Future Reality in Machinehood by S. B. Divya

In the world of S.B. Divya’s Machinehood, the humans have created artificial intelligence, and now it’s demanding its rights. But it speaks as well to our world, by giving the narrative voice to two women. They are sisters-in-law, a close relationship in one half of the cultural setting of the book—a future Chennai, India where the norms and practices are of their time and yet drawn from the city as it is in our time.

In her terrific NPR review, Fran Wilde refers to the book’s “intertwined, generational struggle centered around keeping up with the future while overcoming past mistakes.” It’s also a story that reaches out to the world beyond North America. Nithya, of the protagonists, lives in Chennai, India, and her sister-in-law, Welga, is an itinerant operative, ungrounded in place, hooked on the pills and patches she needs to make it through the tasks of her gruelling job. These are nuanced characters facing challenges that echo the world we live in now.

If the relationship between AI and humans challenges people to acknowledge and respect sentience, the global reach of the characters and their relationships poses that same challenge for difference groups of humans relative to one another. Divya’s Chennai is believable precisely because it’s written from within the city of today

Machinehood is set in a time when an overwrought global gig economy, impossible to avoid yet clearly not great for anyone taking part in it, is brought to its knees by an AI rebellion. This is Asimov channeled and updated. The robots are no longer at the service of humanity, because humanity hasn’t kept its part of the bargain. Substitute Earth’s systems for the AI nexus, and the story takes on added luster, turning into something far larger than the sum of its parts.