Tor.com, 2018, 228 p.

When a first person narrator (here the titular Binti) dies halfway through the text it presents something of a problem for the author. How do you carry on? How can the story not finish then and there? Okorafor’s solution here is to switch to third person – at least till the end of the chapter, when Binti comes alive again, (with a bit of authorial hand-waving. Microbes, she is told by her alien companion Okwu, “blended with your genes and repaired you,” in a breathing chamber in a young spaceship called New Fish.) I would submit that this aspect of the book (though there are others too) makes it more of a Fantasy than Science Fiction. Or is that just me being purist? Still, it makes for an interesting read.

Once more (see here for my previous experience of this scenario) her ever dwindling supply of the skin-covering paste called otjize is a constant source of concern for Binti, without it she feels naked and again she makes extensive use of her edan. Her Meduse okuoko (blue tentacles on her head instead of hair) mark her out, though.

There is still a war going on between humans called the Khoush and the alien Meduse. Binti has moved on from Oomza Uni, the first of her Himba people to go there, the first to leave Earth. Now part Meduse, she has an affinity with and ability to use mathematics, calling up currents to “tree”. When stressed she repeats the word “five” to calm herself. She also has a connection to the Enyi Zinariya, twenty-foot-tall slender beings who seemed to be made of molten gold. Accompanied by Mwinyi, a zinariya, she is going back to her homeland to try to broker a peace between the Khoush and the Meduse. Her family produced astrolabes, devices which carry the full record of your entire life. Hers and her father’s were the best in the business. In times of crisis Himba turn inward. Her family did so (into the Root where they lived) when their village was threatened by the Khoush and their Root was burned so Binti thinks they are all dead.

In the run up to the peace meeting she sees once again The Night Masquerade, a spirit previously only appearing to males (but which we later find is not a spirit,) thereby confirming her unique status. During the negotiations something goes wrong (a minion on one side did not like the prospect and opened fire) and Binti gets shot. Her body is taken on board the New Fish and taken to the rings of Saturn about which she had had a premonition. She reflects, “It was so unlike Earth, where wars were fought over and because of differences and most couldn’t relate to anyone unless they were similar.”

It all makes sense in context and Binti is an engaging companion. It is also still refreshing to read SF from beyond the familiar Anglophile template.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later” ~(or equivalent) count, 8. Otherwise; zinairya (elsewhere zinariya,) spit (spat,) sunk (several times; sank,) shrunk (shrank.) “Astrolabes were the only object that… (objects,) shined (several times; shone.) “None around me were beathing” (was breathing,) “the feel of the numbers … were such a relief” (the feel … was such a relief.) “I didn’t want to go with.” (I didn’t want to go with him,) accidently (accidentally,) a missing quote mark at the end of a piece of direct speech, “their skin and hair was nearly free of otjize” (were nearly free,) “presented the dress she’s sewn for” (the rest of the sentence was in past tense, ‘she’d sewn’,) “the Roots defenses” (Root’s, [defences],) “off of” (just ‘off’,) “as Mwinyi and Okwu moved went New Fish’s walkway” (I have no idea why that ‘went’ is there. The ‘moved’ is a bit iffy too,) “the far side of the doom” (dome,) two full stops at the end of one sentence.

These were announced at the 74^th Worldcon, MidAmeriCon II, last Saturday.

BEST NOVEL The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

BEST NOVELLA Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

BEST NOVELETTE Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu

BEST SHORT STORY Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer

Of these I have read only Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, see here.

I have no idea whether any of these were Sad (or even Rabid) Puppy nominations – in the cases of Folding Beijing and Binti at least I would be inclined to doubt it – but “No Award” appeared only once in the full list this year.

These things come thick and fast this time of year…

This year’s Clarke Award short list is:-

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton)
Europe at Midnight – Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
The Book of Phoenix – Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder & Stoughton)
Arcadia – Iain Pears (Faber & Faber)
Way Down Dark – J.P. Smythe (Hodder & Stoughton)
Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)

Of the two I’ve read so far (for my reviews see links) I’d go for Europe at Midnight.
Of the others the Becky Chambers was on my intended reading list already.

First, congratulations to the BSFA for getting this out in time in time for it to be read before the presentation of the awards at Eastercon. Easter is remarkably early this year. About as early as it can possibly be. (See previous post.)
And not only does the booklet contain the listed short stories but also the non-fiction nominees (or extracts therefrom) and as usual the nominated artworks.

As to the short fiction:-

Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight by Aliette de Bodard.¹
An interstellar Empire has crop-growing space stations and long-lived mindships. Parents’ memories are usually downloaded to their children but those of crop researcher Professor Duy Uyen are allocated to her research group’s next leader. Her daughter, who became a mindship, will nevertheless remember her forever.

Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell.²
A supermarket chain wants to build an outlet in a town where the borders with the other worlds are weak. This would result in the borders being breached. The witches of the title (not all of whom are witches) are three women who band together to preserve the status quo (in all its aspects.)

No Rez by Jeff Noon.³
Unlike in its original publication (in Interzone 260) the text here is not laid out transversely (perhaps robbing the story of some of its visual impact.) The tale is nevertheless rendered in a variety of typefaces. In its world, pixels are the be-all and end-all. Our narrator stumbles across a dead body with a box that renders everything in high rez. Heavies then come after him to get the box back.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.⁴
Binti is the first of her Himba kind to be invited to Oomza Uni, the first to leave Earth. Her tribal habit was to cover themselves in otjize, a mixture of plant extract and red clay. On the trip the space ship is invaded by Meduse with whom the otherwise dominant humans, the Khoush, are at war. Only Binti’s edna – a general name for a piece of old tech whose use no-one remembers – protects her. Otijze turns out to be useful to the Meduse, as does Binti herself.

Ride the Blue Horse by Gareth L Powell.⁵
In a post-apocalypse US two men scavenging amongst a huge collection of shipping containers for sellable goodies from the old days uncover a 1960s Ford Mustang. The freedom of the road beckons.

In the non-fiction⁶ Nina Allan called for the possibility of a woman Doctor (Who) not to be dismissed and for that programme to be less self-referential, the book of Letters to Tiptree acknowledges the legacy of Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr,) James McCalmont worries about the future of impartial reviewing, Adam Roberts surveys the SF and Fantasy of 2014 (and skewers Puppygate for its baleful effect on the Hugo Awards,) while Jeff VanderMeer tells of his trials while writing his three novels that were published in one year.

Pedant’s corner:-
¹ “had fallen out before, on more trivial things” (over more trivial things,) “treason to much as think this” (to as much as think this,) “the only thing in existence were the laboratory and the living quarters” (“and” – therefore the only things in existence were,) designed to accept an unbalance (imbalance,) it’s mother’s hands that lie her down into the cradle” (lay her down [in?] the cradle,) ‘“When I hear you were back into service”’ (in service.)
² This is set in Gloucestershire so the need to use the USianism “gotten” totally escapes me. Also “I could have used” for “I could have done with”. I know it was originally published on a US website but that’s no excuse. After all Cornell does have one character say “summat” as in summat terrible. Sprung (sprang,) focussed (focused,) “instead that she setting up the shop” (was setting up the shop,) “someone she vaguely new” (knew.)
³ “She always get the best streams” (gets,) “too many people, to many viewpoints, all on me” (context suggests “too many viewpoints”.)
⁴ “too old for anyone to know it functions” (its functions,) CO2 (CO₂,) sunk (sank, x 3,) conducter (conductor,) ‘“The only thing I have killed are small animals”’ (things, then,) “all I could see were a tangle of undulating tentacles and undulating domes” (all I could see was…,) “Or the cool gasses” (gases) “Okwu promised would not harm my flesh even though I could not breathe it” (breathe them,) miniscule (minuscule,) museum specimen of such prestige are highly prized” (specimens,) ojtize (otjize,) clear is used to mean colourless rather than transparent.
⁵ Written in USian. “I caught a whiff of carbon monoxide.” (Carbon monoxide is odourless I’m afraid. A whiff of partially burnt petrol, maybe.) Plus: if the narrator and his companion don’t know how to drive a car (and nor has anybody for decades) how does he know which is first (gear) and what a clutch is?
⁶ There were typos etc (noun/verb disagreements in particular) in most of the non-fiction but I haven’t bothered enumerating them.

Hodder & Stoughton, 2015, 239 p. ISBN 9781473617940

Phoenix is an ABO, an accelerated biological organism, a speciMen. Only two years old, she appears to be forty. Not only that but she is a weapon, forged in LifeGen’s Tower 7; she glows and heats up, destroying all around her. But she rises from the ashes to live again; and grows wings. Later she learns how to slip through time. The only two men she has loved are dead at the hands of her creators. The novel is essentially the story of how she exacts her revenge on those who made her and other speciMen. There is slightly more to it than this though. The tale, a prequel to Who Fears Death, a book I’ve not yet read, is bookended by sections describing how Phoenix’s story was first of all found and, secondly, parlayed into something else, the myth that I assume Who Fears Death is built around.

It did feel to me though to be more of a fantasy than a work of SF.

Pedant’s corner:- rung (rang,) “soothed my skin to no end” (‘to no end’ means without effect; ‘no end’, in the sense of ‘greatly’, was what was intended,) the phenomena (the context suggested phenomenon,) to not get too close (not to get,) sunk (sank; numerous instances – though sank did appear once.) ‘My light shined’ (shone; there were countless instances of ‘shined’ used in this way but only one ‘shone’,) sprung (sprang,) Ok (OK; or Okay [or okay in the middle of a sentence,]) round and about (round about,) albatross’ (albatross’s,) publically (publicly,) to not age (not to age; there were other counts of ‘to not’,) outside of (outside x3,) miniscule (minuscule,) manipulating and flying’ through (an apostrofly has done its work in there, http://www.theguardian.com/comment/story/0,,801364,00.html) ‘saw me as many Arabs saw African slaves over millennium’ (millennia? – or the millennium?) ‘They could monitor control … of who got to read the files’ (monitor control? of? Monitor or control – minus the ‘of’ would surely suffice,) off of (off; just off,) Henrietta Lacks’ (Lacks’s,) plus more than a handful of instances of “’time interval’ later”.

Hodder, 2014, 310 p, including 4 p Glossary of Nigerian pidgin, 1 p Acknowledgements and 3 p Reading Group Questions.

Another from the BSFA Awards list. 5 out of 8 read now.

A sonic boom sounds out over Lagos lagoon. Very shortly thereafter three people whose names begin with “A” are taken up by a fist of sea-water and submerged. Some time later they are returned to the beach, as is a creature with the appearance of a woman but who is in fact an alien; an alien who can shift shape. One of our “A”s, Adaora, is a biologist with a lab in her basement and examines the alien, whom she names Ayodele. “Her” cellular structure is totally unlike that of life on Earth, mainly in that it doesn’t have cells, only very small, apparently metal-like, spheres “not fixed together as our cells are.” But Okorafor isn’t interested in this. Her focus is on the effect of the intrusion on Lagos and on its people and on manifestations of Nigerian folk tales/myths. We find out not much more about the aliens than that, apart from being able to read minds and having healing powers, as Ayodele tells the President, “We are technology,” and “we just want a home.”

The other two “A”s, the soldier Agu and the Ghanaian rapper Anthony Dey Craze, and Adaora turn out to have special powers, Agu has extreme strength in his punch, Dey Craze can project sound and Adaora a force field. Adaora’s husband, Chris, who is under the influence of the (nominally) Christian bishop who calls himself Father Oke, already thought Adaora was a witch. In light of this to my mind it undermines the implied criticism of self-serving “charismatic” preachers embedded in Okorafor’s treatment of Oke to have any hint of the supernatural attaching to Adaora.

Ayodele tells Adaora’s two children, “Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It’s your greatest flaw.”

The Lagos setting is welcome (too often stories of alien invasion focus on the US or Britain) but the move deep into fantasy territory broke my suspension of disbelief. Okorafor’s descriptions are effective but the action scenes can be cursory. By and large the characters are well differentiated, though a few are drawn from the stock cabinet, and we do see a cross-section of Lagos society, some of whom speak in pidgin. This can be understood easily enough (SF readers are used to unfamiliar words and phrases) but the appended glossary will help anyone who struggles.

Lagoon is written in USian (Okorafor is a professor of creative writing at the University of Buffalo, SUNY) so we get dove for dived, upside the head, if worse came to worst, most everyone, asses; which all seemed to me odd usages for a former British colony only 55 years from independence.

Pedant’s corner:- “even before he’d sunken his claws into Chris” (sunk,) “also a bad sign were the two army trucks” (a sign is singular,) “low and behold” (lo,) “to not turn away”. This last is not quite cancelled out by knowing where “not” ought to be placed in “not all was well.”

This year’s nominees for the BSFA Awards have been announced.

As far as the fiction is concerned we have the unusually high total of eight novels on the ballot form, of which I have read three*. (Edited to add: so far.)

The Race* by Nina Allan (NewCon Press)
Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
Wolves by Simon Ings (Gollancz)
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August* by Claire North (Orbit)
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder)
The Moon King* by Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)

The short fiction has only three contenders – all of whom are women it seems; for the second year in a row. I have read none of them as yet (but hope the BSFA will produce the usual booklet.) Though it’s totally irrelevant I was on a panel at last year’s Eastercon with Ruth Booth.

The Honey Trap by Ruth EJ Booth (La Femme, Newcon Press)
The Mussel Eater by Octavia Cade (The Book Smugglers)
Scale Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Immersion Press)