Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora

It's always exciting to see short African speculative fiction gain traction in an anthology, and Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald most certainly delivers a range of tales. I will admit upfront that not all of the stories hit the mark with me, but I'll give a quick run-down.

"Trickin'" by Nicole Givens Kurtz provides an unsettling, post-apocalyptic vision involving a monstrous entity named only as Raoul who goes about wreaking bloody havoc on Halloween before sinking from the land again. The writing is solid, evocative even, but I felt as though I wanted a bit more of a wrap for the ending.

Any time I crack open a Dilman Dila story, I know I'm in for an unusual treat. "Red_Bati" introduces us to the artificial intelligence Akili, who deals with somewhat of an existential crisis. Dilman's writing is clever, and also a bit unsettling, and makes us examine non-human awareness and rewriting reality.

"A Maji Maji Chronicle" by Eugen Bacon is filled with beautiful imagery. As always, her style is lyrical and evocative, and gives us magical time travel with a twist as two visitors from the future cause mischief in Africa's past. It feels like a fairy tale, but has a darker undercurrent to counterbalance the whimsy.

"The Unclean" by Nuzo Onoh is a grim story of an arranged marriage and the cruelty people inflict on each other, spiced with a side order of serious body horror. You discover from the get-go that there's a heavy supernatural element, but it's the slow build to the unsettling finish that gives the quiet thrill. Powerful writing here.

As always with any anthology, there will be a story that didn't work for me in any shape or form. Unfortunately I didn't gel with "A Mastery of German" by Marian Denise Moore. The story took too long to get off the ground and I was disinvested quickly – perhaps mostly due to the story playing out in a sort of corporate/research environment.

"Convergence in Chorus Architecture" by Dare Segun Falowa may have quite a pedestrian start, but it melts into a vision of what can best be described as the lovechild of Salvador Dali and Zdzisław Beksiński. It's weird. It's wild. It's nightmarish. And I loved this story so very much.

While I didn't care much for her short story in this anthology Marian Denise Moore's poem "Emily" offers stark imagery filled with yearning. It's short but haunting. 

"To Say Nothing of Lost Figurines" by Rafeeat Aliyu has more of a standard fantasy-adventure feel, which follows the doings of the magician Odun who is searching for a magical figurine that was stolen from him. Of course its retrieval does not go smoothly. This story has more of a feel of a prelude to longer-form fiction, but it's still enjoyable. 

Oh my gosh, "Sleep Papa, Sleep" by Suyi Okungbowa Davies hit all the right notes for me. Max deals in illicit body parts, but he gets more than he bargained for when he sells bits and pieces harvested from kin. I really don't want to spoil this one for you – Suyi is a master of building tension.

"The Satellite Charmer" by Mame Bougouma Diene offers a vision of Africa pillaged by Asian mega-corporations equipped with terrifying technology. And it's about Ibrahima, who struggles to come to strike a balance between the old and the new, and the siren call of a destructive power beyond the reality he knows. This story is is a threnody of lost innocence, endings and transitions.

"Clanfall: Death of Kings" by Odida Nyabundi is another tale that feels more like an action-packed prologue than a fully rounded short story. That being said, I was left wanting more of this melding bio-mechanoid warriors and tribes duking it out for dominance. 

"Thresher of Men" by Michael Boatman didn't work for me at all. I couldn't immerse and ended up skim-reading. The fault most likely lies with the reader, not the author, so you'd best make up your own mind on this one.

"Ife-Iyoku, The Tale of Imadeyunuagbon" by Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald tells of a people living in a world ravaged by a cataclysm. Society as we know it has crumbled, and these hardy survivors battle against a hostile environment poisoned by radiation and rife with mutations. The people themselves have beneficial mutations, and they survive by enforcing a rigid caste structure – for the benefit of the whole. But what happens when someone yearns for individuality? How does this put a precarious community into peril when there is a threat from without? At times violent and bloody, this action-packed tale of survival nonetheless offers some brutal twists in terms of challenging traditions.

All in all, Dominion offers a diverse selection of stories that showcases the depth and breadth of African speculative fiction. If you're tired of the same-old, same-old in speculative fiction, then step off the beaten track with this anthology. There's some strong stuff here. 

Author spotlight: Eugen Bacon

I'm super excited to have Eugen Bacon stop by my blog for a quick chat. Some of you may have heard that her novel Inside the Dreaming is releasing soon. So, here goes!

You have a Tweet length to tell the world about your writing (280 characters) – and go!  

Curious, playful, provocative, poetic, cross-genre, cross-cultural. Text shapes my silence. It shouts my chaos. I feel safe when interrogating complex and unsettling themes. My approach to the compositional space is with a sense of urgency where writing is an active speaking from a place of knowing, or unknowing.

If you think about what has led you to becoming a writer, what are some of the key milestones that stand out?

A love for text from an early age—how and why stories: why the zebra… / how the crocodile… / when the hyena… / what the monkey… 

My father, the values he instilled in me, and a wonder about things beyond comprehension. 

A deep fondness for musicality in text, hence my attraction to Toni Morrison. 

Doing a PhD in writing and discovering literary theorist Roland Barthes, who found pleasure in the text; uncovering features of the ‘rhizome’ that philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaboration with psychoanalyst Felix Guattari produced in A Thousand Plateaus (1987), where the rhizome ‘has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’. I see rhizomes every which way in my text: deviation, plateaus, interconnection. A distortion that is whole. 

Which cultural objects have resulted in massive ‘aha’ moments for you? 

Drums. Folklore. Spirits. Masks. A close affinity with water, nature, language, rhythm.

When I write, I read text out loud—how it sounds, what is sees, the shape of its flow is important. It’s like a ditty in my head, I just know when it feels right. 

In your own work, do you ever indulge in intertextuality?

Yes. There’s a deep connection between texts, hence my crossing genre and writing across forms. Mine is a betwixt kind of writing. Perhaps that’s why I’ve taken naturally to prose poetry—literary vignettes on the everyday, the cousin of a poem and flash fiction, words and imagery enmeshed in art and metaphor. 

I learnt balance from Barthes, for whom text is a multi-dimensional space where things are made and unmade, where language is infinite, and literature deepens or extends language. 

Do you hope your writing sparks change in your readers, and if so, what would you like to see?

I like to think of the author as an agent of change—if not for the world, for themselves. I borrowed an understanding of the power of literature from existentialists like Simone de Beauvoir, who understood how a story and its characters interact with each other—how they are a bridge to inside out: an author or reader’s self-understanding and experience of the world they live in, or are creating. 

Inside the Dreaming is releasing via NewCon Press in December. You have no more than a 100 words to tell someone who's never heard of you or your book before what it's all about and why they should read it.

There are multiple points of intersection in blackness. Inside the Dreaming is an African Australian story, black speculative fiction that’s a murder mystery and an origins tale. Ivory Tembo, the detective assigned to the case, has secrets of her own that make her uniquely qualified to face a killer that’s far more than human. And it’s linked to the death of a man with twin souls, wrath of the gods, a new habitat. This origins story is about finding who you are. It’s a fiction that’s literary and cultural. A speculative tale that is a mystery and a history.

Bio:
Eugen Bacon is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing.  Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted or commended in national and international awards, including the Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Award, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Her creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide, and 2020 sees the release of two prose poetry chapbooks, three collections and a novella—Inside the Dreaming by NewCon Press, UK.

New Men issues 1-3 by Murewa Yodele and Dotun Akande, edited by Nicole D'Andria

 I don't read comic books nearly as much as I wish I had time for, so when New Men issues 1-3 landed on my desk, I was more than happy to say yes. With the story by Murewa Yodele and art by Dotun Akande, I was plunged into a pleasing subversion of the standard super hero trope.

The creators ask the question, "What if incipient superheroes are hunted down before they can establish themselves?" Which does make me wonder how our governments would respond in real life if mutants manifesting super powers were to become a regular occurrence.

We kick off book 1 with Faith, who comes into her powers when she and her boyfriend leap of a building (leap of faith, get it...). She manifests powers; he doesn't. The premise is that those who look into the face of death without fear can become gods, the so-called "New Men". And there are those who want to stop these New Men from existing – the anti-New Men agents.

Considering what the agents are up against, it comes as no surprise that there's a high turnover in the workforce, but there are always more to take their place. Enter Shade. She's somewhat unusual in that she's been in the business of killing for more than 12 years (nine years longer than your average agent). And not only is she ferociously good at her job, she enjoys it.

Okay, so any more than that, we enter spoiler territory. New Men is a wonderfully gritty, African-centric take on the whole superhero vibe. It's well drawn and I love the finish to the graphics that have a slightly decon, glitchy feel to them. New Men is ultraviolent, lavishly coloured, and fast paced, with a slick overall finish. My only critique is that some of the transitions were a little on the jagged edge, so the story begs a second read-through to catch any of the twists missed the first time round. Not a deal breaker, but I really just enjoyed the trip.

A lot of love has been lavished on this story, and it gets a huge thumbs up from me. Give it a shot and show some love for African SFF.

Author Spotlight: Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

Today I'm featuring prolific Nigerian writer Marvel Chukwudi Pephel for a quick Q&A.

ND: How does your environment and local culture inform your writing?

Marvel Chukwudi Pephel: Thanks for having me, Nerine Dorman. To say the least, I have always wanted to connect with you on the basis of your being a wonderful speculative fiction writer. To your question now: Well, it's obvious that one's environment can influence one's writing. But I don't set out to write an environment-influenced or culture-influenced piece. However, their latent influence cannot be denied. Being a Nigerian, I try to let some aspect of my local culture in; but this cannot be forced. At least, I have learnt this from my years of experience. I let my writings decide for themselves if they want to wear the cloak of my environment and it's local culture. Consequently, the effect is that not all my writings reek of my environment and local culture. So, if not for local names, it might be difficult to tell if the piece was written by an African (Nigerian in this case) or if it was written by a Westerner. And I think this is quite reasonable; for one's imagination should not be confined to the quarters of local culture or its environment thereof. So, in a nutshell, my environment and its local culture has no choking determining hands on the neck of my writing. My subconscious determines when my environment and its local culture should inform my writing; and how they do inform my writing when the situation necessitates it is by making me look at stories about my people that need to be told but which have somehow remained untold.

ND: What do you love best about poetry?

MCP: As a writer who started writing poetry first, I must say that (good) poetry is the foundation of wordly beauty. At an early age, I was exposed to various poets and various forms of poetry. There was Gwendolyn Brooks who wowed me with her poem "We Real Cool". There was Pablo Neruda who set my ambition on higher ground. There was Shakespeare who built worlds of impeccable beauty with his poetry. There was also Wole Soyinka who sat on a cliff in my mind and pointed me to the uncharted territories deep beneath the waters of poetry. I am grateful to all the poets that have affected me in one way or the other. Now, what I love best about poetry is the fact that it is an embodiment of compact beauty. Nothing beats the ability to express an idea in few words nor does anything beat the tingling sensation good poetry gives to the brain. Another good thing is that readers and writers of poetry lead happy lives when they choose to avoid their lives growing moss from the vicissitudes of life. Poetry helps in easy articulation, and I wonder if there is anything more satisfying than this on the intellectual scheme of things.

ND: How has your writing changed your life?

MCP: The truth about writing is that it is therapeutic. Well, my writing has changed my life as much as my life has changed my writing over time. Writing has opened my eyes to the many hidden treasures life has to offer, and has taught me that the more you write the more you care about the humanity of people. It has changed my life so much that I can stay calm when things are not going quite well; and don't we writers face a certain kind of uncertainty when we are at work on a project? If we can endure and persevere, sometimes for years, before finishing up a masterpiece then same endurance and perseverance can be applied to our individual lives. I think writing is an art that can only be practiced by the patient. No one in a hurry has ever produced a work worth reading. My life has also changed my writing. The fact is that my life has always revolved around the appreciation of nature and beauty, and this informs my writing to a large extent. And recently, this appreciation has been growing in exponential, epic proportions. Well, I was taking a walk the other day when I passed through a certain shop popular for its advertisement. This shop sells dogs. I love pets, but not dogs. But this particular Chihuahua sat in its kennel staring so cutely as I walked by; so cutely I felt it was tugging at my heartstrings. So palpable a tugging I returned for it the following day. And now, who's writing a short story featuring a chihuahua named Bliss? Me!

ND: Tell us about your speculative fiction; what are some of the themes that you uncover and elaborate on?

MCP: Speculative fiction is like a darling to me. It offers readers the chance to experience new worlds, which is quite important. In fact, my first fiction to be ever published is a speculative fiction titled "Girl, Blue Eyes, Boy". This particular story gave me quite a tough time. The first version was a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, but it got rejected twice. It was my essay into fiction-writing, so I was quite sad and annoyed. But I didn't allow myself to be discouraged. Rather, I locked myself in my room and tried to see what was actually wrong with the story. I tried so hard till I fell asleep. A sleep I am quite indebted to; for every unnecessary bit of the story presented itself when I woke up. I quickly edited out the fantasy with satisfaction and sent out the story to Africanwriter.com. Within a short space of time, I received a response; and it turned out to be my first acceptance for fiction. Since then, I have written many more with themes ranging from space travel to alien attacks to time-travel to cybernetics to love and many more. My spec fic can be found on the African Speculative Fiction Society's database, which collects published works of speculative fiction written by Africans.

ND: If there was one thing your current self could tell your younger self, as a writer, what would that be?

MCP: Well, that would be a succinct advice: "It's normal to be uncertain. It is uncertainty that fans the flames of creativity. The progress might seem slow, but wishes can be horses for whoever has the magic of belief.

Marvel Chukwudi Pephel is a prolific Nigerian writer who writes poems, short stories and other things besides. His works have appeared in various media. His poetry was selected for the Best New African Poets 2016 Anthology and the Austrian Haiku Association's Lotosblüte 2018. His short story was shortlisted for the 2019 Sevhage Short Story Prize. His poem titled "Ogene" appears on 10,000 socks printed in Sweden and to be distributed across the world. He is represented by Van Aggelen African Literary Agency. 

Here is a link to his most recent speculative fiction at Kalahari Review.