Like some of Elaine Lee's other work, The Transmutation of Ike Garuda is science fiction of the noir space opera genre.

The Transmutation of Ike Garuda is set in a future in which interstellar spaceflight transportation has been obsoleted by the Galactic Access System (abbreviated G.A.S.

Private detective Ike Garuda is called in by Diamond Minds, ostensibly to investigate the theft of a prototype of one of its experimental technologies, a sending platform or soloflight transport device.

As Garuda investigates, he learns that rather than being involved in a simple industrial espionage case, he is actually caught up in a deeper and much more complex conspiracy that threatens to upset the balance of power in the universe.

Characters, in order of their appearance or mention in The Transmutation of Ike Garuda, with descriptions of whom they apparently are when they are first introduced (by the end of the story, many of the characters are revealed to be something other than what they initially seemed): The Transmutation of Ike Garuda explores a number of science fiction existential themes and asks bioethical questions, such as whether a person who enters a womb has the same identity as the same person reconstituted in a womb on another planet, and whether biodroid copies are just as real as the people on whom they are based.