A poor woman is held captive in a submerged Kolkata because of her ability to look into the past. An eleventh century poet is resurrected to be an artificially intelligent companion on a spaceship. A syncretic empire of steampunk wonders follows the Mughals in a revised historical telling. This collection of deeply-imagined speculative short stories burst with political subtext, a deep humanity and a hypnotic upending of the art of storytelling, while being distinctly set within a South Asian milieu. Combined with Singh’s work as a scientist, they simultaneously act as a wakeup call, through vivid scenario-building, about some of the most pressing issues that plague our planet.
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