rife with issues of slavery and consent and a thousand other problematic things. Your flowers might speak, Lewis Carroll, but do they get to vote? I fucking thought not.

But sheesh, in sci-fi, basically every setting and every plot begs questions of humanity. Every time there’s an alien or some artificial intelligence or a sentient plant or a jumped-up Roomba, I want to know whether that’s a human. In a world where a robot can run a planet, I want to know what the author thinks being human means. In worlds where computers can think on their own and people are technologically enhanced and aliens turn up every dang day, what does human-ness require? And some science fiction books interrogate this well (Semiosis), and some do not, and so many don’t even try, but when I read speculative fiction specifically so authors can explore worlds that are more fair or just or thoughtful than ours, and we’re not querying how we treat the independently thinking robots who are running entire planets, it makes me furious.

Which brings me, finally and in the most roundabout way possible, to Vandana Singh’s Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories.

Vandana Singh is both a speculative fiction author and a theoretical particle physicist. And frankly, you can always tell when a sci-fi author is also a scientist, can’t you? It’s not even so much the facility with the science that’s apparent in the details, but the way of looking at the world around you as a place of infinite possibility. A proclivity to see the wonder of both the grand scale of the universe and every person’s tiny place in it.

Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories has all of that wonder and then some. Singh was born in India, to parents with graduate degrees in English literature, so she was raised on stories: Indian epics, the myths and legends of South Asia, Shakespeare, and more. Those tales are the foundation for her work: Even as we’re following a protagonist across the universe in pursuit of a robot, hell-bent on revenge, Singh is explicitly drawing parallels to the Ramayana. But perhaps even more than those tales, Singh’s awe of the universe seeps into the pores of every story. Her stories are about wonder and wondering: Is time truly linear? Can one person change the cosmic course of the universe? Is there a case to be made for an Anti-Occam’s Razor Theory? Her stories are an inherent exploration: of society, of the world, of the universe.

And of what it means to be human.

Through all those legends and all that wonder, in worlds of profound artificial intelligence and alien manipulation, Singh’s fundamental question is a humanist one: What does it mean to be human? It’s a question that she poses delicately, empathetically, in a profoundly exploratory way—but she’s relentless in her inquiry. Every story in the collection asks, in one way or another, what it means to be human. Is it love? Is it revenge? Is it duty? Is it self-determination? An ability to change the world? Is it, in fact, being able to wonder at the endless possibilities of the universe?

I could tell you more, of course. About how “Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” is an explosive take on the power of stories. Or about how “A Handful of Rice” contemplates both surprise and compromise. Or the reader’s own moment of wonder halfway through “Peripeteia.”

But I don’t need to, do I?

Because you already know the most important part: Vandana Singh’s work, steeped in Indian tales, presented with a scientist’s awe, asks the question that I most need from my sci-fi reading: What makes us human?

Yours in wonder,

Amy
http://www.sirensconference.org/

[Ash · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF after trudging through 3 stories in this book. All the three were terrible. Yes, terrible and not just bad. They were boring, ending was open ended, there wasn’t any real story in there and it all felt too fantasy-ish. Vandana is a scientist so I went into this book expecting some great scifi and also she is regarded as the first scifi Indian author. But what I found were alternate histories and in one story, she just mixed various mythological stories and made her own. It’s okay if she had made up her own story but she instead took little bit from multiple stories and made one. As a person who knows and adores Indian mythology, it was cringe worthy. The supposedly scifi stories were all meaningless and had zero science in them.
I am not sure I am going to try anything else by this author.

[Oviya · Rating 3 out of 5]

as is the case w most short story collections
there were some hits and some misses

but for how repetitive the misses were and the flaws were, they soemtimes seem to overwhelm the hits

vandana singh has a small arsenal of phrases that she used repeatedly and it just fell flat
she was often overly poetic at the cost of any meaning or direction which frequently led to just cringing and lameness
some nice lines i appreciated

hinduising india generically
in an uninteresting and again generalising fashion which makes it...feel...problematic
and just some of the elements that make me enjoy indian, south asian genre fiction felt so trite or cloying or overt that just it didnt work
and really ungrounded the stories for me

the themes she explored were sometimes way too on the nose and if they expressed real world critiques fell flat and made it feel like a mock of it, less serious and affective than it is in the real world
see: wakerider
jeez

for a sf collection and predominantly sf author and also a scientist, she rarely elaborates on the machinations of what is happening in her story
im not looking for heavy jargon or super expansive, detailed scientific breakdowns (not my vibe) but in sf, i like some elaboration or explanation to come to grips with the world, etc

frequent pacing issues

at one point, mrinalini said "execution based and not an absolute thing" about some criticism we were discussing
and i think thats v true
but just too much too often unfortunately

but the stories and concepts i liked, i really did like so theres that
mrinalini's review says everything i think and her rnaking is p accurate to what mine would be i think
overall she def does better with concepts and conetmplative stories than her plots, at least in this collection

tbh word for word agree with mrinalinis ranking and thoughts

a handful of rice - kinda annoying way of approaching ayurveda and alt science - couldve been done better and in a way that didnt make me itch
shouldve leaned further into the personal elements, bromance and conflict which were its strong points which then fell flat as it reached its climax so L

cry of the kharchal - concept good, execution lame

wakerider - just did not like it. the depiction of capitalism just did not work for me

with fate conspire - i liked it - started strong, but got vague toward the end if i remember right
felt this way with a lot of the stories i thought i could like or was liking till a certain point in the story where it just felt super unclosed (not in an open/ambiguous ending way), kind of lazy or waiting for a chance to do more, which if thats the case probs shouldve just saved it for a novel drawing board

peripeteia - dont remember too much of the details but liked the concept
liked the overall ambiguous, unreliable narrator-ness of it all
and the matrix-esque vibes etc
cool cool cool

lifepod- i think i liked this but tbh i do not remember it

oblivion - was confusing
remember being annoyed and it all fell flate
the conflict was weird
the personal conflict was weird
idk
pov was weird
did i like the ending? cant remember? i. think?

somadeva - storytelling yay!
i liked this one im p sure
narrative voice was cool
the contemplations were interesting
the stories within stories
potential unreliability of the narrator
good stuff

are you sannata3159 - like mrinalini said, rare occasion of on the nose-ness working out
cool interesting sus government, mental manipulation, failed resistance and cannibalism story

indras web - concept cool
like how she treats nature for the most part i think
actually liked how she approached the slum and infrastructure stuff which i think i didnt like too much in other stories where it felt more dissonant
here, it was idealistic but good - cus solarpunk - v nice ideation and commiunity focused rather than displacement and uprooting and trying to annoyingly integrate into a sociallly acceptable or more prestigious system
theme of death and grief to parallel with the social and infrastructure and nature stuff didnt work for me
writing was stronger here
liked the contemplative focus rather than plot focus here

ruminations in an alien tongue - remember liking the writing here, was among the stringest i that aspect
ambiguity in this worked well
poetic stuff actually worked
nature and science blend was cool - humans and physics and how physisc is bent etc
liked the other characters and how they were talked about
how the narrator talks about relationships and those dynamics
cool sf machine at the centre of it
sups cool concept of human refugees and using/exploiting the machine to change their realities
migrating idea
defining characteristic for humans of constant need for change and new possibilities as described here
generally really liked this, its themes, the personal and the world stuff, the writing, structure
one of my favs
arrival vibes

sailing the antarsa - i think this was the story about the transofrming species and alien interactions? reminded me of liliths brood i think? or?? anyway
really liked this one
really liked the narrator
and the kinship stuff and relationship stuff
reminded me of oankali
evolution, species vibes and stuff was nice
character study vibes were really nice
story within story really liked
writing was good in this one
consideration of the other beings around her in space was really cool too
anthropological vibes were cool
"v malinowksi without all the terribleness" is what i said
again contemplation over plot adn was done really well
another favourute
last lines were heavy handed but easily forgiven for once
learning about the world, its specific social relations, and the characters was super smooth
neat and polished story
similar feeling to 'to be taught if fortunate' by chambers - the approach to space and discovery minus the characetr dynamic stuff
the way the need for sharing for kin and knowing and meeting and making connections was comunicated was really niuce
exploring the humans and how they have evolved and are mostly communal and cooperative was super cool. and the exception of the ice people was done really well too
again anthropological feels

requiem - felt better developed than most of the stories and was a relief after the bleughness of wakerider and the underwhelmingness of ambiguity machines
good writing
liked the character stuff
liked the world stuff
felt so much more grounded and seamless. the environmental stuff and capitalism stuff - dealt with p well
but just as things were getting more intriguing plot wise it just rushed to the end which was sad cus for once plot aws doing pretty well here
use of 'eskimo' repeatedly was...something
the repeated "white man" lingo was a bit corny and felt a bit old school tropey for the setting
better balance in its writing - between the poetic and straightforwarsness - actually landed well

And whales give themselves to us is a weird way to put it
In terms of tradition and “prayer/blessing” then yea its fine
But explanation wise cus you cant really interepwt that wway yk
Again not a white woman vegan way
Indigneous hunting methods >
But the way it was written toward the end was a bit weird
felt underresearched and a bit ignorant

But overall really liked it i think
Like wanted more which is a good sign
Except for the pacinf critique

ambiguity machines - titular story - was p decent
liked the larger concept and the intention of breaking it into three stories structurally
but a bit underwhelming for me
it was fine
3>2>1 - order of how i liked the axxounts wiithin

[Ankit Prasad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is important because it was lent to me by a friend who thought Vandana Singh is Bengali (we never resolved the reason behind this impression - the first story? - and emphatically concluded that Singh's research is just very good). I'm grateful for having been lent a physical copy of the book itself because I don't think I would have finished it otherwise (Kindle books all look the same, and there is something about a friend lending you their own beloved copy: "Take care of my baby!").

It's that, and the fact that I've discovered a way (many ways) of being through these stories. Though I haven't always enjoyed the style (my deep-seated squeamishness thanks to a certain kind of "training" in literature?), there's an honesty and a deep sensitivity to them. "Oblivion: A Journey", "Are you Sannata3159?", and "Rumination in an Alien Tongue" broke (through) me. And as they did so, I learnt to like the writing for itself too. This is important.

There is a way when disciplinary boundaries are broken, and Singh does that. She does that in a way that makes the term "disciplinary boundaries" itself seem suspect. This is probably the most important thing I take away from the book, and I'm grateful for this. If I ever look back and see this time in my life as being devoted to unlearning (is that why I'm away from academia?), this book will have been important (I already feel it is).

[Cheryl]

I've enjoyed other SF works by Singh, as well as her children's stories, and am excited about this.
......
It's not the book, it's me. Or maybe how I attempted to read it, because it would have been easier to take the unrelenting mood/ tone (ranging from melancholy to grief) if mixed up with other stories. But at this point of my life I need to focus on stories that have some joy, that make me feel alive. The several stories I read from here (including the title story) seemed important. interesting, and brilliant but they were also hard work, boring, and depressing. In *my* opinion, in my here-and-now.

(I want to add something clever about how literary Singh is to bring together her understandings of quantum physics and ancient mythologies together to make SF that looks like fantasy... but I'm not that clever. Otoh, she is, so try this book yourself.)

[Nikolay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very topical collection of short science fiction stories that to a large extent deals with our understanding of the world we live in, nature, and our communication between ourselves and nature. However, I felt there is another major theme and that is the idea of the power of stories and how we as humans are driven and defined by them, our world is stories. Naturally, it might be said that the general topic of language and communication is pervasive in most of the stories in different shapes. The narratives that deal more with the rather humanitarian theme of storytelling might not strike some of the readers that expect more technology and science as very good, but I personally enjoyed them a lot as well. The many references to Hindu mythology and Indian and Mughal literature and history are the cherry on the top.

[Mrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think by virtue of being a collection of pre-existing short stories this comes a couple flaws AND ALSO SOME GOOD THINGS that are hard to avoid. Positive first: weirdly the lack of proper "themeing" across these stories (at least that I'm aware of) allows for some cool diversity in the subgenres of scifi that she gets to play around with!! solarpunk story, that one cyberpunk story (uhhhh at least in theory), math/probability being the main element, some stories being set in space others in dystopian future earth and others in modern day but things are Off and others still in alternative histories, some very tied to indian stuff and others a bit more generic Science Fiction glorg and blorg type cultural reference points, etc.

Unfortunately the negative was that stuff got.. repetitive. There were definitely stories that I liked a lot because of the ideas and the worldbuilding, but were unfortunately bogged down by vandana singh repeating certain stock phrases she uses across her writing.

Other than all that, this also definitely suffered from some really unnecessarily over the top writing that wasn't really Great enough to warrant being there instead of just telling us what was happening straight-up. Also, while i actually really like that this EXISTS, indian sci-fi yay! and all that, it also sometimes suffers from diaspora-itis (DESPITE BEING WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ACTUALLY FROM INDIA) with the way characters or places are named (lelia,,, ashapur,,,) or some descriptions of like indian myth/trad stuff like the RAMAYANA in one story or "the upanishads as a disguised theory of cosmology" or generally the use of hinduism as a more generic Indian Vibe (blegh)

(compare that to the attempt at representing inupiaq indigenous knowledge in requiem... but that's a whole other issue - i dont think i would've been very impressed if i was from that culture either so maybe it's just my proximity to indian stuff that made me roll my eyes at it here).

I think there was one story I can definitely say i really love BEYOND the context of this collection (there are many I like for what they are!) and that is ruminations. Two I disliked enough to remember how much I disliked them and those are oblivion and wakerider - aforementioned ramayana story is the former and the latter is the aforementioned cyberpunk attempt. I'd like to read a full novel by vandana singh and maybe open my mind more... lets see! lol

rough ranking in tier (no ranking within tiers):

S: Ruminations in an Alien Tongue (SYSTEMS!! HUMAN REFUGEES!!! PROBABILITY MACHINE!!! STRUCTURE!!!), Sailing the Antarsa (endearing MC with a really cool alt physics vibe that reminded me of outer wilds)
A: Peripeteia (i love when she gets speculative), Lifepod (cool motherhood story!), Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra (wonderful story about storytelling and folklore!!), Are You Sannata3159? (dark funny cannibalism vibes and actually GOOD at being on the nose about its main themes for once - despite some lame bits that are always present in this collection), Requiem (one of the best written stories with the best personal character stuff and open ending that's brought down by the very strange representation of inupiaq ppl)
B: With Fate Conspire (strong start tbh), Indra's Web (really good potential that becomes a bit boring when it switches to more personal stuff), Ambiguity Machines: An Examination (if just third or second story i'd place higher, but the first story was sooo nothing, and i like the "idea" of weird "ambiguity machines" but the concluding paras kinda fumbled)
C: Cry of the Kharchal (really ambitious and interesting in concept but ultimately fell flat), A Handful of Rice (cringe ayurveda but based bromance, unfortunately very anticlimactic in an annoying way)
F: Oblivion: A Journey (ramayana meh and annoying superficial philosophisizing), Wake-Rider (bad... not good...plain and simple)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I loved Vandana Singh’s short story collection The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories, I made the decision to read Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories. And what a wonderful decision it was!

Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories contains fourteen stories and novelettes. These stories are futuristic and yet rooted in history. They’re also all about connections — the connections between people, connections between cultures, connections between people and nature, and connections between time. It’s a topic broad enough to allow for a diverse array of stories, but the thematic linking makes every story speak to each other in powerful ways.

“Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” was perhaps my favorite story of the connection. It juxtaposes the past with the future as an ancient poet is reborn as an AI aboard a spaceship. I love innovative science fiction that plays with genre constraints, and this story delivers. In concept, it is somewhat similar to another story in the collection, “With Fate Conspire,” a novelette about an illiterate woman in a flood drowned future who has the ability to peer back into the past through a strange machine. She’s supposed to be observing a famous male poet, but she instead becomes fascinated with the life of an ordinary woman. She begins to create her own poetry, convincing the oblivious scientists that these are fragments of the famous poet’s lost arts.

“A Handful of Rice” has some of the trappings of steampunk (it originates from a steampunk themed collection) but it is less obsessed with the aesthetic than other steampunk works. The protagonist decides to assassinate an immortal Mughal emperor. Then he realizes that the emperor is a man he once knew, a close friend from boyhood. I think the two were supposed to have a brotherly relationship, but honestly it felt so homoerotic. Was this intentional? Who can tell!

“Cry of the Karchal” is a novelette and possibly my least favorite entry in the collection. It just feels too long and is full of people I don’t care about! It takes place in an old Indian hotel, built on the ruins of an ancient fortress said to be haunted by a sorcerous queen. The ghost of the queen is putting a plan into place, one that involves four individuals and magic in the shape of a sand storm. It’s the only story in the collection that’s more fantasy than science fiction.

The titular “Ambiguity Machines: An Examination” is a novelette that originally appeared on Tor.com. The story’s a collection of three accounts of impossible machines that warp the rules of reality, blurring boundaries and forming connections between people, places, and times. It’s the story where the thematic material is most relevant, and it’s both gorgeous and enthralling.

In “Ruminations in an Alien Tongue”, an old woman waits for the return of an old friend… only, while she’s met him many times, this will be his first time meeting her. He’s caught in a time loop, and as decades go by he reappears on her doorstep without aging a day or remembering who she is.

“Wake-Rider” and “Are You Sannata3159?” are probably some of the most standard science fiction stories in the collection. They are well crafted and engaging but tread more familiar ground than some of the others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! I enjoyed both stories. In “Wake-Rider,” the protagonist is a young woman who’s part of the rebellion against a corporation that gains dominance through a nano-plague that infects people, turning them into drones that do little other than work and consume at the company’s behest. She finds an old wreck that might change everything… if she can get the information out. In “Are You Sannata3159?”, a boy lives in the darkness of a grand metropolis’s undercity. His mother and sister both get jobs at the slaughter house that’s suddenly providing residents with meat of a suspicious origin. It’s fairly easy to see the direction the story takes, but it still managed to creep me out.

“Oblivion: A Journey” is another story that uses a familiar set up: a revenge tale. In a far future, the narrator’s home is destroyed and they vow vengeance on the perpetrator. The pursuit of vengence will provide meaning to their life, but how fulfilling is it? Like some of the other stories in the collection, “Oblivion: A Journey” also contains queer themes, with the protagonist switching genders and various points in their life.

“Peripeteia” is one of the stranger stories of the collection. The narrator is convinced that the universe is a grand conspiracy created by aliens. She’s long jokingly believed it, but her longtime partner leaving her is causing a crisis: she can’t understand any reason for this to happen other than alien invasion. Is the narrator insane or saner than everyone else? Like with many of her other works, Singh eschews clear cut answers.

“Life-pod” is another puzzling story. The protagonist is a woman who was human… but is she still? She’s awake on an alien ship filled with captive humans. She thinks an alien might be lurking too, but she can’t be sure. The story’s dreamlike tone is subtly entrancing.

In “Sailing the Antarsa,” space is like an ocean, with all that entails. A woman volunteers to go off on a mission, riding solar currants, to see if the settlers of a nearby planet have survived. Over the course of her journey, she encounters strange creatures in a manner that hearkens back to the golden ages of science fiction.

“Indra’s Web” is one of the more forgettable stories in the bunch. In fact, I had to look it up to be able to recall what it was about when I started writing this review. It’s a solarpunk story where an Indian slum has been transformed into a vision for a sustainable future.

Finally, “Requiem” is the only story original to this collection. The protagonist is a grad student who finds out her aunt, a scientist working in Alaska, has died. She goes to Alaska to collect her aunt’s belongings and finds some truths about the world and herself. I liked it fine enough but didn’t think it was the strongest in the collection. That said, I enjoyed the interaction between Inuit and Indian culture.

Vandana Singh is a sadly underrated author. Maybe people just don’t know authors unless they write novels? Anyway, I highly recommend reading some of her work.

Review from The Illustrated Page.

[Pavan Dharanipragada]

I bought the book not aware that it is sci-fi. The name "ambiguity machines" compelled me. This intuition paid off really well for me---some of the stories in the collection involve sci-fi ideas I had never encountered before. The author creates fascinating worlds for the stories, which are both fun and profound to think about.
Of course, there are boring stories as well, and stories where the phenomenal concept is not supported by the narrative of the story. There's also one story which reads like a particularly gory version of a PETA video exposing meat industry.
But this is true Indian sci-fi, with the culture and literary heritage of India woven through most of the stories. It's great. Climate change and loss are also themes that recur in many of the stories.
The stories I liked include "With Fate Conspire", in which scientists of the future capture people to observe through a telescope Wajid Ali Shah in the past as a way to change the future with climate apocalypse; "A Handful of Rice", a retelling of Krishna-Sudhama story with homo-eroticism and Mughals; "Oblivion: A Journey", a revenge tale with cyborgs; "Somadeva: A Shy River Sutra", a beautiful story about stories, in which a future ethnographer builds an AI mind of Somadeva the poet from 11th century to help her study the story telling traditions of various planets she travels; "Ambiguity Machines: An examination", a story about three machines that blur the boundaries of things, with a framing device that, though under-explored, is fascinating---the concept of a "machine space" mapping the space of all possible machines, with holes or spaces that represent machines of ill-defined purpose.

[Peyton]

DNF at around 40%.

Singh writes beautifully and I enjoyed a lot of the themes explored in this collection, but the stories are internally disjointed and have such abrupt endings that I didn't feel compelled to keep reading. I would probably have enjoyed the stories I read more if they were part of an anthology, as opposed to a single-author collection.

I also noticed that Singh's protagonists always point out the literary, historical and religious references in the stories and it can be quite jarring. Most writers who borrow from Shakespeare or Homer didn't need to explicitly mention them by name for the reader to get it. The same principle should apply to stories inspired by the Ramayana or Din-i-ilahi. If Life of Pi can pull it off...

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
These short stories are quite dense with lore, emotion, and tech. Luckily, the sci-fi technobabble details aren’t so important to carrying the overall messages and feelings of the stories. Singh weaves a rich and complex tapestry in each tale. The book felt a bit overwhelming at times (it’s certainly not a beach read), and not all stories worked for me, but several were so gorgeous they brought tears to my eyes. I loved the back to back Ruminations in an Alien Tongue, and Sailing the Antarsa.

[gwayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not to be missed: well-crafted, engaging stories featuring a poignant mixture of science, spirituality, imagination, and humaneness. They leave you in a deeply reflective frame of mind. I loved that so many of the stories were from older women's perspectives—such an underused point of view in the genre.

[Radiantflux · Rating 3 out of 5]

21st book for 2018.

An interesting collection of scifi/fantasy stories.

While few of the stories really stood out to me as being exceptional, I enjoyed reading stories strongly imbued both with a non-Western (Indian) perspective and a strong environmental ethos. Her story "Sailing the Antarsa", which describes a colony world, in which all life is held as sacred, was particularly good in this regard; I would love to see this particular story expanded into a book.

Looking forward to reading Singh's first novel.

3-stars.

[Leone Hankey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely mindblowing eco-science fiction and other kinds of science fiction and fantasy, meditative, exciting, utopian and dystopian, joyful and tragic.

[naviya · Rating 5 out of 5]

- what a lovely, lovely book
- it reminds me of why i love both science and writing and how academic separations don't really exist,, that yes science is about poetry
- oh!! so heartful!! id say her writing reminds me alot of ken liu's work, but something about this is alot more historical and a lot more grounded
- my favorite stories are Somadeva: a Sky River Sutra, Are you Sannata3159?, Indra's Web, Ambiguity Machines and Ruminations in An Alien Tongue,,,,tbh no bad stories
- i think the narrative voice is similar in all the stories, which sometimes made the characters indistinguishable
- this book weaves in so may things, and it is so many things,,,,oh to write like this!! it's fantasy and science and drama and mythology
- i think it's a lot of fun to see how she has named things, and interwoven indian mythologies as a native speaker,,, its like an extra easter egg on top of everything else that we find out!!
- this book also has wlw and mlm relationships which is also amazing bc tired of reading cishet?? how can u create new worlds if you refuse to give up heteronormativity??
- i think this is a book i will buy and reread bc it's soothing

[Haralambi Markov · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading this collection for three months. Not because it's difficult, but because I did not want the stories to end. I don't think I've read any recent science fiction that's so effortlessly hopeful and earnest without veering into pure sentimentality. Deliciously dense and hypnotic in places, the writing carries me to a better mental space, which in 2021 is much needed. I haven’t read much utopian fiction, but the worlds and the warmth Singh imbues them with uplifts my soul.

Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories achieves something that few other collections I’ve read are able to do – it builds up the good vibrations with each successive story. I read the collection out of order, because I was out of time and my book club was coming up, and even so every new short story became my new favorite (with some few exceptions).

Notable stories that are a must – Indra’s Web, Ambiguity Machines, Cry of the Kharchal, Requiem, Oblivion: A Journey and Sailing the Antarsa.