The capstone to this hopeful, enriching collection is the small masterpiece 'Requiem,' set in Alaska in a future scarred by climate change and dominated by massive tech corporations ...The more mechanized our future, Ms. Singh suggests, the more precious our connections with the living will be.
Vandana Singh’s poetic collection Ambiguity Machines: And Other Stories (Small Beer) is as ambitious and cerebral as the various experiments her scientist characters embark on ... There’s a wonderful discordance between the cool, reflective quality of Singh’s prose and the colorful imagery and powerful longing in her narratives.
It is difficult to single out the stories contained here as, delightfully, the tapestry they create together is so cohesive. I rarely find short fiction collections with this level of continuity of concept that are not also, at times, one-note ... Each individual story has a point and a power; together, an image emerges, a thematic argument of unity ... Singh has very much knocked it out of the park in an unassuming but thorough fashion.
Singh’s dexterous hand for speculative science fiction is on full display in this lyrical and humanist collection. In each story, keen and ruthless female protagonists work to make sense of a world that has been defeated by the violence of nature ... Singh, both a physicist and wordsmith, is developing an exciting new subgenre all her own, and Ambiguity Machines is an enjoyable introduction to her voice.
A delicate touch and passionately humanist sensibilities sweep through this magnificent collection, which ranges from the near future of our world to eras far away in space and time ... in general this collection is full of risky experiments that turn out beautifully: colorful, emotionally resonant, and consistently entertaining.
