• Sex dolls, cyborgs, whole body absorption and a great writer all mingle on Nairobi’s most run-down commercial avenue • Two brothers navigate their way through Nairobi using billboards, to which they give a gender. Each billboard is also a wormhole ‘No Kissing the Dolls unless Jimi Hendrix is Playing’ (2014) by Clifton Gachagua (Kenya) […]
No Kissing the Dolls Unless Jimi Hendrix is Playing
Posters with the face of a grinning girl with red hair are all over the city’s walls. A family of three who have found a home outside an Indian café stitch the posters together into a curtain, her face watching over them. Her name has become infamous. Seventeen murders in the ghettos, no MO, no […]
Elephants Chained to Big Kennels
Cephas stands on the roof, where streaming warmth catches his face and seeps into his cheeks. There is a race in the sky between the rising sun and the cloudwall of the Kenyan monsoon. The cool and fast wind blows south-west and not even a drizzle to breathe in yet. It’s the rare moment when […]
Part Six: Living in an African Future
• A city of skyscrapers and aircars in a future Malawi • An Africa ruined by war and climate change • Human kind split into different species, living on Mars and Venus ‘Sahara’ (2016) by Shadreck Chikoti (Malawi) ‘Land of Light’ (2015) by Stephen Embleton (South Africa) ‘Women are from Venus’ (2015) by Tiseke Chilima […]
Sahara
It’s either the northern raven or the girl. In the case of the raven, he is resting his hands on the balcony railing and looking down Avenue 6 Drive when the passerine bird, large-bodied, long graduated tail, huge black bill, all-dark, not the white-necked pied crow known in these regions, flies by and perches on […]
Land of Light
The monorail snaked upriver through the thick teak forest canopy and occasionally out into the daylight. The bursts of sunlight grew more frequent but less harsh as the day faded into the west. Rather than an end to the day, the night was about to bring Paula to the beginning of the real journey. For […]
Women are from Venus
GENESIS GENETICS: Malawi Headquarters Service to women only That signpost…it gave me the hovers. That’s what my mother called it when I hovered, unable to take the final step over the precipice and into my decision. I had it bad; my feathers were quivering something awful. It was a horrible childhood habit but even mother […]
One Wit’ This Place
Whenever she dreamed, it was always the same dream. But this time, it was different. It was always the day before he left for the war. They were together on the white shores of Neo-Dar before the floods came. They were standing at their favorite spot, his arms wrapped around her waist, her back against […]
Her Broken Shadow
An Excerpt from the Shooting Script SCENE 1: INT. ADONGO’S HOME Extreme close up of a hand turning a key, locking a door. The hand then throws the key into a toilet, and flashes. SCENE 2: INT. ADONGO’S OFFICE Adongo sits at a desk, typing. She is of nondescript age, her hair nappy, uncombed in […]
Part Seven: Do I stay or do I go? Publishing internationally, writing locally
• In the future you test how far AIs have deviated from the original human personality they were based on? • Is the old man on the beach an ancient god? ‘The Regression Test’ (2017) by Wole Talabi (Nigeria/Malaysia) ‘Herbert Anoda Kudzoka Kumusha/Herbert Wants to Return Home’ (2017) by Masimba Musodza (Zimbabwe/UK) Bonus new story: […]
The Regression Test
The conference room is white, spacious, and ugly. Not ugly in any particular sort of way: it doesn’t have garish furniture or out-of-place art or vomit-colored walls or anything like that. It’s actually quite plain. It’s just that everything in it looks furfuraceous, like the skin of some diseased albino animal, as if everything is […]
Herbert Wants to Return Home
‘It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!’ she cried, struggling mechanically. ‘I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.’ ‘For God’s sake, don’t let it in,’ cried the old man trembling. ‘You’re afraid of your own son,’ she cried, struggling. – W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey’s […]
Herbert Anoda Kudzoka Kumusha
‘Mwana wangu; ndiHerbert!’ akaidzira, achikakaritsa. ‘Ndange ndakoshiwa kuti zvinhambwe mbiri kubva pano. Uri kundibatirei? Ndisiye. Ndinofanira kuzarura musuo.’ ‘Ndapota hangu, usachirega chichipinda,’ harawa iya yakadaro, ichibvunda. ‘Unotya mwana wako wekubereka,’ akadaro, achikakaritsa. – W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey’s Paw DHAYARI RATOBIAS MUTSEPESHI 18 Gumiguru 2011 Zvedhayari ndakapedzisira kuzviita ndichirikuchikoro chaiko, apo ndakazvitangira mushure mekuverenga nezvemumwe murume […]
The Old Man with The Third Hand
The old man with the third hand sat on the beach and watched the waves wash over the sand. I’d seen him before. Everyone had. Some people assumed he was crazy. Others thought he was just lonely, sitting out there by himself day after day, staring at where the ocean seemed to merge with the […]
21 Tomorrow: Key stories available online
Augment your reading in African speculative fiction with these 21 stories available online for free. Alternatives to ’21 Today’, these stories are among the best in the genre. 2011 ‘Virus’ by Jonathan Dotse (Ghana) Published first in Jungle Jim, this short story is an excerpt is from the novel Dotse has been working on for […]
21 Today: The Rise of Speculative Fiction, year by year
This is primarily a list of written fiction. Where relevant some comics or films are listed, but there is no pretence of this being a complete history of African comics and fantasy films. Given publishing difficulties, dates of writing are sometimes used in preference to date of publication. Authors are often listed only once, dated […]
Copyright Credits
“Branded” by Lauren Beukes © Lauren Beukes, first published in December/January issue of SL Magazine, Cape Town (2003/2004). “Warped” by Ayodele Arigbabu © Ayodele Arigbabu, first published in A Fistful of Tales (Lagos, Nigeria: Dada Books, 2009). “Eden’s Burning” by Doreen Baingana © Doreen Baingana, first published in Chimurenga 12/13 (Cape Town, 2008). “Doppelganger” by […]
Bluedot: Sunday’s music, reviewed by Lucy Burns
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 9 2017. At a festival like Bluedot where so much depends on the science talks, the workshops, the demonstrations, the projections, the light shows, the readings…you’d expect the music programming to get left behind. Besides the set of fairly predictable crowd pleasing headliners (Pixies, Orbital, and alt-J) Bluedot […]
Bluedot: Saturday’s music, reviewed by Lucy Burns
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 8 2017. At a festival like Bluedot where so much depends on the science talks, the workshops, the demonstrations, the projections, the light shows, the readings…you’d expect the music programming to get left behind. Besides the set of fairly predictable crowd pleasing headliners (Pixies, Orbital, and alt-J) Bluedot […]
Bluedot: Radiophonic Workshop, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 9 2017. There’s a quiet thrill of anticipation in the stuffy air of the Orbit tent, early evening of the Bluedot Saturday. It’s the bubble of knowing that witnessing the BBC Radiophonic Workshop live is likely to be a rare and unique pleasure. With Leftfield and Orbital on […]
Bluedot: Orbital, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell stage, July 8 2017. With the blazing sun on its way down and the giddy full moon on its way up, the second night of Bluedot needed some suitable music-of-the-spheres to toast the glorious day. Fortunate then that techno pioneers Orbital had set aside their three year indefinite hiatus to […]
Bluedot: The Dark Web – explained by Geoff White, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Contact stage, July 8 2017. There’s a sense at Bluedot sometimes of the stark difference between the utopia of the open air fields and the darker undercurrent of misdemeanour inside the science talks. Not that there’s anything dangerous or dodgy going on, more that there are confrontations within these fabric walls […]
Bluedot: Delia Derbyshire and Mary Casio, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Delia Derbyshire Day – 80th Anniversary Tribute, Nebula Stage, July 8; Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia, Lovell stage, July 8 2017. At festivals, especially big ones with lots of good stuff going on, you get used to wisps of sound from other tents and stages intruding on your experience. I’ve always […]
Bluedot: Pixies, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell stage, July 7 2017. Pixies under the Lovell Telescope with talks on how the universe was formed still ringing in my ears made a strange and beautiful kind of sense. The day was hot and heavy and the crowd that waited at barriers for them for hours beforehand was already […]
Bluedot: Sheena Cruickshank, The Amazing and Horrible World of Parasites, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Mission Control, July 7 2017. It’s hot. I’ve danced in the sun throwing my head back, losing my hat. I’ve burnt my nose. I have an ice-cream and there are tents all round the edges of the field, they’re full of clever people giving talks. I’ll chose somewhere to sit and […]
Bluedot: Ezra Furman & The Boyfriends, reviewed by Tessa Harris
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lovell Stage, July 7 2017. “This is my favorite thing to do in the world” Ezra Furman told an adorning front row at Bluedot on Friday night, “thank you for being here with me.” And as someone shouted up at them, it was a gawd-damn pleasure Ezra! With performances that are […]
Bluedot: Professor Steve Fuller, Transhumanism: Can You Afford to Live Forever, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Contact stage, July 8 2017. You come to Bluedot for music, sure, and maybe a few fun science experiments with plastic bottles and ping-pong balls. But you also come here to wrestle with some of humankind’s most fundamental and ethically demanding questions. On the table today is a simple one: want […]
Bluedot: Leftfield, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Orbit stage, July 7 2017. Twenty-two years have whipped past since Leftfield released their pioneering album Leftism and joined the ranks of Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Orbital in steering British music away from the total heat-death of endless guitars. The Orbit tent is packed for a full performance of the […]
Bluedot: Anchorsong, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Nebula stage, July 7 2017. Part of the joy of a festival like Bluedot is happening upon a spare hour and filling it with an act you’ve never heard of and know nothing about. The festival itself makes much of the idea of discovery, so much so that it is practically […]
Bluedot: Jeff Forshaw, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos, reviewed by David Hartley
Bluedot, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Mission Control, July 7 2017. It’s a tall order trying to explain life, the universe and everything – or at least how it all started – to a tent full of festival folk on a cloudy Friday in a field in Cheshire in forty minutes. But particle physics Professor Jeff Forshaw […]
Manchester International Festival: Holly Herndon and Yael Bartana, reviewed by Luke Healey
Dark Matter: Holly Herndon, Gorilla, June 30; Yael Bartana, What if Women Ruled the World?, Mayfield Depot, July 5, 2017. In a blog post dated 9 March, 2017, Manchester International Festival’s Director John McGrath framed the contents of this year’s edition as ‘a picture of the world today’. While McGrath maintains that ‘We don’t set […]
Love Supreme Jazz Festival 2017, reviewed by Ian Pople
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, Glynde Place, June 30-July 2. So, Love Supreme is five. And there was a swing back to jazz (pun intended) this year. Topping the bill on Sunday on the main stages were Robert Glasper and Gregory Porter; and Herbie Hancock ended the day in the Big Top on Saturday. On the […]
Richard Barnett, Seahouses, reviewed by Ken Evans
Richard Barnett, Seahouses, (Valley Press, £7.99). Is it too fanciful to hope, that a cultural archaeologist, in six hundred years, might turn over in their hands, the delicate, beautiful rectangle of processed wood, print technology, and creative design, that is the small press poetry volume of today, and marvel? They would be right to marvel […]
Sheena Kalayil, The Bureau of Second Chances, reviewed by Ian Pople
Sheena Kalayil, The Bureau of Second Chances (Polygon, £8.99). The trope of the recently widowed man returning to the ‘mother’ land from another country might, in other hands, have seemed just that, a trope. The man who’s returned from time to time and built a house near to his home village, amid the land which […]
Lucha Libre, Albert Hall, reviewed by Luke Healey
In 2015, the multi-Emmy award-winning television producer Mark Burnett, brains behind such reality shows as Survivor and The Apprentice, launched Lucha Underground, a weekly episodic professional wrestling show realised in partnership with Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez. Bringing wrestlers from the American independent scene and Mexico’s AAA promotion together with supernatural storylines and a pulp-cinematic production […]