Interested in a good take on Sci-Fi by a Nigerian author? Check out the short story Discovering Time Travel By Suleiman Agbonkhianmen Buhari.

“Then why do all the Quantum-Chronologists at the Arusha Institute still say time travel is impossible?”

“It’s like dinosaurs and spheres.”

“What?”

“People around the world have been digging up dinosaur bones since the time of the ancient Egyptians but blinded by dogmatism and superstition, they were always thought to be the bones of dragons or some other mythical creature. It wasn’t until the 1950s that most scientists and the general public accepted the fact that giant reptiles walked the earth millions of years before we even existed. Likewise, every day we look to the sky and see spheres, the sun is a sphere, the moon is a sphere, the planets closest to us are all spheres yet it took us almost 5000 years of geography and astronomy to finally accept that the earth is a sphere.”

Thanks to Abdurrehman Nisheeth S. for the tip

All the stories are a real treasure to read, can be found online and are written by African authors.

But one special treat was a story by Suleiman Agbonkhianmen Buhari (Twitter: https://twitter.com/agbonkhianmen1), called “Discovering Time Travel” (click on the title to read the story). Unlike other stories you may have read, this one is simply a conversation between two individuals but has elements of science fiction in it — after all, the story is about time travel.

Who is Suleiman? According to a short bio I read at the end of his post “Learning Arabic” Suleiman Agbonkhianmen Buhari is a daytime prosaist and nighttime poet who resides in Lagos, Nigeria, where he is working on his first novel and editing an anthology of poems.

Searching Google you can find some of his poetry, and learn more about Suleiman.

Happy reading!

History of Science Fiction in Sub-Saharan Africa is an even more neglected subject than say Science Fiction in the Arabic or Turkish languages. Thus it was a breath of fresh air to know about Amharic Science Fiction by a Muslim author from the mid-1940s. The Ethiopian Amharic writer Mäkonnen Endalkaččäw published a collection Arremuňň. One of the stories Yayne Abäba is about an Amhara pre-teen who is sold into slavery but  she escapes and is later reunited with her mother. I09 notes “In one sequence she dreams of a microscope which allows her to see the “Reality behind mere Appearance.” “Yayne Abäba” is notable as an early example of Muslim science fiction, with the “Reality” seen being both terrifying (cosmic horror) and awe inspiring (the workings of Allah).”

While not considered true Science Fiction Muhammadu Bello Kagara’s works may be considered to have elements of proto-Science Fiction. His works from the early 20th century are some of the earliest works of Spelative Fiction in not just Africa but in the rest of the world as well. Anti-colonial themes are an important part of his work which may be one of the reasons why his work did not become well known outside of Nigeria during his lifetime. Here is a synopsis of his novel Gondoki from Io9.

In 1934 the Nigerian Hausa writer Muhammadu Bello Kagara (1890-1971) wrote Ganďoki (1934). In the 19th century, Ganďoki is a brave young Hausa from Kontagora, in northern Nigeria, who opposes the arrival of the British military and the imposition of British rule. He fights against the British, and when the ruler of the city of Kano orders the Hausa to surrender, Ganďoki refuses, and with his brave son Garba Gagare fights a last battle, at Bima Hill, against the British. They both fall asleep, and when they awaken they are in an Africa with jinn and other mythical creatures. Ganďoki and his son fight various battles, successfully, while also converting many people to Islam. They eventually return home.

(Image Source: Al-Jazeera)

Al-Jazeera has just ran an article on the rise of Horror, Speculative Fiction and Science Fiction in the Arabic language in recent years.

But the Katara prize is untested, and this year’s Sheikh Zayed award hardly launched a tweet. Meanwhile, the IPAF sparked an avalanche of social-media zaghrutasand attendant speculation by authors and publishers.

It wasn’t just Iraqis who were delighted. This was also the first time the prize went to a work that hopped the track of literary realism. Saadawi’s compelling novel tells the story of Hadi Al-Attag, “a rag-and-bone man” who haunts the streets of Baghdad, searching for fresh human body parts to stitch together a human corpse. Once completed, the patchwork Frankenstein, or “what’s-its-name”, stumbles off on a journey of revenge.

Science fiction, horror, thrillers, and other “genre” novels have been a tiny minority in Arabic literature, and have hardly been considered part of the serious canon. But on this year’s IPAF shortlist, there was not just Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, but also Ahmed Mourad’s popular psychological thriller, Blue Elephant.

Indeed, the 2014 shortlist included a wide range of books, from magical-realist prison literature (Youssef Fadel’s A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me), to historically minded travel literature (Abdelrahim Lahbibi’s The Journeys of Abdi), to a grim literary realism (Inaam Kachachi’s Tashari and Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives).

Thanks to Hal for the pointer!

Abdourahman Waberi’s Aux États-Unis d’Afrique was published in 2006, and the English translation, In the United States of Africa, came out in 2009. It’s a brief, lyrical and pointed satire that imagines our world in reverse: Africa is a region of stability and prosperity, united by a single government, with the desperate multitudes of the impoverished West begging for its aid.

In the United States of Africa is science fiction only in the loosest sense, in the way that Gulliver’s Travels is science fiction: it’s a social commentary that creates an imaginary world in order to critique the world we know. Waberi is not interested in exploring how technology might have developed differently in the United States of Africa, or in inventing new socio-political systems. His interest is in images: “the moon, polished by Malian and Liberian astronauts” (p. 4); a “shelter for destitute Caucasians, with their straight hair and infected lungs” (p. 5). It’s his exuberant prose, laced with just enough irony to sting, that gives these images the destabilizing force of the best science fiction.

At the center of the novel is Malaïka, called Maya: a white girl adopted by African parents and raised in comfort in Asmara. The book describes Maya’s life and her development as an artist, but it’s also addressed to her: “You were an angel, Maya,” declares the unnamed narrator, “both light and vigorous. You were as fresh as a newborn butterfly in the pure air” (p. 29). This creates a curious mirror effect: Maya is shown, but she is also told about her own image, so that she is present both as an actor and as the observer of her own story. Mirrors figure prominently in the novel: “[I]s the person you see every morning in the mirror—that double, that twin—so familiar? Or is she already taking up too much space?” the narrator asks (p. 38). Maya’s mirror-twin is a sinister, threatening figure, but its disappearance later in the novel is even more disturbing: “You are…absent from your own dreams. You really are invisible, there’s no doubt about it. It happens at night, when you take your clothes off before going to bed: you look at yourself in the mirror and you can’t see a thing” (p. 82).

Maya’s alienation is caused by her status as a privileged young woman who nevertheless bears the white skin of “the wretched of the earth” (p. 15). To find herself, she sets out to seek her birth mother in the decaying slums of Paris. “You put on a calm face as you drag two suitcases stuffed with clothes to fight the cold, medicine against the thousand microbes they have in Europe, not forgetting small presents for the people you’ll have to deal with. You were told many times never to leave empty handed” (p. 95).

Maya’s journey provides plenty of opportunities for Waberi to frame Europe in the terms commonly used to describe Africa. There’s a certain amount of glee in this reversal of stereotypes, but the novel is more than just an extended joke. It is, itself, a mirror. In its pages, a reader of any background will see herself or himself reflected in the body of the other. The insistent address of the narrative voice, the repeated you—you are seeing this, you are doing this—underscores the urgent call for self-examination that lies at the heart of the book.

Often, science fiction imagines the future; In the United States of Africa re-imagines the present. Yet it also gestures toward a future in which Maya will find peace, a peace that the reader is called to seek as well. In that future, the narrator declares, “the world will refuse to turn into mud.” This future must grow from the quiet reflection of the present, but it is far less static, less dependent on the image in the mirror. “You will convert the blue sky to palpable works, you will wave azure handkerchiefs in farewell” (p. 123).