Reddit mentions: The best african literature books

I posted this a while ago when someone asked... what can we do to make SA better... I'm tempted to think the lizard people are ****ing up on the world stage on purpose so that we would eventually welcome such a system, when THEY are ready to implement it....

"

How about Kickstarting the development of rule by a computer softwarez. There's good reason a cellphone is called a CELL phone... (Read https://www.amazon.com/Moxyland-Lauren-Beukes/dp/0857660047, great book). Build a system capable of eliminating the entire government, that uses constant citizen voting to determine resource allocation and project priorities. Blockchain and crypto it all, bring in GPS and the phones to check verify EVERTHING. You could even should probably get more voting merits depending on your past social contributions and "good-for-nothings" get their votes taken away until they improve.

Initially politicians can even be coerced into "going transparent" (a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(2017_film), which is a shite movie BTW IMO.... like where's the punch line?) by allowing their every move regarding a project/s to be tracked by the masses 24/7. ONE GIANT DIGITAL BEAST encapsulating Government, Finance and the media, all rolled into one. Everyone will just be tapping in with their phones all day long and their acts will be verified by the users around them, and it all can be followed thread by thread, just like a Reddit. All taxes will be paid in crypto, will be released and TRACKED as it is used. Real Black Mirror type stuff, of course with the potential to be the world's greatest mess as well, but so with any other plan.

Take this current land issue .... how could a system like this potentially deal? The more I think about this question the more I get the impression that the people are led into not wanting land from the government, but land controlled by "the colonists", which will be a total stuff-up under this system IF it was initiated under "one man one vote" coding. If the systems phases in with data and weighting for PAST CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY ( taxes paid, for instance ) adding more votes, the notion will of "give us all your good land now" will hopefully fail, because anarchy sucks. Those who cried for this land grab will subsequently keep putting in more requests to get voted in, sobering these up into something that might be more do-able that will actually get voted into implementation. The "heavy-voters" might even put proposals in as well, helping things along.

E.g. "You want to own your squatting-stand?... If that land you're on is ex-gov, all in favour say aye...Send GPS....Its yours, congratulations"

E.g. "You want some farm land? To farm on? ( Check crypto balance and past....... beep bap boop ) You have or don't have enough to do this.... Come back later / You can do this.... Here's your choice of available ex-gov land to pick from, based on your $ balance you can pick x hectares...

Eg.. "You want enough crypto to be eligible for some ex-gov farmland... We currently have 9 850 000 jobs available as "block patrol guards"... apply by tapping this button... Beep Bap Boop.... Be at GPS loc tommorrow and tap peoples phones there, introducing yourself as new "block patrol guard" with your phone verification. You will be paid x crypto at the end of each verified shift... When you have xx crypto, apply for training into LEVEL 2 JOB TRAINING.... Continue on this path for yy/mm and you will be able to farm 1 hectare of free land."

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I ramble on... What's that Queen Song again... heaven something something?/// "

I would think the key to revitalizing high fantasy is to do what Tolkien did but with other cultures as the cornerstone: research heavily, reinterpret, hold to the virtues, present with style.

Tolkien just took the Old English and Norse origins and re-contextualized them to fit a fantasy world he created. Nothing was wrong with that inherently. A problem now is that too many simply base their works on his works or other authors they enjoyed, creating a thematic and mythological feedback loop of the same ideas over and over.

We as fantasy fans need to read more high fantasy that does what Tolkien did, that which draws from mainly a culture, and preferably one that does not inform our current society as much. African fantasy, East and South Asian fantasy, Amerindian fantasy, Mesoamerican fantasy and so on.

As writers though, there needs to be less portrayal and more criticism in fantasy. Portrayal only means how you present something, but many fantasy writers hide behind it. ("I'm not encouraging nationalism, I'm just portraying how it helped these people in this very specific circumstance!")

Though I think it is important to draw from central cultures and portray them effectively, it is also important to raise questions about those cultures and how they treat certain other groups of people. Simply hand-waving these unsavoury aspects of world-building make for a woefully under-explored setting.


EDIT: In case anyone is looking for such works, a few I know are Ehdrigohr, a Lakota-cultured high fantasy RPG; Artesia, a Greek-cultured high-fantasy comic series with a woman of colour protagonist, as well as it's own RPG ruleset and one novel in the universe starring her brother; and although it's tough to find African High-Fantasy, Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is a great surrealist fantasy set in Nigeria.

That's excellent!

If you're interested in some others, just to add to the TBR:

We See a Different Frontier is a great SF anthology (I'm not a fan of the cover, but the contents are terrific). On Amazon

And there's a big South African SF/F scene going on right now - folks like Charlie Human, Lauren Beukes, Sarah Lotz - and a few moresuggestions here.

AfroSF here and Afro SF 2 are both great anthologies as well, and Something Wicked is a badass magazine that you can get pretty cheaply in digital through various platforms - like Amazon.

zoo city is really awesome, with a strong female protagonist. it's south african young adult cyberpunk; i think they would really enjoy it. also, it won the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award!

I'd stick with what you know. And ask people from the actual culture you're writing if you need help and don't want to insult anyone. But you know, you can have all black casts without it being weird. But as long as when you think of your stories you're not flinching away from an all black cast because you think no one will read it, you will do well.

It sounds like part of the issue you're having is that you want to make people "fit" their culture. But we know people live, work, and date in other cultures all day long. Don't worry so much about making a fit as long as you got the cultural details right and it's plausible (ex. Paul uses a katana not because he's japanese but because he was taught kenjutsu from a young age by a friend of his grandfather's. or something similar).

Also, for some black speculative fiction, try anthologies like Steamfunk! or AfroSF. I have Steamfunk and if you have Kindle i'll lend it to you. Or anyone that wants to read it.

My book just went live.

The Kishi (Tales from Esowon) (Volume 1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999848313/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_hGaGAbEWE32EW

Here is its blurb:

An African fantasy based on the Angola folklore of the kishi!

The Kishi—shape-shifting demons who lure young women to gruesome deaths.

They can’t be real, can they?

Something has slain a villager, and the locals point their fingers at Amana, a pacifist monk running from his dark past.

But Amana knows there’s something else, something much darker, lurking in the village.

Can he save the village, his name, and his principles? To save one would mean the sacrifice of the others, if he has the strength.

Or if you’re more visual here is it’s trailer:
https://youtu.be/CYeknY-3kl0

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes is a really fast and fun read. It has elements of dystopia and sci-fi which apparently you're a fan of and it has a lot of potential for discussion.

The book has attitude and is not a struggle to get through, I think you'd have fun with it.

Some of the short story collections mentioned in the various articles are AfroSF, AfroSF v2, and Imagine Africa 500.

The Nommo Awards are run by the African Speculative Fiction Society; you can see their 2017 nominations here.

The entries for the speculative fiction week of The Writer 2016 contest can be found here.

AfroSF is a collection of short science fiction stories by African authors. The stories themselves can be hit or miss but all in all I liked it.

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In case anyone else is interested in reading the actual stories, I spent some time digging them up.

There are three short stories mentioned in this article:

1. Tendai Huchu’s ‘The Sale’ (2013)
   
2. Abigail Godsell’s ‘Taal’ (2009)
   
3. Mandisi Nkomo’s ‘Heresy’ (2013)
   
   Numbers 1 and 3 are found in this collection AfroSF and the second is found in this collection Something Wicked Vol. 2

>Odufa by Othuke Ominiabohs

I'm in the uk and I found your book on amazon.com : https://www.amazon.com/Odufa-Lovers-Tale-Othuke-Ominiabohs-ebook/dp/B01G2KGQY0/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Odufa+by+Othuke+Ominiabohs&qid=1559067017&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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So it's on the dotcom site if that's what you're worried about.

> Shitting on your culture" by daring to cast actors of color.

Likewise, if we replaced some of the main actors in "The Memory of Love" with Arabs, Indians, Jamaicans or Polish people, it would be shitting on the culture of the author and country the story came from, which is Sierra Leone in W. Africa.

It is by no means a new concept. The term originates from a century or two ago when being able to "pass" as white meant you could have the same rights if you hid your ancestry well. Shit, there's even at least one famous novel about the idea. Just because you're ignorant of a concept doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

>At the most basic level the tribe is free people joined by kinship that control their territory that benefits their immediate family. You cannot have such a huge cooperation without running into competing interests

I think you misunderstood me I am not arguing for lineage or family based tribalism but community of free individuals bonded by solidarity and co-operation, people organizing themselves horizontally and democratically to manage their affairs whether it is in their neighborhoods (city,town or village) or their workplaces. It's true bad actors might arise but if most decision are made with consensus basis and other decision are delegated to recallable elected delegates then the platform that would allow bad actors to dominate others is gone.


>If you apply this to Africa and say go be Anarchists they would split into 1000+ countries of little tribes. This is the problem with many African countries and why it's so many of them are powder kegs because for most of the history they have been tribes. If China was like that they would be like Africa and they would all be worse off. China has uplifted the most people out if poverty in history while Africa continues to live on aid and there is constant famine. It is better to be one China than Africa with it's 53 countries.


Thats simply a fallacy, Africa has countless of highly centralized states but they haven't delivered any development so the argument that centralization delivers development is null because most states who centralize decision making are poor and miserable places, China just being the exception to the rule. The reason China developed is because they were free to choose a capitalist model of development that protected and nurtured their industries while Africa was not free to choose their economic model but was forced to export-oriented resources extraction and we have been forbidden from protecting our nascent industries (Ha Joo Chang)

Basil Davidson a african historian, argues in my opinion convincingly had the young independence movements of Africa developed their own institutions of national polities borrowing some from their rich histories rather than copy-pasting the centralized nation-state models of Europe, the disappointments and misery of the post-colonial states wouldn't have occured

>Doesn't matter what you want or think is just if you can't defend it. If a centralized authority can kill more of you and wants what you have then it's matter of survival that you centralize or perish.

I am not saying at all times we must forbid centralization but we just have to be wary of it, for it has in it's seeds the source of all tyranny

I don't wanna be dogmatic maybe we need tanks to destroy our enemies but my feeling was best captured by Martin buber “One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves"