Vandana Singh

I actually bought this, because after reading a different anthologized short story by Singh, and her first Younguncle children's book, I decided I want to read more by her. And yes, even though this had a higher 'yuck factor' than I prefer, and I would never have chosen it by the blurb by any other author, I loved it. Intelligent, graceful, fascinating, thought-provoking, engaging. I will continue to look for more by the author.

I've been a fan of Vandana Singh since I read The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories and met her at the Science Fiction Research Association 2015 conference, so I was excited to acquire an advance review copy of this, her second collection of short fiction, covering works released (mostly) after the publication of her first. A second novel is always a tricky thing; I'm wondering if a second short story collection can be even more so.

I enjoyed the first collection for its show more thoughtfulness and its sense of play, but I'm used to Singh's voice now, and at times I felt that Ambiguity Machines & Other Stories wasn't giving me much that I hadn't got out of the first. Singh has a recurrent interest in how (what one of her characters in TWWTSWP&OS called) "inner space" and "outer space" need to be accessed at the same time. As a result, there are a lot of ruminative stories about people in outer space here, people's ordinary lives paired with extraordinary journeys through time and space. On top of that, AM&OS adds an interest in the environment-- as is common in contemporary sf, a lot of these tales take place after some kind of ecological disaster or environmental collapse, though sometimes they're about one being forestalled. I'll be honest, occasionally it started to all blend together.

But when Singh hits, she really does sing. I really enjoyed "Peripeteia," about a physics academic who, after her lover leaves her, starts to worry that Occam's Razor might not be true, and maybe all of physics is just an ad hoc alien construction. "Are you Sannata3159?", about a man working for a pittance in a meat factory in a stratified future society, is a really dark story, more like what I would expect of Manjula Padmanabhan (it's sort of Harvestesque), but blackly good. "Sailing the Antarsa," about a lone space explorer who discovers there's always a new unknown to know, was a nice and uplifting counterpart to that one. I liked the knitting together of the stories of ordinary people during a fantastic event in "Cry of the Kharchal."

The second-best story in the volume is the last (and the only one not previously published): "Requiem," about a graduate student who goes to Alaska (in a time of environmental collapse) to collect the belongings of her recently deceased beloved aunt. A strong take on grief, with some intriguing ideas under the surface. The best story in the volume is the title story, "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination," three stories about nameless characters encountering machines that may or may not exists, each one on its own an insightful, melancholy tale, but in combination, greater than the sum of their parts. Which is true for many machines, many stories, and many collections, including this one. show less

From the shirt-eating baby to the paneer-eating tiger - not to mention the eponymous hero - the characters in Vandana Singh's debut children's book are endearingly idiosyncratic, humorously entertaining, and altogether charming. This all-too-brief chapter-book chronicles some of the adventures of Younguncle - a sweet-tempered, open-minded young man, with a horror of being tied down, either to career or wife - who comes to live with his elder brother's family, and quickly becomes the favorite show more companion of his nephew and two nieces. Whether he's rescuing the local dairyman's cow or recovering his great-uncle's stolen horse, Younguncle always seems to know just what to do, resolving crisis after crisis in clever and amusing ways. He even finds a way to extricate his little sister from her engagement to an unexpectedly boorish young man! As Sarita, Ravi and the baby discover, once Youngucle comes to town, nothing is ever the same again...

Chosen as our September selection in The International Children's Book Club to which I belong, where we try to read a children's book from a different country each month, Younguncle Comes to Town was originally published in India, by New Delhi-based Zubaan Books. How fortunate that Viking picked it up for publication in the states, as now American children will also have the opportunity to read it! Not only is it a lighthearted introduction to life in northern India - the monsoon rains, the periodic invasion of the local monkey population, the crowded bus-rides - it is just a fun-filled, warmhearted, entertaining romp of a book, in its own right. I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion while reading it. Younguncle's admonition to his sister that they are not living in a silly Bollywood film, his reflection that a particularly ostentatious pink mansion must be the product of a "disturbed mind," his sister-in-law's habit of Speaking in Capitals - they all had me chuckling! The depiction of the baby's ongoing crusade to find a shirt of Younguncle's to eat was the best of all, though, and had me in stitches:

"Although the heat had adversely affected the enterprise and energy levels of the two older children, the baby was just as usual. She spent her spare time crawling about the house, pulling herself up along a sofa or chair, waiting for Younguncle to relax his guard. The baby's chief ambition in life was to find and consume an entire shirt of Younguncle's, and Younguncle knew this. Although they loved each other very much, Younguncle and the baby had completely different ideas on the meaning and purpose of shirts.And one day the baby got her chance."

Hilarious! I closed this book with a strong desire to read the sequel, Younguncle In The Himalayas. Here's hoping Viking published that as well! If not, it will have to be yet another book order from abroad... show less

Seeing that I was presenting on short Indian science fiction at the Science Fiction Research Association, it seemed I ought to read the short Indian science fiction written by the conference's guest of honor. I was glad I did-- Vandana Singh is a very different writer to Manjula Padmanabhan (one might glibly say that Padamanabhan's work is all about getting out of India, while Singh's is about getting back), but also a very good one. This volume collects all Singh's published short sf as of show more 2008, most of which I would classify as falling on the literary end of things, some even being more stories about science fiction than actual science fiction. Anyway, it's thoughtful, inventive stuff: the title story, for example, sees a man's wife transform into a planet, to the extent that her residents colonize him!

I particularly liked "Infinities," about an obsessed mathematician; "Hunger," about a dinner party gone bad through the small cruelties all of us commit every day in our need to get by; and "Three Tales from Sky River," an inventive set of folklore from another planet in another time. My favorite story in the book, though, was "The Tetrahedron," where a giant tetrahedron just appears in a city street one day, and its protagonist must try to figure out what it's doing and why it captivates her so much. No one else understands her interest, and I felt this sentence not only summed up the story, but also the book as a whole, and was just a lesson worth remembering: "outer space, inner space, both had unknown topologies. You couldn't overlook one at the expense of the other." show less