Book Review: Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions

Imaginative fiction, Jamaican vibes, and random musings on life create a quirky anthology of speculative fiction

In her latest science fiction anthology, Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions, Nalo Hopkinson delivers a collection of short stories from various parts of her prolific writing career. Some of the stories are co-written by other authors including Nisi Shawl and Joshua Mays. The narratives range from lengthy and thoughtful social commentary to short, quirky, fever-dream musings. Each tale includes a brief opening comment from the author, giving readers a bit of context for her writing process at the time of the story’s creation. Without a clear central theme to connect the tales, we have an assemblage that is chaotic, in a good way. The collection has a range of everything from steampunk robots and cybernetics gone wrong to monster babies and world-ending plagues. The result is an eclectic rambling of Caribbean-futuristic speculative fiction served in bite-sized pieces to fit a range of moods.

Many of the stories share themes of environmental abuse, particularly as it relates to water, which becomes a recurring symbolic element across the collection. In the tales, water manifests as lethal, nurturing, mysterious, familiar, victimized, powerful, comforting, and punitive. Many of the tales are specifically or impliedly set in Jamaica. Jamaica (Xaymaca) is known as “the land of wood and water” or “the land of rivers and springs,” so the essential presence of water is a natural element of the culture and the stories. The other recurring element is the language of Jamaica. Bits of Jamaican-inspired dialect, vernacular, and slang are woven into stories of dystopian futures or mystical creatures. Despite the Jamaica focus, several of the tales are distinctly not Jamaican, including “Moon Child” and, ironically, “Jamaica Ginger.” As is the case with most anthologies, some stories stand out as particularly engaging and thought-provoking.

“Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story” is set in a dystopian era where humanity is scattered across dense, stressful cities or complex floating water communities. In this future Earth, the ocean is no longer grand and beautiful but is an obstacle of dirty water caused by decades of misuse, climate change, and pollution; hence the story’s title. Jacquee is a member of a close-knit water community, but she is piloting her water vessel alone and is soon faced with unexpected danger. It’s a classic journey story with a few twists. She’s just recently undergone surgery for cybernetic implants to help her better pilot her watercraft. But her impulsive decision to leave the medical facility before fully healing leads to problems for her psyche once she’s back on the water. Jacquee’s own tragic backstory of the loss of her family parallels the Earth’s own environmental losses. Like many of the other tales, the story is threaded with references to Jamaican and Caribbean culture, particularly in the use of language. Despite its tragic elements and dystopian setting, the story is surprisingly positive and ultimately empowering, with found family and community themes that resonate.

“Inselberg” is a creepy, dark humor tale also set in a decimated future version of Jamaica. The use of a second-person narrative immediately pulls the reader in for an immersive adventure with a naïve group of tourists and their cynical local tour guide. The story migrates from humorous to disturbing as terrible occurrences befall the travelers in their degenerating journey to a destination that is not what it seems. The story ends a bit abruptly but the set-up is intriguing and the writing style is addictive.

“Moon Child” give us an eerie narrative of Amy, a mother struggling to care for her beast-like changeling infant who would rather drink blood than milk. Despite the strangeness of the creature, she and her husband are bonded to the child. However, the community avoids the family and the child in particular, fearing that the child is unnatural. Amy soon decides to take a dangerous trek into the forest to find a solution. In the preface to the story, Hopkinson describes a vision she had while flying and watching the moon hovering in a deep forested valley. The result is a gorgeously descriptive narrative in a lush, dark setting. The journey is both immersive and symbolic and the solution is unexpected.

“Jamaica Ginger” is set in a steampunk-style New Orleans where Plaquette, a Black female engineer, works for a strict employer creating robots designed to replace the Black porters who serve on the train cars. Plaquette’s own father was a porter until an ailment left him unable to work. As a result, she and her mother must come up with creative ways to keep the family going.

My favorite story in the collection is “Clap Back.” In this tale, a wealthy, popular designer creates a fabric designed to erase guilt over racism and exploitation by building in audible forgiveness messages from the low-income workers who assembled the wildly expensive clothing. The words sink into the wearer’s skin like nanites and cause the person to audibly share the implanted phrases of coerced forgiveness from the oppressed workers. Meanwhile, artist Wenda does her own manipulation of inanimate objects and uses a horrifying figurine collection of old and offensive depictions of Black people to enact her own countermessage.

In addition to the strong central stories, the anthology has several shorter pieces, many of which end in unexpected ways and don’t necessarily have a moral point or character arc. Instead, they are small explorations of imagination and emotion that feel a bit open-ended. With a range of tales from a range of time periods, Jamaica Ginger acknowledges society’s challenges and ailments and provides a provocative remedy.

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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Twisty, eclectic, dystopian tales
• A range of narrative intensities
• Jamaican cultural references

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Interview: Into the Sauútiverse

The Sauútiverse, a shared science-fantasy world inspired by African folklore (of which the first anthology, Mothersound, is already out) is a fascinating collaborative writing project born from the creative space Syllble. (Full disclosure: I'm currently involved with the development of another Syllble project.) I spoke with Ghanaian author Cheryl Ntumy, one of the founding members of the Sauútiverse, about the conception of this fictional world and the ideas behind it. In befitting Sauúti fashion, the answers came from the writing collective as a whole:

Who came up with the idea for the Sauútiverse?

The universe itself (the name Sauútiverse, the planets, etc.) was created by all the members of the Collective, over the course of several brainstorming sessions. We have prepared insightful FAQs that can answer some of your questions.

Was the project originally conceived within Syllble or brought into it from a previous idea?

The project was conceived when Fabrice Guerrier, founder of Syllble, Wole Talabi and Ainehi Edoro of Brittlepaper first met to discuss the possibilities for an African collaborative writing project. While Wole Talabi spearheaded Sauúti as an African-focused shared world, aligned to the Syllble mandate, Syllble was already hosting other shared world projects. Sauúti sprang out from that source, using a lot of the Syllble base framework even as we adapted and expanded it.

How long did the project take from first idea to first publication? What stages were involved?

We had our first meeting in March 2022, and saw our first published Sauúti story, "The Alphabet of Pinaa: An AI Reinvents Zerself On An Inhabited Moon," set on our invented planet Pinaa, released in July 2023 by Interzone Digital. Mothersound, the first Sauútiverse anthology, edited by Wole Talabi, was published in November 2023.

First we had a lot of brainstorming sessions, not just for the fictional world we were creating but also for the communal ownership model we would use as the Collective. We used the existing Syllble framework for collaborative worldbuilding. We spent a lot of time worldbuilding, then we each developed story pitches and shared them with the group. We started writing our stories and many of us ended up writing more than one because we were so inspired! As we wrote, we also developed a story bible to keep track of the world and to help new contributors easily understand the Sauútiverse.

Next, we invited other writers to contribute to the anthology. They submitted pitches, followed by stories. While the process of refining and editing stories was ongoing, we were also looking for a publisher. We found a home with Android Press. During the whole process, we took the opportunity to promote the project at book festivals and conventions, including the Ake Arts and Book Festival, The Nebula Conference and the Africa Writes literature festival.

What elements about the worldbuilding of Sauúti can be traced to real-life cultures?

Many elements of the Sauútiverse come from real African cultures. We all drew heavily from the cultures that we grew up in, as well as other African cultures. The word Sauúti comes from "sauti", which means "voice" in Swahili. Most of the words and names we use come from real-life languages. We also drew from real-life cultural practices, rituals, beliefs, etc., though we tweaked them to fit in with our inclusive, futuristic vision. The primary resource in the shared world is sound, and there is no written language in the Sauútiverse; that element is representative of the importance of oral history in real African cultures. The Sauútiverse Creation Myth reflects this pan-African inspiration, as indicated in Wole Talabi’s introduction to the Creation Myth “Our Mother, Creator” in Mothersound:

“...we took inspiration from North African communities who center themselves around a matriarch and goddess. From the Ijaw people and their creator goddess Woyengi. From the Egyptian mythological Nut. Nana Buluku of the Fon who gave birth to the moon spirit Mawu, the sun spirit Lisa. From so many more.”

How was the process of recruiting the various writers who contributed to the project?

Wole recruited the rest of us to the Collective. This is the email he sent out, seeking writers: The History of Sauúti.

How are decisions made regarding what locations and events are official in the shared continuity?

We meet fortnightly, and make all decisions as a Collective. Once a location or event appears in a published story, it is considered "official" and key points from it are added to the story bible, where relevant. In terms of events, anything that affects the wider universe needs to be discussed and agreed on by the Collective.

Does anyone supervise that one writer's additions don't contradict another writer's?

We are switched on as a collective. Pitches and reviews are key to helping us avoid contradictions. We submit pitches before writing new stories so that the rest of the Collective can give feedback, take note of any conflicting or contradictory ideas and find ways to resolve any story challenges. We also review the finished stories to check and give feedback as well. It's just also a great way to support each other's work.

Where did the concept for the magic system come from?

Once we settled on the power of sound as the focus of our world, having sound as the basis of the techno-magic system made sense. It happened pretty organically—one idea led to the next. Sound is already linked to the supernatural in terms of spells, chants, prayers, etc., so it felt right.

In a culture organized around the magical study and manipulation of sound waves, what is the social status of people born without the ability to speak and/or hear?

Inclusion is an important part of the world we're creating, and those without certain abilities have the same status as anyone else. We view sound in this world as something rich and complex—it includes all kinds of vibrations and mechanical waves, infrasonic, ultrasonic, all varieties of sound. So people can manipulate sound in more ways than speaking and understand each other without hearing. They can play musical instruments and tools, use signs, use technology, etc. We are open to every interpretation of sound in the Sauútiverse.

We have stories that feature Deaf/deaf/Hard of Hearing (HOH) and non-verbal characters, some of whom are incredibly powerful. Sign language is used widely across the Sauútiverse and has the same status as spoken language (in some cases it's even required or preferred). The story "Lost in the Echoes'' by Xan van Rooyen features a Deaf/non-verbal DJ with extraordinary magic. Xan had a Deaf friend provide a sensitivity read for their story, to make sure the representation was accurate and didn't play into any negative stereotypes.

It’s also important to note that the founding Sauúti Collective includes queer and neurodivergent people and the Sauútiverse is queer-normative, so LGBT+ characters are fully accepted in society (i.e. queerphobia would be the exception and not the norm). Similarly, neurodiversity is represented in Sauútiverse stories.

If it's not top secret, can you mention other authors who will add more material to the Sauútiverse in the near future?

If we tell you, we’ll have to kill you... but I guess we can take the risk with you! I’m co-editing our next anthology, Sauúti Terrors, with members of my Sauúti family Eugen Bacon and Stephen Embleton, and we're stoked to see that contributing members of Mothersound —Tobias Buckell, Somto Ihezue and T. L. Huchu— are interested in sending us stories, and we're starting to receive exciting pitches! We also have newcomers like Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Ivor Hartmann, Kofi Nyameye, Nerine Dorman and Tobi Ogundiran on track in this new project. It's an anthology by invitation, and we're also accepting poetry. We're thrilled to confirm that we have signed agreements with five-time Bram Stoker Award winner and recipient of the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award Linda D. Addison, Grand Master Akua Lezli Hope, and other prominent speculative fiction poets, including Miguel Mitchell and Jamal Hodge.

Members of the collective have also written and sold Sauútiverse stories to other venues outside of our own anthologies, so you can look out for them soon.

The plan for the Sauútiverse was always to have it expand beyond the original collective and keep growing—for it to be a sandbox of imagination for Africans and those of the African diaspora to tell new, complex and fascinating stories together and we are so glad that it seems to be right on track.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology

An eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology is an anthology of short stories written by a range of authors in the African diaspora. Through the variety of writing styles, we get an eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways. All of the tales are set in the “Sauútiverse,” a fictional star system inspired by African mythology and African-futuristic sci-fi. Most of the stories in the anthology are infused with evocative imagery and gorgeous, immersive lyrical prose.

The anthology opens with several layers of commentary on the creation and inspiration for the collection, followed by sections of explanatory discourse on the makeup of the Sauútiverse. Fans of detailed world-building might enjoy the deep dive into politics, mythology, magic, technology, and planetary ecology. But plot driven readers will prefer to skim the preliminary details and dive into the stories. Throughout the book, the stories vary from lyrical world-building to fast-paced adventures to introspective character narratives. Each tale is carefully woven and thoughtful but some are more philosophical and abstract while some are grounded in active struggles and adventures.

Each story is preceded by a backstory explanation passage which, like the prologues, may appeal to those who like technical details. However, this technique is distractingly lecture-like to readers who just want to dive in and escape to another world. The details from each preceding passage are helpful for understanding the context of the tale but the decision to speak directly to readers reminds us that this isn’t real. For those who prefer to be transported and immersed in a new reality, the information could be better woven into the introductory sentences of the story or provided by a recurring fictional storyteller sharing the information in between the tales.

Despite this shortcoming, many of the stories in the collection are fascinating, immersive, and engaging. A few stood out in particular for me.

In The Way of Baa'gh by Cheryl S. Ntumy, a crab-like creature tries to sabotage an alliance of his people with the humanoids. Unlike prior stories, this is a tale told from the point of view of humanity’s enemy, a monster who despises, fears, and misunderstands humans and remains determined to sabotage them when the humans and Baa’gh form an alliance to try to harness control of time. Through the protagonist we see humans as dangerous aliens. This clever literary technique allows the story to unfold in a unique and tragic way.

The Grove’s Lament by Tobias S. Buckell is the story of Ami-inata, one of several refugees rehabbing a wasteland and trying to protect the fragile ecosystem. But she must fight for her life when a chaotic scientist from their ruined world tries to reenact the same type of dangerous experiment that destroyed their home world. He is mystical and destructive but Ami-inata is practical and focused as they clash with the safety of their people in the balance.

Xhova by Adelehin Ijasan is one of many stories in the anthology which addresses the intersection of technology with spirituality and magic. A human child is raised by an android parent, Xhova, in a post-apocalyptic society where androids control the creation and raising of humans. Xhova has grown attached to his human child but testing reveals she possesses magic which dooms her to death and Xhova has to choose whether to save his human daughter. The story is told from Xhova's first-person perspective and also from his second person perspective to his daughter. As a result, it becomes an immersive confluence of mythology and technology.

My favorite tale in the collection is A City, a Desert, and All Their Dirges by Somto Ihezue and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. A young man, Ajubiju, is bored with his highly spiritual, rural, nomadic people. He gets a chance to change his destiny when he meets a high tech foreign entourage (the Lomanoo) to his community. Two of their high councilors have been murdered by spiritual means and, since they only have high tech at their disposal, they need a person from a magic community to help them solve the mystery. Ajubiju is tired of his isolated, spiritual nomadic life and craves adventure with the technologically advanced society so he defies his mother and breaks his spiritual bond with his people to leave. This story is a futuristic crime thriller set in a high-tech city. Ajubiju is the magic wielder brought in to find the spiritual assassin in a city of non-believers. While there he befriends a young woman, the sister of one of the targeted councilors, who finds him fascinating. The story is a page-turner, with chase scenes and plot twists worthy of a big-screen adventure, but it still manages to be poignant, tragic, and thoughtful in its exploration of grief and revenge.

Sina, the Child with No Echo by Eugen Bacon is set in a society where all humans have an “echo,” a form of spiritual/magical hearing essential to their culture. In the story, Sina is born without an echo and left by his parents to die in the woods as an infant. But he is rescued by his aunt, a village leader who raises Sina as her son and trains him to use his skills to hunt and forage. Sina’s sister, Rehama’re, is a year younger than him and raised by their parents as a replacement for him. Understandably this creates an awkward relationship when they encounter each other in the village. The background is an allegory for society’s willingness to accommodate physical disabilities while the main plot focuses on the two siblings joining forces against a creature who has been ravaging the village. Overall, the story is an exploration of the true meaning of “family” and the value of unequivocal love that inspires Sina’s journey to his own self-acknowledgment.

Some of the stories focus on the theme of false histories versus the pursuit of societal truth. In Undulation by Stephen Embleton, an orphaned girl is tasked with reciting the origin story of her people in special public ceremonies. She struggles when she senses the falseness hidden in the words even as she comes to terms with her own personal tragedies. Muting Echoes, Breaking Tradition by Eye Kaye Nwaogu is the story of an opposing pair of secret assassins who must decide if truth and friendship can overcome murderous commands and institutional lies in this star-crossed lovers story.

Overall, editor Wole Talabi has created a memorable collection of clever stories set in a vivid universe. Although the world-building can be exhausting, the payoff is worth it. The tales blend technology, magic, and spirituality in a way that will appeal to readers with an appetite for immersive and innovative storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights

• Immersive imagery, gorgeous prose.

• Backstory overload.

• Engaging mix of magic, mythology, and high-tech futurism.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Womb City is a fusion of body horror, cyberpunk, dystopia, and a crime thriller all wrapped in an Afrofuturist setting. Think Handmaid's Tale meets Minority Report meets Get Out. (No spoilers).

In Womb City, we meet Nelah, an architect who lives in a futuristic Botswana with her police officer husband, Eli. Things aren't so copacetic, however. Implanted in the back of her head à la Johnny Mnenomic (and the now real-life Neuralink) lives a microchip that records everything she does and sees. 

Her husband reviews this tape daily, but not necessarily for the reasons you think (glimpses into potential affairs and lying are icing on the cake). Instead, it's because Nelah's body isn't the one she was born with. Nelah — her living personality and soul — currently inhabits a different body, and this one used to be a criminal. 

The world-building is top-tier

In this society, body-hopping is a frequent occurrence, but if your consciousness finds itself in a body that used to be "bad," you'll be monitored for recidivism, both by your family and by the state in a yearly criminal evaluation that can predict if you'll commit a crime. 

Because of the microchips and the subsequent 24/7 surveillance, crime is not common in this dystopia, but the price people pay is privacy and free will. 

A brief plot summary

Nelah and Eli are trying to conceive a child, but she is seemingly barren, so the couple turn to a Wombcubator, an external uterus that can grow a child to full-term. Because it's a dystopia, however, there's a catch. If you don't make every payment, the plug is pulled on the Wombcubator quickly and callously. (The Wombcubator made me think of the uterine replicators in Bujold's Barrayar.)

Nelah and Eli are accordingly stressed. Adding to their waning marriage is the fact that she is also having an affair with a rich businessman. One evening, on a wild night filled with sex and drugs in a fast car, the two hit and kill a woman, then bury the body instead of going to the police. 

The rest of the novel deals with the fallout from this enormous mistake, and it involves revenge, mythology (I had no familiarity with Botswanian history before reading this book, but the mirroring of the country's history of religious reincarnation with scientific body-hopping reincarnation is a fresh and fascinating take on sci-fi trope), supernatural forces, and a huge society-wide conspiracy regarding the mysterious Murder Trials (yes, that sounds like the Hunger Games, and yes, it's not an entirely unrelated concept). 

Even just typing all this out is difficult — the book does a lot in a short amount of time, and it can get confusing. There are also multiple plot twists around several corners, and these serve to tie a few plot strands together, even if they don't always need to be related.

Our bodies and who inhabit them — I can't stop thinking about this idea

There have been tons of books, movies, and TV shows about body hopping through the years, but Womb City really got me thinking for a few days about the mind-body duality. That, to me, is a sign of a great book. I turn to sci-fi for new ideas and predictions about the future, and Womb City definitely delivers. 

Nelah's inhabited her most recent body for about 10 years, and she still maintains ties with the body's original family. This relationship is fraught, however, as you could probably expect. She shows up on her family's doorstep on the day of the body's funeral. Just imagine burying your daughter, then a few hours later, she shows up alive with the personality and soul of a stranger. And then, you take her in as part of your family. 

I texted my mom if she'd want to hang out my body if someone else's soul was in it, and she thought for a minute and replied, "I think I would. I love your smile." Meanwhile, when I asked friends the same question, they said no, and I believe this reveals something Tsamaase was trying to get at in the novel. Mothers tend to have a strong corporeal connection to their child, considering that children literally come from a mother's body. Friends, on the other hand, are drawn to a person's personality and thoughts, generally speaking.

It's a question that's been thrown around society for thousands of years — Plato was talking about it in ancient Greece — but Womb City is adding more nuance to the debate, and it works extremely well.

For a first novel, it's very ambitious, but I was along for the ride

Womb City won't be for everyone, but if you're interested in a novel chock full of ideas and takes on the future in a futuristic Africa and don't mind the thriller-like pace and tons of body horror, you'll enjoy it. I can't wait to see what else Tlotlo Tsamaase brings us next. 

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The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: Intriguing ideas that harken back to classic sci-fi ideas but are presented in new and very engaging ways; incredible suspense and body horror; twists that keep on coming; the cover is going to be one of the coolest of the year, I'm sure.

Penalties: Perhaps too many twists and plot changes; there's a lot going on in this book and it may be too much for some folks.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, new NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Novella Project: To the Woman in the Pink Hat

A futuristic exploration of contemporary race and gender issues woven into a both disturbing and relatable tale. 

Set in a near future America, which feels futuristic as well as current, To the Woman in the Pink Hat is a story that challenges our views on morality and justice. Jada is a young, Black woman with a supportive family and a bright future ahead of her. But when Jada is convicted of a terrible crime (one which she fully admits to committing) she gets the option of an alternative sentence. Instead of spending her life in prison, she has the chance to live in a state of the art rehabilitation center designed to reform convicted young women of color into future leaders in society. Like many of the other program participants, Jada is both a victim of and a perpetrator of a horrific crime. All of the criminal inmates are referred to by the title “Leader” so the facility’s staff refer to Jada as “Leader Jada.” This is a brilliantly creepy way to open the story. Jada and her fellow inmates sarcastically compare the center to college. Young people of color sleep in dorms, eat at a dining hall, and attend classes on a range of subjects including politics, botany, and martial arts. They are constantly being evaluated to determine their aptitudes and their potential future “leadership” path in society.

The vibe of the facility feels like that of a dystopian version of an HBCU. But what is really going on in this rehabilitation center? Each title of respect and each exchange of therapeutic encouragement also carries an underlying threat. Some of the classes the inmates must take don’t align with leadership responsibilities. And most of all, it is clear that while the “leaders” have some elements of self-determination, they really have no true freedom.

The narrative begins with Jada in a counseling session with her AI therapist Ayana who wants Jada to come to terms with her crime and her victim. Ayana is an artificial intelligence originally designed to look like a graying, kindly, older Black woman. She is designed for Jada’s comfort since, due to the crime committed against her, Jada cannot abide a white therapist. However, because of new rules relating to AI transparency, Ayana has some of her physical features stripped so that she looks partly robotic in the therapy session. The visual of Ayana that Jada describes is jarring, and the initial scene grounds us in the dichotomy of truth versus fakeness that permeates the story. With this setup in the opening pages, we may think we know how this story is going to unfold. It feels like a classic dystopian institutional setting with an inevitable path to racism and oppression. But the tale takes an unexpected direction, particularly by the end, and circles back to the opening themes of justice versus retribution, self-determination versus manipulation, and accountability versus guilt. 

To the Woman in the Pink Hat efficiently weaves multiple layers of racial and gender social commentary through Jada’s lived experiences. Authentic connection, support, and beliefs are contrasted with artificial or superficial responses. The title of the story references the superficial, performative ally-ship symbolized by the knitted pink hat worn by someone who seemed to be an ally. Other reminders of falseness are quietly and deftly sewn into the story’s setting, including the unappetizing dining hall food called printloaf and the center’s artificial but life-like window scenery used to create a false sense of connection with the outside world. 

In contrast, the story shows us genuine family bonds through Jada’s relationship with her father, her younger sisters, and memories of her late mother. We also see the friendships Jada forms with the other inmates. However, the primary conflict in the story is the terrible racial and gender based crime perpetrated against Jada (and other women) as well as her equally terrible response which landed her in prison. Jada never denies her guilt and always expresses regret. The problematic inconsistency in the story is Jada herself. She is at times strong, resilient, and pragmatic, and at other times naïve and irrational, and at other times, cunningly rage-filled and vengeful. This frustrating contradiction in the main character ironically keeps us hooked because we genuinely don’t know what she will do or say next as each scene unfolds. 

  The twisty ending is powerful and unsettling, returning to the concept of self-determination versus manipulation, as well as grief and violence versus accountability. Overall, the story is a powerful allegory of well-intentioned but performative emptiness contrasted with the larger concept of the rage of a dream deferred. To the Woman in the Pink Hat is both brilliant and unsettling, leaving us with difficult questions to ponder and even more difficult answers to absorb.

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Highlights: Futuristic but relatable, contradictory protagonist, efficiently addresses multiple layers of racial and gender social commentary

 Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Jordan, LaToya, To The Woman in the Pink Hat, [Aqueduct Press, 2023]

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.  

African Folktales Reimagined

A fantastical change of pace with insights into African folktales.  

Tucked away in Netflix’s expansive science fiction and fantasy collection is a 2023 anthology of stories from across Africa. African Folktales Reimagined is a joint project of UNESCO and Netflix. The six films are retellings of folktales from Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritania, Tanzania, and South Africa. The stories are not only interesting on their own, but they provide inspiration to explore the traditional stories on which they are based. 

 Katera of the Punishment Island is a film from Uganda, by director Loukman Ali. It is inspired by stories of an old practice of sending pregnant girls to a small island as punishment for getting pregnant before marriage. The punishment island is based on a true story of an island in Lake Bunyoi, Uganda where unmarried pregnant girls were sent. The expectation was that they would die but some girls were rescued by men seeking wives. In the film, Katera is trapped and chained on the island but is rescued by a man from a nearby village. Once free, she hatches a plan to take revenge on the person who put her there. 

Halima’s Choice is from Nigerian director Korede Azeez. The story is inspired by the folktale of the “Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull.” In the original folktale, the daughter refuses all of her suitors but is charmed by a stranger who arrives in the village. The stranger is actually a skull who has borrowed body parts from others in the spirit world to make itself appear as a handsome human man. The Netflix film does a twist on the story, setting the tale in a futuristic world where a majority of the world’s population lives in a Matrix-like artificial reality.  Halima’s community is one of the few places where humans live “real” lives. However, life in the real world is not perfect, in fact, it’s harsh and simple. Halima is an independent young woman whose family has arranged a marriage to a man she doesn’t want. When a handsome young traveler arrives in their isolated village, the community suspects he may be one of the AI entities who infiltrate villages to lure people into the artificial world. But Halima is bored with her rural existence and feels a connection to him. The story is particularly timely given the current debate over the role of AI in our society.

Anyango and the Ogre – From Kenya, directed by Voline Ogutu, Anyango and the Ogre is inspired by a traditional tale of an ogre who pretends to be kind to trick people into trusting him so he can devour them. In the Netflix film, society is divided. The Blue Zone has comfortable homes and modern conveniences while the rest of humanity lives in harsh, rustic conditions. A widow with three children, agrees to marry a wealthy man so that she can bring her family to the Blue Zone. However, her new husband is not what she expected and their comfortable life comes a high cost. The story deals with domestic violence and child abuse, so be warned. My favorite thing about this story is the way it overlaps the ogre folktale onscreen as a parallel to the real life suffering of the widow and her children. The crossover storytelling is a great technique to tell a difficult story.

Enmity Djinn – From Mauritania, by director Mohamed Echkouna, a mysterious Djinn (Jinni) appears in the town where a grandmother lives with her extended family.  The Djinn’s invisible presence escalates enmity in the community and in the grandmother’s family specifically. The story uses simple, dark costuming to convey the Djinn’s presence in a way that is sinister and eerie. Through flashbacks we see the grandmother encountering the Djinn as a baby as the sole survivor of a slaughter. The scenes of her family’s current beautiful home are contrasted with the presence of the Djinn. In a particularly clever scene, the grandmother talks to her young granddaughter about colors and each color evokes symbolic elements as she considers how to confront the Djinn that only she can sense. 

Katope – Katope is a story from Tanzania, by director Walt Mzengi. This is my favorite tale in the collection. Katope is based on the folk tale of the mud child. In the folk tale a couple wishes for a child and makes one out of mud. Because the child is made of mud he cannot ever be caught in the rain or he will be destroyed. In the Netflix film, Katope is a girl who comes to life when an old woman who wishes desperately to have a child forms one from mud. However, since Katope’s birth, there has been a terrible drought. When a rain bird appears, Katope makes a choice for her community. The story is simple and the visual effects are subtle. It’s a sweet poignant tale.

MaMlambo – From South Africa, by director Gcobisa Yako, MaMlambo is inspired by the water goddess from Zulu folklore. Instead of portraying Mamlambo as a malevolent being, the film reimagines Mamlambo as a protector of women who have been victims violence. The film emphasizes female empowerment in response to gender based violence and uses water as a symbol of rebirth. 

With so many excellent choices out there, this anthology might slip by you. The presentations are minimalistic and lack elaborate visual effects. Many of the stories involve violence against women. Most of the stories are bleak rather than uplifting. But if you are in the mood for something completely different, this collection might be just the thing to capture your imagination.

--

The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights

• Clever storytelling

• Minimal special effects

• A change of pace

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation. 

Microreview: Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus

Maurice Broaddus’ Sweep of Stars starts a new series in a deftly and imaginatively created near future interplanetary society.

You are, for the purposes of this review, immersing yourself in the culture of Muungano. A future interplanetary society whose bounds and customs, rules and structure, are unfamiliar to you, but you will come to learn them. Through the characters in this society, from the young scion who has reached a milestone in her life and is ready to take her place as a full member of society, to a group of soldiers on a planet on the other side of a interstellar gate, you will come to learn, and perhaps love this diverse and well imagined Afrofuturistic society, especially as it deals with the challenge of a new conflict with the society it defeated in order to come into being in the first place.

You are reading a review of Maurice Broaddus’ Sweep of Stars.

I wrote the above in second person because right from the get go, giving a number of chapters in the second person, Broaddus immerses us into the world of Muungano in a strong and unrelenting way. It ungrounds the reader, putting us into the head and perspective of Leah, a young member of the society on the precipice of a new phase of her life. It also cleverly allows for a lot of information to be rapidly pressed into the reader as we get a flood of this new and different early 22nd century culture and society. While we soon will alternate between Leah and mostly more traditional forms of point of view¹ Leah’s chapters set the tone for the book, and what Broaddus is trying to accomplish with the book.

There has been a fair amount of Solar System space opera in recent years, and in many scales and stories told, from Ian McDonald’s Luna series, to the wild success of the Expanse, to the re-release of Laura Mixon’s Up Against It, to the more narrowly focused Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man, set on an interplanetary cruise liner. In that tradition, Sweep of Stars goes for the wide scale approach, with a number of points of view ranging across the solar system, and a story that reaches into another solar system entirely by means of an Interplanetary Gate.

Too, Broaddus’ solar system future stands apart from the others, and most of the ones I have recently read, in being an Afrofuturist focused vision of the future in space. This is not entirely virgin territory, the Bindi novels of Nnedi Okorafor come to mind, but this is a novel, the first in a series, that aims to tell the entire story of the Muungano civilization. The novel provides a fair number of point of view characters to this, and the build toward the conflicts that hit in the back half of the book do take time to develop. Broaddus uses that time, I feel, wisely. There is a lot of worldbuilding and development of the society under display here. Given the conflicts of the novel when they do arise, Broaddus’ strategy appears to be to be able to show Munngano as its strength, at its optimal, one might even say reaching-for-utopian ideals of a young culture, before putting it under stress with external conflict.

To that end, through about a half dozen point of view characters and several locations and subplots, see Muungano at a growing level and stage at its development, a young and burgeoning civilization, a diverse range of West African derived cultures and societies scattered across the solar system. From an utopian colony city, to the frontiers of the solar system, to a military unit, we get to know Muungano as it stands right now, and Muungano, instead of being a monoculture, is itself a web of differing ideas, roles, political systems and societies. This makes a high wire act for the author--he is not really just showing one future society where all that societal development is channeled into one template, he’s showing a spectrum of a future society where the different habitats and parts of Muungano have commonalities, but they are significant differences that need to be respected.

The novel is also intensely political in that many of the conflicts and lines drawn, especially when we move to the second half of the book, are intensely political and diplomatic in nature. Autocracy is a predominant mode (long live the King/Queen/Empress/Emperor), or in science fiction too commonly these days, Long live the CEO, may long they reign. While there are reasons, historic and otherwise, for this concentration of political power in SFF works, it does miss some opportunities.

However, Muungano provides the author with a diffuse political as well as a culturally diffuse society to work with, meaning that the politics and diplomacy are not autocratic, there is negotiation, meetings and some rather sharp political factions across Muungano. It is especially in politics that we see some of the other sides of this culture and it provides us more ways to get a hold of and understand the kaleidoscope of a future world that the author provides.

One perhaps unusual SFF space opera that I kept thinking of as I was reading Sweep of Stars is the Okie (City in Flight) novels by James Blish. Those novels are set in a world where antigravity and longevity have both been discovered, and the form of interstellar society that develops is a set of formerly bound to the earth cities who pick up and go wandering the stars. The cities meet, clash, go through cycles of power and development and build a whole stage of civilization through their adventure and efforts. Where the Okie novels really intersected my brain and my thought is in the endpaper matters where Blish lays out the cycles of the Okie novel civilization in terms of Oswald Spengler.(2). Blush clearly saw the Okie civilization over time (there is a fairly wide time scale in the Okie novels) evolving along the lines laid out in this way.

Where Muungano comes in is that I was able to apply that lens to Muungano. Muungano is a young civilization, in its Spring period. It’s new, it's in conflict with an older civilization (O.E, Original Earth, who definitely want to bring Muungano back under its aegis). Muungano is developing its own unique and flowering sciences and especially art and culture. It’s a society that is growing and developing, and in terms of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation saga, is about to run into its first crisis period (3) in the books that we have. In Sweep of Stars, then, we are getting an ambitious look at something unusual in science fiction outside of writers like Blish and Asimov--we are getting a look at a flowering of a culture, a society, a civilization. We see it in the language, the art, the food, the rituals, the greetings. It’s a very tangible book in that regard.

And of course all of this grand civilizational sweep is in the context of telling the stories of these characters, of this place, of this moment in time. Broaddus starts the story with the Naming Day of Leah (our second person POV). Even as he is showing this grand epic to us, he keeps us in the human, in the tangible, in the real, in a way that, say, Asimov as above, never can manage with his own civilizational epochal story.

Sweep of Stars is a big space opera, and it needs to be, to contain everything that Broaddus’ strong and deep ambition is trying to make it become. My only real criticism of what is a stunning and inventive novel is that the timeline of the history feels too compressed for my taste. I am not sure that the events, as described, and the society as depicted, could all resolve and arise in the relatively short amount of time that Broaddus assigns to it. This is hardly a fault unique to Broaddus’ work of course, but I think that the rise of the Muungano civilization, including the precipitate events that led up to it, the milestones in the growth and development of the solar system, would and will take decades more than the rather brisk time frame shown here. I understand how and why Broaddus chose this, so as to have characters who could have personal ties to the end of the conflict between OE (Original Earth) and Muungano, but I don’t think the timeline works.

With that caveat, I found Sweep of Stars, a bold and bright space opera that confidently tells the story of a new civilization, it’s triumphs, culture, society and its people (from its point of oview characters on outwards) and then plunges that young and vibrant culture into what appears to be a series-spanning conflict that will certainly change the culture and the entire solar system in the process.

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for a diverse (on all axes) and inclusive, and interesting world and canvas, an amazingly imagined civilization

+1 for very strong notes of a variety of point of view characters

+1 for the bold ambition to tell this story.

 

Penalties: -0.5 The timeline of the events of history feel too compressed.

 

Nerd Coefficient: 9.5/10

 

Reference: Broaddus, Maurice, Sweep of Stars [Orbit, 2022]

¹It should be noted that there is also a First person plural point of view character in the book. It seems to me that the author was definitely having fun with the experience of telling his story by using a variety of point of view techniques.

²Oswald Spengler had some notions about civilizations (his best known work is The Decline of the West) on their origin, rise and fall, seeing how civilizations, to his lens, have similar cycles and characteristics in their path. Spengler's work is marred by him being somewhat adjacent to more unsavory elements of 1920's and 1930's Germany, although his civilizational ideas would influence historians like Arnold Toynbee and Will and Ariel Durant. 

3I don't know that Asimov read Spengler, but per note 2, he definitely read Toynbee. 

Review: The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer

The story of Dirty Computer continues in five richly plotted scenarios set in a dystopian future

Taken as a whole, Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer art project consists of a music album (nominated for the Grammys in two categories), a short film (nominated for a Hugo), and now, from Harper Voyager, a collection of short stories written in collaboration with other authors of color. This production is not connected to Monáe's previous Metropolis storyline, centered on the android Cindi Mayweather. Both the album and the film of Dirty Computer follow a different character, Jane 57821, as she escapes an oppressive future in the company of her lovers. This book serves as a window into exactly what horrific world Jane is escaping.

The introduction to the collection is a quick summary of the rise of a totalitarian regime, New Dawn, whose control over society was possible because "we accepted their offer that an eye in the sky might protect us from… ourselves." With the assurance of total visibility, an immediate problem emerged regarding privacy and deviancy, and the regime decided that "what they struggled to see, they began to deem not worthy of being seen—inconsistent, off standard. Began calling it dirty—unfit to be swallowed by their eyes."

In the backstory that this introduction presents, the new social category of the dirty started being applied to modes of thought and identity that did not fit the rigid standards of the regime. The stories that compose this collection explore various characters' struggle to reclaim, preserve, and even celebrate the dirty.

The titular story, The Memory Librarian, cowritten with Alaya Dawn Johnson, follows Seshet, a government employee whose job is to gather, catalog, inspect and, if necessary, redact memories routinely collected from the citizens of New Dawn. What she thought she knew about her position in society is challenged by an unexpected romance with Alethia, an underground dissident whose thirst for independence of mind forces her to face thorny questions of power and intimacy. How can you learn to respect your partner as an equal when you have the legal authority to manage their mind? Is full access to your partner's every thought enough for you to say you know them? Why is it so difficult to be vulnerable in front of someone you don't control? And what does it do to you when you're given the power to edit how people—even you—remember you?

In the story that follows, Nevermind, cowritten with Danny Lore, we meet our main heroine, Jane 57821, in hiding after having survived New Dawn's attempt to remove her most precious memories (as seen in the Dirty Computer short film), and now turned into the unofficial leader of an intentional community that inhabits a hotel in the desert where women can experiment with alternative forms of social organization. Free from New Dawn's monopoly on memory, the members of this breakaway community find comfort in a storytelling ritual where each participant contributes the bits that the other struggles to articulate. Against this joyful act of sharing stand the hunters of the regime, mutated humans for whom sharing feelings is physically painful. While New Dawn weaponizes memory as an assault on reason, the dissidents paradoxically wield emotional openness as a protective deterrent. This story draws from ongoing discussions in contemporary activism about the need for an ever-expanding scope of inclusiveness.

Then comes Timebox, cowritten with Eve L. Ewing, about Raven, a newly independent young woman with barely any time for all her daily obligations, who discovers that her apartment has a paranormal room where the flow of time is suspended relative to the outer world. Her chronic sense of deprivation clashes with her girlfriend's shallow performance of generosity when they set out to decide what to do with an infinite resource.

We are next treated to Save Changes, cowritten with Yohanca Delgado. This is a brilliantly multilayered exploration of the fantasy of fixing the past. On the surface, this story is about the social difficulties experienced by the family of a political prisoner, whose shaky mental state after being sentenced to memory revision is placed in symbolic parallel with her daughter's project of repairing clocks dating from before New Dawn. But on a deeper level, this story is about the heart-rending sacrifices people are willing to make for their loved ones under unbearable oppression. In a regime that lays claim to all facts, a blatant lie can be the most unpredictable tool of resistance.

The last story is Timebox Altar(ed), cowritten with Sheree Renée Thomas, an uplifting metaphor about the social power of media representation (and therefore, a metafictional statement of purpose for the book itself). In a plot of overgrown land with disused rail tracks and rusty fairground equipment, a small child whose mother was taken away by New Dawn reshapes the abandoned objects into something new, following an inborn urge toward the raw potential of artistic creation. In doing so, they produce a miracle. This event establishes a correspondence between the fictional artists inside the story and the real artists writing the story, as well as between the characters who are shown a vision of a brighter future and the readers who might feel similarly inspired by seeing themselves in that future. The link between memory and time—namely the metaphor of reclaiming memory as a form of time travel—extends further to Monáe's role as a musician. As the protagonist of this story wisely proclaims, music is fundamentally made of time. This notion invests the musical record (and, by extension, any work of art) with the properties of a time machine. To make art is to reclaim memory is to exert power over time. This theme brings the book full circle back to the Dirty Computer album as a ritual whose performance is meant to effect change in the material world, as a cry for a liberation whose realization is contained in its utterance.

In each of these stories, but most notably in the introduction, which Monáe wrote by herself, her talent as a songwriter shines. Her prose vibrates with the telltale cadences that tell you this was written by an artist intimately familiar with the music of language. It takes an experienced lyricist to produce sentences with such rich sonority that they all but demand to be sung, like "She missed the music of the hotel the moment she exited, even as the wind hit her face, just cool enough to mimic the feeling of misting water," and "So they stared at the gray obelisk in the distance, shuddered and turned away, running in the opposite direction, racing down a path, not caring where it would go."

This collection adds important details to the otherwise barebones worldbuilding Monáe had laid out in her album and film. The characters she and her collaborators have created for these stories feel profoundly, compellingly human, even as the conditions they have to endure threaten to rob them of their most human qualities. That's the most remarkable trait that these stories have in common: even in the absolute worst of circumstances, the characters we meet here are not broken. They abound in hope and kindness, and meet each new day with the bold refusal to become jaded. In the nightmarish future of Dirty Computer, marginalized communities still fight to create spaces for solidarity, safety, and pure joy.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +2 for the intricate work of worldbuilding and characterization.

Penalties: −1 for sometimes relying on overused turns of phrase.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Monáe, Janelle. The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer [Harper Voyager, 2022].

Yasuke celebrates African heritage at the expense of Japan's

Even a mythical reimagining should make an attempt at making sense

First, the facts:

In 1582, Japan was going through a violent process of unification. After defeating almost every other local leader and conquering their provinces, warlord Oda Nobunaga had secured control over almost all of Japan when one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, betrayed him by launching a surprise attack on his castle and causing him to commit seppuku. One of Oda's most loyal soldiers, an African man he had originally bought as a servant from Portuguese traders who had kidnapped him probably in Mozambique, has entered the history books as the first foreigner to ever receive the rank of samurai, but after the fall of the Oda clan, nothing more is recorded about him. We don't know his original name. The Japanese called him Yasuke.

Now, the fiction:

The new Netflix animated series Yasuke imagines the Black samurai twenty years later as a retired old warrior struggling with his inner demons but suddenly called again to battle when a magical girl becomes the target of a weird Christian cult that wants to exploit her powers. The plot gives much more attention to the girl's development as a character, with Yasuke relegated to a glorified bodyguard. In essence, this show has the character of Yasuke, but doesn't cover what he did in life, doesn't explore the significance of his achievements, doesn't give him much of a personality, doesn't rely on what actually made him historically interesting, and isn't even about him.

To make matters worse, the show just isn't very engaging. The animation is flawless, and I have nothing but praise for how the show looks, but the story is bland, generic, painfully predictable, and peppered with unoriginal one-liners that the writers had to have known were not going to impress anyone.

The writers' room of Yasuke has three African Americans (LeSean Thomas, Steven Ellison, Nick Jones Jr.) and one white Canadian (Alex Larsen). Not a single Japanese voice was involved in writing the story. The production used the services of a Japanese animation company, but the credits make no mention of any cultural advisor, sensitivity reader, or anyone who could have provided input to correct the Orientalist stereotypes and historical distortions in the script. By distortions I don't mean flying robots and sorcery. By distortions I mean things like the portrayal of Oda Nobunaga as an enlightened reformer who planned to expand civil freedoms and who was deposed by traditionalists primarily because he dared to knight a Black man. This is not only a blatant butchering of how military rivalries worked in early modern Japan; it's a clumsy attempt to transplant 21st-century preoccupations onto a setting where they don't make sense.

The story does reflect African values nicely through its titular protagonist (for example, the principle that everyone in the community is responsible for every child's safety), but when it comes to representing Japanese culture, all we get are tired clichés like the fixation with honor, as if Japanese society didn't have any other values. In the end, we don't get any tangible hint of who Yasuke was as a person (or even who the writers wanted to say he was) beyond a set of formulaic platitudes.

Yasuke does a grave disservice to a fascinating historical figure to tell a paint-by-numbers escort quest plot that doesn't illuminate his character and wastes the narrative possibilities of a crucial period in Japanese history. It's a real pity.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10.

Bonuses: +1 for beautiful landscapes and expertly fluid animation, +1 for the uniquely bold kind of worldbuilding that allows for a samurai, a sorcerer, a robot and a werebear to exist in the same story.

Penalties: −3 for using almost every Orientalist trope in the box.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: The Dominion Anthology

Ours is a time of ever-increasing visibility for African SFF—now it has its first anthology

Our editor Adri mentioned this book already last August, but it bears revisiting at greater length. This is, according to the publisher, "the first anthology of speculative fiction and poetry by Africans and the African Diaspora," so it deserves every chance of visibility it can get. Edited by Zelda Knight and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and with a foreword by Tananarive Due, the Dominion anthology collects twelve stories and one poem about imagined futures and reimagined pasts told with deep sincerity and robustness of worldbuilding. This is certainly an exciting time for diversity in speculative fiction.

Trickin' by Nicole Givens Kurtz, from the United States, is an odd choice to open the book with, as it is not a very strong story, with little impact on the reader. In the ruins of a city devastated by biological warfare, a mysterious wanderer wakes up on Halloween and starts terrorizing the survivors, demanding a blood tribute. There are the vaguest indications that the protagonist might be some sort of superhuman, most likely a vampire, but the story itself is scarce in information. One has to flip back to the book's introductory pages to learn from the editorial synopsis that this character is supposed to be a god. Not the most impressive of starts, but don't worry: the rest of the anthology more than makes up.

Red_Bati by Dilman Dila, from Uganda, is the deeply moving rebellion story of a former pet robot now working for an asteroid mining company that finds it cheaper to repurpose discarded pets than to buy actual miner robots. Unbeknownst to its new owners, Red_Bati had a software upgrade with human-like intelligence so it could better serve as a companion to humans, so when it suffers an accident and is put in storage as damaged junk, he devises a risky escape plan.

The most effective artistic choice in this story is its gradual dosing of information: we start in the middle of a conversation with minimal context, then we are pulled back so we can see some of the scenery (we are on a spaceship), and later we learn the protagonist's immediate predicament, and only when it becomes relevant to the plot are we given the rest of the backstory. This technique of withholding crucial facts until they are needed is very hard to do successfully, but this time it's managed with a flawless expertise that never loses hold of the reader's attention. The interaction between the robotic protagonist and its internal simulation of its dead owner is as funny as it is heartbreaking, and it subtly grows in weirdness until the ending comes and devastates the reader.

There are, however, a few missteps, which would not matter in any other kind of story, but are too noticeable in one that presents itself as science fiction grounded in physics. One aside comment mentions a sentient robotic crew on another spaceship that panics and refuses to keep working upon estimating only a 99.9% chance of a safe landing (which is not how any superintelligent being would respond to probabilities), while another part refers to a system of thermal insulation so good it can resist −400 °C (a temperature that is physically impossible in this universe). These details are brief and do not affect in the least the emotional punch of the story, but they do distract enough to prevent full suspension of disbelief.

A Maji Maji Chronicle by Eugen Bacon, from Australia, is a time travel story that revisits the Maji Maji Rebellion, an uprising that erupted against forced labor in the German East Africa colony (today's Tanzania). A wizard and his apprentice jump from the future to 1905 Earth and explore the ramifications of an alternate outcome to the rebellion. In our timeline, villagers used folk charms that were believed to stop bullets, and were brutally suppressed by the German colonial officers. In this version of events, we watch with dread the insidious darkness that could have taken over the human heart if the rebels had had access to real magic.

This tale appears to have a simple structure at first sight, but it contains material for extended discussions on the allure of power, the difficulty of maintaining control, and the didactic usefulness of history. The reader will marvel at how the author managed to speak of a horribly painful episode while having the two viewpoint protagonists banter with Quixotic irony.

The Unclean by Nuzo Onoh, from Nigeria, is a haunting story about the horror of loss worsened by the horror of patriarchy. In the years leading to Nigeria's independence, a young Igbo woman separated from her home by arranged marriage endures first the cruel pressure to conceive and then the despair of her child's death. When she starts receiving nightly visitations from the child's ghost, she tries desperately to help him be born into his next life. We experience in parallel narratives the journey that brought her to her present misfortune and the trial by ordeal she's going through for practicing forbidden sorcery.

This story abounds in cultural specifics that construct a solid image of the setting in the reader's mind. We're presented with an array of malevolent spirits, magical rituals and secret Nsibidi symbols that anchor the story firmly in its corner of the world.

But beyond the care for authenticity, it is amazing that a terrifying tale of horrific events can be so filled, from start to end, with beautiful sentences that jump out at the reader, demanding to be reread for the pure enjoyment of their rhythm, their choice of words, their evocative poetry. A select few are "As I walked through the low metal gate of our compound, my feet grew sudden wings as I raced the last few yards to our front door" and "My reddened eyes remained puffed with unfinished tears, ready to shed my agony at the slightest excuse" and "The unnatural stillness in my room was heavy with a waiting quality that made the darkness a solid malignant mass" and "Gathered in a silent, waiting crowd, hollowed eyes dripping blood as black as tar, each posed in the manner of their demise, they impaled me to the ground by their appalling visage" and "God is thundering, roaring, helpless as He's always been in the face of mankind's tragedy."

This is a powerful piece of horror and one of the highlights of the entire collection.

A Mastery of German by Marian Denise Moore, from the United States, is a short but effective exploration of the anxieties brought by the current genetic ancestry testing fad. In a not very tightly regulated pharmaceutical company, a project to turn generational memory into a product is discussed in the context of larger questions about privacy, identity, heredity, and erased history. If a company can make money from your memories, but you are your memories, is the company selling you? This question would be piercing enough in any story, but in one told from the perspective of African American history, and coinciding with the still-ongoing discussion about who gets to own and tell a people's experience, it carries an extra edge.

The anthology also features Emily, Moore's heartfelt poem about the many characters lost to history and the things we wish we could have told them.

Convergence in Chorus Architecture by Dare Segun Falowo, from Nigeria, is a survival story with the symbolic scope and weight of an epic. In a richly detailed Yoruba setting, sustained by powerful descriptions like "Lightning flashed and for a moment, everything seemed made from white stone," a community of war escapees who founded a secret village have to decipher a vision from the heavens. For a long stretch, the plot is less about material events and more about the effort to decipher the omens. This is a nice way to tell a story about stories: to make it hinge on an act of interpretation. Characters spend whole days in mystical trance and their perception of the waking world is effortlessly blended with the signs of the dream.

The narration relies heavily on the divinatory practices of the Ifa religion, and large portions are devoted to painting intricate dreamscapes that hold the secrets to the story. These sections employ surreal imagery that both detaches the reader from the conventional meanings of words and creates a very concrete, very unique world with its own system of meaning. This is what makes it possible for the author to put so much force into wonderful sentences like "A scream was cut short by a blaze of violet fire, as the screaming body exploded into the air, burning a trail thin as thread from the distant plain into the gut of the boneship" and "Up in the sky where he looked, he saw as in the shared dream, a blackness staining the night, the emergence of a void in the flesh of reality" and "Her motions set off melodies which the air sings to itself."

The author's mastery of description holds together two parallel plots that explore both the depths of the earth and the void of outer space. Thieves from another star system have come to the village, in a stylized metaphor for the arrival of the slave trade, while a man navigates the underworld to seek the divine power that may save his people. Both below the earth and up among the stars, the events have to be read with multiple meanings, with the lasting resonance of myth. This story, my favorite in the book, is absolutely breathtaking, crafted in a tactile language that makes the stuff of dreams feel real.

To Say Nothing of Lost Figurines by Rafeeat Aliyu, from Nigeria, is a fun portal fantasy where a bored half-alien bureaucrat assigned to a boring uneventful town is suddenly ordered to watch over a human wizard searching for a staff he needs to participate in a magical competition. The frustrations of cultural misunderstandings and the absurdities of transdimensional legislation carry the tale in a breeze, but it's worth noting briefly the series of clever allegories inserted here: barriers to immigration, theft of cultural treasures, the discrimination suffered by people of mixed ethnicity, and the power of heritage to literally make a territory.

Sleep Papa, Sleep by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, from Nigeria, is a gritty undead story where an organ trafficker is haunted by his father's corpse after inadvertently selling parts of him. We follow the protagonist in a deadly quest through the criminal underbelly of Lagos to unburden himself from his guilt.

Clanfall: Death of Kings by Odida Nyabundi, from Kenya, is a complex political drama with plenty of throat slashing and gut ripping. In a far future Earth without humans, a territory known only as the Cracked Realm is ruled by feuding cyborg dynasties. The clan of the Fisi has just overthrown the clan of the Simba for control of the country, but a spy drone sent by the reclusive clan of the Chui has discovered a secret that could strengthen their position under the new regime. The plot is slow to reveal itself, and folds back into the past several times to revisit events from another perspective. The multiple alternating viewpoints tax the reader's working memory, and the abrupt ending comes frustratingly soon after the author has spent so much effort on building a fascinating world that cries out to be explored more. It reads as the first chapter of a much longer epic, and one can only hope it is.

The Satellite Charmer by Mame Bougouma Diene, from the United States, zooms the controversy on Chinese acquisition of African raw materials to cosmic proportions: in a future empire spanning the territories between Chad and Senegal, Chinese corporations have acquired a license to shoot gigantic beams of red light from orbit to pull minerals from the ground. A young man with prophetic powers has spent his life captivated by the strange seductive power of the red beam, obsessed with becoming one with it, while his country tries to survive amid massive environmental devastation.

The prose is written efficiently, but has time for strong description when it matters. The reader is regaled with sentences like "He could taste the dampness in the air, his eyes watering with the wind" and "Entire swathes of the continent seared and bleeding with lava, like open arteries on a suicidal forearm" and "The Mandrill's eyes opened onto the universe, folded it into the shape of Ibou's heart and took a bite." Likewise, the protagonist holds on to scarce moments of beauty as an escape from the bleakness of the world. Through slices of his life, we watch him adapt to the pressures of extractive economy until it takes everything from him and more.

This story gradually rises from a mundane plot to metaphysical musings without letting go of its threads of logical continuity. It's one thing for you to repeat the mantra that everything is connected, and another thing to be yourself the pathway through which it happens.

Thresher of Men by Michael Boatman, from the United States, is a quick succesion of shocking episodes about an avenging goddess who has lived for centuries watching over the African people and their descendants, and now has returned to the world in the era of police brutality.

Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, from Nigeria, concludes this anthology with mixed results. In a future Ife, a refuge for the dwindling survivors of a nuclear war, the tribal leader makes unauthorized contact with the outside world, offering his people's supernatural talents in exchange for a dubious promise of rescue, and sets in motion an explosive confrontation and a social revolution in his suffocatingly patriarchal community.

The dialogues are excessive, explaining too much in a theatrical voice that makes the characters sound separated from their own feelings. In the manner of didactic tales, which themselves feature as central elements of the story, the author chooses to tell rather than show, to a degree that strains the reader's investment. The characters come off more as archetypes than as concrete persons. Every time a fact about this society needs to be told to the reader, characters say it to each other, in classic "As you know" manner. Strangely, in a pivotal early scene where two prophets pronounce world-shattering revelations, the dialogue is simple, almost business-like, incongruous with the events it is describing.

The action scenes, in contrast, are written with better skill. This is not entirely to be celebrated, as this is not a story of war, but a story of cultural change told with the trappings of war. When it returns to its central topics, however, it adopts a preachy tone that does its message no favors. Only its mythical ending saves this story, which by that point has grown rather ponderous.

This last part may sound like an indictment of the book, but it's far from that. There is material here for every taste, and you may notice that in Adri's review last August, she enjoyed stories I didn't. This anthology is worth your immediate attention, and the most exciting bit is that it is labeled as "Volume One," so we remain eager for the rest of the series.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +2 for beautiful prose.

Penalties: −2 for numerous typesetting errors that are even more numerous in the Kindle version. It is unfair that an anthology capable of such literary heights should be stained by clumsy paragraph indentation and careless kerning.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Knight, Zelda and Ekpeki, Oghenechovwe Donald [editors]. Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora (Volume One) [Aurelia Leo, 2020].

Microreview [film]: Born in Flames, Lizzie Borden [dir.]

A Punk-Inspired Underground Gem from 1983

 

Described by The Village Voice as "a radical-lesbian-feminist sci-fi vérité," Born in Flames might be a little hard to pin in any one genre, but it's a tightly-packed, singular film, produced on a shoestring, with a vision of society that has profound, unfortunate resonance forty years later.

Born in Flames is set ten years after a fictitious socialist revolution swept American politics, but now a decade in, it has become clear that women have been left behind, an afterthought of social progress. The movie follows a number of women: organizers, reporters, editors, and others in their orbit who embrace, or reject, or remain ambivalent about the rising tide of increasingly militant women's activism. Stylistically, it's a brilliant hybrid of scripted scenes, improvisational dialogue, news footage, security camera footage, and just good-old guerilla filmmaking that allows writer/director/editor Lizzie Borden to get a ton of production value on the screen, in service of a story whose scope is one of the broadest I've seen in outsider cinema.

There are difficult parallels in this movie to our current moment, from a bombing at the World Trade Center to the shady in-custody death of a Black woman, which felt like an eerie echo of Sandra Bland, but from thirty-five years in the past. There are definitely moments in this film that are hard to watch, especially when considering that they could be describing events happening right now. But one of the most compelling takeaways from Born in Flames is the idea of intersectionality. This topic is something that we are grappling with daily (just check whatever the trending topics on Twitter are right now), and even ten years before the term was coined, Born in Flames tackled it head-on. There are viewpoints across class, racial, and sexuality divides depicted in the film, and many of the same talking points we hear today that exclude or marginalize different groups of women are pilloried in this movie. Are the attitudes and representations totally in sync with today's norms? No, of course not. But the dialogues taking place on screen remain relevant and thought-provoking.

Very simply, Born in Flames is the kind of movie that reminds me why I love cult movies. I found out about it because the Criterion Channel is doing a retrospective on Afrofuturism, so this is one of those times where I went into a movie with no background, introduced to it because it was included in some retrospective a film preservation group put on, and I walked away with not only an example of astonishing techincal achievement accomplished with negligible resources, but also with a window into an entire worldview and generational movement that I never knew existed. If you had told me before watching this movie that in 1983 there was a collective of intersectional feminists in New York City discussing militarism, exploitation, forced domestic and sexual labor, bridging racial divides, and international solidarity for common cause, I might have said, "I wish I could've seen that." Thanks to Born in Flames, I kinda did.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10. This is low-budget guerilla filmmaking, but inventive use of technology creates a broader canvas than usual.

Bonuses: +1 for the NYC punk vibe of the early 80s, +1 for early appearances from fellow members of the emerging scene such as Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Bogosian, +1 for staying topically relevant for almost 40 years

Penalties: None from me

Cult Film Coefficient: 9/10. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather since 2012.