Explores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works.
Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing. Recent discussions around the ‘rise of science-fiction and fantasy’ in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O. Fagunwa’s classic novel (1938)
Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (
The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga), the mythopoeia of Elechi Amadi’s
The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian writing of Buchi Emecheta in
The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining African classics such as Kojo Laing’s
Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) and the oeuvre of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The volume also critically examines modern African texts from writers including Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as critically looking at the terms ‘Afrofuturism’ and ‘Africanfuturism’ vis-à-vis their particular cultural aesthetics and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative arts.
This volume also includes a Literary Supplement.
Guest Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO (Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria).
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida).
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EDITORIAL ARTICLE
Introduction: Science & Speculative Fiction – What is
Past and
Present . . . and What is
Future?
LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE and CHIMALUM NWANKWO
ARTICLES
‘Being very human in one of the most inhuman cities in the world’: Lagos as a Site of Africanfuturist Invasion in
Lagoon and
Godhunter
JANELLE RODRIQUES
Southern Africannearfutures: black-tech, ambivalence, and speculation in Namwali Serpell’s
The Old Drift and Masande Ntshanga’s
Triangulum
JEFFREY G. DODD
Woman of the Aeroplanes and the Prediction of the Future
CHUKWUNONSO EZEIYOKE
Re-membering the Past:
Black Panther, Sovereignty, and the Cultural Politics of Africanfuturism
KAYODE ODUMBONI
African Counter-utopias: from Counter-narratives to the Presentification of Alternative Worlds
ERIC TSIMI
Shifting the Frame: Re-imagining Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart and
Arrow of God as Speculative Narratives
CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI
Contemporary Ugandan Speculative Fiction: A Passing Fad or an Emerging Canon?
EDGAR NABUTANYI
Moving the Centre: Positions and Locations of African Speculative Fiction
JAMES ORAO
FEATURE ARTICLE
Reimagining Transracial Intimacy: The Cartography of Decolonial Love in Leila Aboulela’s Something Old, Something New’ and Tomi Adeaga’s ‘Marriage and Other Impediments’
GABRIEL BAMGBOSE
INTERVIEWS
With Chigozie Obioma
LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE
With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
KADIJA GEORGE
With Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu
KUFRE USANGA
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘Poison for the Dogs’ (Short Story)
ESHITIKA L. LUTOMIA
‘Wherever Something Stands Something Else Must Stand Beside It’ (Short Story)
A. ONIPEDE HOLLIST
‘The Song-Warrior’ (Short Story)
REGINALD OFODILE
‘Answers that will not be swallowed’ (Poem)
‘When a bitch eats her young’ (Poem)
‘This is how’ (Poem)
‘A Daughter, Coming Undone’ (Poem)
‘Crumbs’ (Poem)
‘Not Crying’ (Poem)
IQUO DIANAABASI
‘The String of Discord’ (Poem)
‘Destiny’s Dish’
‘Tasha’ (Poem)
AISHA UMAR
‘African Children’ (Poem)
TIJANI ABDULLAHI OLANIYI
‘Nun’s Twilight Call’ (Poem)
CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI
‘To Mokwugo Okoye – A Forsaken Freedom Fighter’ (Poem)
IFEOMA OKOYE
REMEMBERING ELDRED JONES (1925-2020)
Farewell, Othello’s Countryman
NIYI OSUNDARE
Professor Eldred Jones: A Humanist and Critic
ELIZABETH I.A. KAMARA
TRIBUTE
Chukwuemeka Ike: An Administrator with a Cinematic Imagination
AUSTINE AMANZE AKPUDA
REVIEWS
Sakui Malakpa,
Black Professor, White University
OBI NWAKANMA
Daria Tunca (ed),
Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
KATE HARLIN
Ernest Emenyonu,
The Literary History of the Igbo Novel:
African Literature in African Languages
KUFRE USANGA
Jack Mapanje,
Greetings from Grandpa
OLUFEMI DUNMADE
Ada Uzoamaka Azodo & Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (eds),
Resident Alien and Other Stories: An Anthology of Immigrant Voices from Africa and the African Diaspora
INI UKO
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CHIMALUM NWANKWO is Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria. He has previously taught at the Universities of Nigeria, East Carolina-Greenville, North Carolina A & T State University-Greensboro, where he was Professor of English and World Literatures and Former Chair of the Department of English, Nigeria Turkish Nile University in Abuja. He was Guest Editor of ALT 30 Reflections & Retrospectives. His other critical studies include Of the Deepest Shadows and The Prisons of Fire (2010) and Toward the kingdom of Woman and Man: The Works of Ngugi wa Thiongo (1992). He is also an acclaimed poet, who has published five volumes of poetry, including The Womb in the Heart and Other Poems and Lovesong for Julian Assange & Poems from Love Mountain.