A Typology of African Science Fiction (2006–2018): Strategies of Self-Representation in the Global Cultural Marketplace
General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Final Report Abstract
There was a spectacular upsurge in the publication of African science and speculative fiction (ASF) works towards the end of the first decade of the 2000s. If Deirdre Byrne lamented the dearth of published ASF and ASF readership in 2004, within five years, works like Beukes’ JoBurg novel Moxyland (2008) and Kahiu’s film Pumzi (2009) shot the genre into popular attention. Soon, ASF authors, editors, and fans built a cultural infrastructure for the genre to thrive, including dedicated magazines and awards, from the ground up. Within a decade, all major international SF prizes had been won by ASF authors, most large American publishers had ASF writers in their portfolios, and major production companies, including HBO and Disney, had ASF shows. This project analyzed the intersecting factors behind the upsurge of ASF, the genre’s transformation from 2008 to 2023, and the significance of ASF debates during this period. First, African SF has a long history on the continent but never coalesced into a coherent movement; early works were misclassified as magical realism, and existing infrastructure did not support its circulation. This began to shift when the pressure on African authors to produce "serious” realist literature eased, coinciding with the rise of Afrofuturism in the 1990s in the US and a growing demand for distinctly African speculative fiction on the continent—a shift Byrne retrospectively was part of. Yet the grounds for ASF to flourish materialized later: ASF is a post-2008 financial crisis genre—not a genre of crisis, but one whose conditions emerged from the fissures the crisis opened. This was a space of bifurcation, making new futures possible, with US-China rivalry as its most visible symptom. It was also a space of intensified neoliberal exploitation and global precarity. Within this contradictory landscape, speculative fiction became a privileged site for grappling with the future and the past, as well as the present. Second, during the project’s 15-year timeframe, ASF underwent a dramatic formal transformation. The expanding ASF platform enabled a shift from short stories to novels and from online to print publications; thematically, as precarity intensified and initial optimism about the future (of the African continent) waned, the theme of revolution was increasingly joined by that of oppression; the topos of the African world empire gave way to household-centered narratives. Third, a heated debate about ASF accompanied the upsurge, in which its Africanness was contemplated, and its increasingly dystopian leanings were debated resulting in attempts to make the genre more utopian. Paradoxically, considering its roots in the loosening of realism’s dominance, ASF slowly became understood as an explicitly political genre. Meanwhile, ASF was integrated into the existing global publishing infrastructure, giving it a larger platform, but with diasporic authors as its main representatives.
Publications
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6 best African sci-fi and fantasy books to read, The Conversation Africa, 19 December 2024.
Maurits, P. J.
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Legacies of marxism? Contemporary African science fiction and the concern with literary realism. African Identities, 18(1-2), 64-79.
Maurits, Peter J.
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Micro-dystopic precarity fiction: the everyday of Tlotlo Tsamaase’s short stories’, National Taipei University, Taipei, American Comparative Literature Association (Online), 17 June 2021.
Maurits P. J.
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‘From cell-phone genre to blockbuster: the capitalist appropriation of African science fiction’, Princeton University, Global Publishing and the Making of Literary Worlds Conference (Online), June 5 2021.
Maurits P. J.
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‘The future sabotaged: Luso-African cinema and the Cotonou Agreement’, Reykjavik University (Online), Council for European Studies, 21 June 2021.
Maurits P. J.
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Sleepwalking Land (Terra Sonâmbula, 2007). Lexicon of Global Melodrama, 291-294. transcript Verlag.
Maurits, Peter J.
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The Mozambican modern ghost story, Peter Lang, 2022.
Maurits, P. J.
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‘L'essor et la chute de l'utopie : La trilogie de Wormwood de Tade Thompson’. Invited conference presentation. Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Association Pour l'Étude des Littératures Africaines, 16 November 2022.
Maurits P. J.
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‘SF in Afrika‘, Future Fiction Magazine 2 (2022): 32-43.
Maurits, Peter J.
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“Time can become so uneven, stretched across space”: Historicism and speculation in Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift’, Oslo University, Oslo, Science Fiction Research Association, 1 2022.
Maurits P. J.
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African Literature Today 39 ed. by Louisa Uchum Egbunike and Chimalum Nwankwo (review). Science Fiction Studies, 50(2), 276-279.
Maurits, P. J.
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An interview with Tendai Huchu, Metropolcon Berlin, 19 May 2023.
Maurits, P. J.
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An interview with Tlotlo Tsamaase and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, University of Dresden, Science Fiction Research Association, 16 August 2023.
Maurits, P. J. & Andrew Erickson
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Hope, despair, or beyond? The anxieties of African speculative fiction’ (paper with Michelle Louise Clarke), University of Cologne, Cologne, European Conference on African Studies, 1 June 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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Rejets de l’utopie, retours en dystopie : ambiguïtés semi-périphériques et discontinuités génériques dans la trilogie Rosewater de Tade Thompson. Études littéraires africaines(54), 91-105.
Maurits, Peter J.
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‘Future development in space policy and the role of African speculative fiction’. Invited presentation. Cambridge University, Space-story listening project, 24 May 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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‘Lunar Technology and the Science of Being Bird: Mozambican Poetry on the Borders of Science Fiction’, Makerere University, Mashariki conference, 25 August 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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‘New Maps of Debt. African science and speculative fiction and the micro dystopia’. Invited guest lecture. University of Amsterdam, 8 May 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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‘SFFH around the globe: developments, themes, trends’. Invited roundtable presentation. Metropolcon Berlin, 19 May 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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‘The Household Dystopia: Small-scale doom in African literature’. Invited conference presentation. Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften Vienna, Messy Beginnings conference, Vienna 19 October 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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‘“Sheltered from the omnipresence of history”? African science fiction and the problems of literary utilitarianism’, University of Tampere, Narrative Matters, 16 June 2023.
Maurits P. J.
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African SF: An Introduction. Science Fiction Studies, 51(Part 3), 353-359.
Chukwunonso, Ezeiyoke; Maurits, Peter J.; Ncube, Gibson & Wenske, Ruth S.
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Bifurcated futures: Generic discontinuity and speculative form in the post-2008 African novel. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 61(1), 8-22.
Maurits, Peter J. & Waller, Thomas
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Fuel Scavengers: Climate Colonialism in the South African Science Fiction of Alex Latimer’s Space Race, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Poison, and Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. Postcolonial Theory and Crisis, 141-156. De Gruyter.
Maurits, Peter J.
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Review: Afrocentricity in Afrofuturism: Toward Afrocentric Futurism , edited by Aaron X. Smith. Science Fiction Studies, 51(Part 3), 503-506.
Maurits, Peter J.
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Sedimented Reading Habits? The Future Utopia in Contemporary African Science and Speculative Fiction. The Political Uses of Literature, 250-264. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Maurits, Peter J.
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‘Changing forms: The global circulation of the British ghost story, and the new forms that came of it’. Opening keynote. Postcolonial Narrations Conference, 6 September 2024, University of Augsburg,
Maurits P. J.
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‘The rise and consolidation of African science and speculative fiction’. Invited guest lecture. University of Amsterdam, 22 April 2024.
Maurits P. J.
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The Reemergence of African Science and Speculative Fiction (ASF). African Literature in Transition, 266-282. Cambridge University Press.
Maurits, Peter J.
