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  • Introduction to Focus:The Other Sci-Fi
  • Uppinder Mehan, Focus Editor (bio)

This past October, I had an opportunity to hear the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in conversation at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas. She has deservedly garnered much praise and critical attention for her novels (Purple Hibiscus [2003], Half of a Yellow Sun [2006]), drama, poetry, and short fiction. In addition, she has also devoted much of her time to conducting writing workshops for young writers in Africa. Given her close ties to the contemporary writing scene in Nigeria, I asked her if she could tell me about the state of contemporary Nigerian science-fiction writing or at least writing that blurs the distinctions between realism and fantasy as in the works of Ben Okri and before him Amos Tutuola. Her response was that she was not aware of any; fair enough, but she added that she wasn't sure of the necessity of such writing, "Isn't realist fiction enough?"

Where to begin responding to such a statement? I don't believe Adichie is advocating that no other kind of fiction need be written or read. I assume she is simply stating her preference for a certain kind of writing that she finds sufficient for her needs. Realist fiction certainly isn't enough to capture the multifariousness of lived and imagined reality—it hadn't been enough for the centuries before prose, and it certainly has not been enough since. (Looking at sales figures, realist fiction certainly is not "enough" as publishers will tell you.) Given the forum at the Texas Book Festival, Adichie may not have had the proper environment in which to offer a more considered response; perhaps, speaking in a more intimate setting, she would have taken the time to think more about her response and, at least, have acknowledged that "realist" writing is often the preferred technique for writers who need to convince their readers that what seems fantastic to them is rather ordinary for the characters in the world of the fiction.

I know next to nothing about her personal life, but it strikes me that she is representative of a type of writer who is working under a kind of false consciousness brought about by the twin forces of political and cultural imperialism/colonialism. The "realist fiction" that Adichie prefers took over the market in the nineteenth century both in imperial centers and in the colonies as well. And while we may bemoan the lack of an audience for the literary novel, it certainly has a large institution supporting its production and consumption: the liberal arts college. The colonial and postcolonial writer enters the larger metropolitan market (in the Anglophone world) through publishing giants such as Heinemann and Longman who favor more of the same kind of writing that sells. It isn't only the marketplace, however, that promotes such realist fiction from the former colonies (most well-read people would be hard pressed to name a writer working in a "non-realist" mode other than Salman Rushdie or Arundathi Roy who has sold well).

Writers who would identify themselves as belonging to cultures that have been colonized by imperialist powers tend, on the whole, to focus more on a re-examination of the roots of the continuing damage caused by centuries of foreign exploitation and destruction. Little thought is given in the fiction to imagining the future or exploring other genres. Over the last few years, though, a largely unremarked explosion has taken place in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy writing.


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Nalo Hopkinson, Archie Weller, Tobias Buckell, Andrea Hairston, Celu Amberstone, Anuradha Marwah, Sheree R. Thomas, Vandana Singh, Steven Barnes, Nnedi Okorafor, Karin Lowachee are just a few of the writers who have started to explore possible futures, experiment with generic conventions, expand the boundaries of "acceptable" literature produced by the subjects of colonial processes. In the Focus of this issue of ABR, a number of these writers have come together to comment on each other's work.

Satwik Dasgupta's review of Anil Menon's The Beast with Nine Billion Feet begins by...

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