Scientists and other characters in this book of stories travel through time, deal with the aftermath of climate change, and otherwise navigate the complexities of living in worlds distant, but not so different, from our own.
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.
