2009 books
22) Vandana Singh, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories, 2008
Ten stories make up this first collection, published by India's premier feminist publishers, Zubaan. Over the last half dozen years Singh has been garnering a reputation for quality, though I don't think it will be much longer before she's on the Hugo or Nebula shortlist. That quality also comes with some variety, sometimes gentle but often more measured and hard-hitting, but Singh is never strident. All the stories also rely strongly on Indian themes and their speculative aspects are mostly drawn from folklore or common Western SF tropes, with one story, 'Conservation Laws', written as a direct tribute to the master of Bengali SF, Premendra Mitra. Highly commendable is 'Thirst', which takes a while to get to its speculative point but when it does it stays lodged in the mind; best is 'Infinities', first published here, a story about a lifelong mathematical obsession that's set against a backdrop of Hindu/Moslem racial tensions in Delhi, and it's a story I think deserves much wider recognition.