The novel "Machinehood" - which belongs to this year s Nebula Awards Nominees - by S.B. Divya is set around the year 2090 ( amazon). Most jobs are done by AIs and other machines and humans take advanced drugs and get micro-machines (pills) implanted to be able to compete with the superior machines. The plot follows two sisters, one in India s Chenai, the other in Phoenix, USA. They - and the rest of the world - have to deal with massive attacks by a terror group, called "Machinehood", who is fighting for the rights of AIs and other machines (this is a spoiler free blog). The complex plot has interesting & plausible ideas about the future labor market, how corporations & social networks might have developed and how humans and robots could cooperate & compete.

Not only are these books enjoyable on their own, fiction can serve as teachable moments in robots and STEM and inspire a robot-obsessed teen to read more and improve their reading comprehension. Let's start with the scifi book I most frequently recommended to friends to read in 2021: Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. It is not a robot book per se but robots and automation are realistically interspersed through it- and the book is one of Stephenson's best, pulling together LOTS of technology, subplots, and themes similar to what he did in Diamond Age. One of the technology threads is how drones are ubiquitous throughout the book, with small drones being used singly or in swarms for surveillance and social media and bigger drones used for delivery, human transport, and, well, mayhem. Nominally the book is about climate change and how a group of individuals led by a rich Texan plan to cut through the COP26 meetings blather and get on with geoengineering the environment.

For anyone who has purchased a pair of shoes online, only to be immediately pursued across the Internet by enthusiastic algorithms exclaiming that we will love exactly the same pair of shoes (which is, technically speaking, true), the globe-spanning future of 2095 that Machinehood presents through the eyes of two women caught in its web feels disconcertingly logical. From the very first page, Machinehood, the debut science fiction novel from Nebula- and Hugo-award nominated machine intelligence specialist and biomedical engineer S.B. Divya, achieves what the very best science fiction aspires to -- it establishes our future by making it relatable, plausible, and infinitely strange at the same time. That Machinehood goes on to upend long-established laws of robotics, question longstanding political machinations, establish a credible voyeurism-based sub-economy, and take us on a thrilling who-done-it through the advent of the singularity are only a few of the novel's accomplishments. Machinehood also introduces us to the plight of humans caught within a future where everything is faster, better, and smarter -- everything except humans. That'Machinehood' goes on to upend long-established laws of robotics, question longstanding political machinations, establish a credible voyeurism-based sub-economy, and take us on a thrilling who-done-it through the advent of the singularity are only a few of the novel's accomplishments.

In SB Divya's 2016 novella Runtime, nominated for the prestigious Nebula Award for science fiction, a gritty, under-equipped young tech genius competes with the most advanced cyborgs in a challenging multi-terrain marathon set in the distant future. As the protagonist battles the elements, pain and even betrayal equipped only in gear put together from other people's garbage, the gripping, fast-paced narrative brings up issues relevant to the present world: economic inequality, corporate monopoly, and social injustice. There are other thought-provoking, absorbing stories in Divya's 2019 collection Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse (Hachette, Rs 399), which is full of fantastical situations, genderless, ageless humans and brilliant machines – a must-read not just for fans of sci-fi but anyone who loves a good book. "Most of my ideas tend to be mashups of different elements in real life. The technological inspiration often comes from science and technology, because I love to read up on the latest research and developments. I draw the human and social elements from observations about my life or news items," says the 44-year-old US-based author, who worked for 20 years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author.