New Perspectives

[mtvessel]

Nov-Dec 2016
Binti - Nnedi Okorafor - Tor, 2015 / A Taste of Honey - Kai Ashante Wilson - Tor, 2016
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Despite having owned one for several years, I am still not entirely comfortable with an e-reader as a substitute for a proper book. But I have to admit that their advent has had one significant and wholly admirable consequence, which is to make unusual-length fiction that would not be economically viable in printed form into something that authors and publishers can make money from. What's great about this is that a story which is interesting but too slight to fill out a novel without painful bloat can be made available to readers who are after something light and swift. Everybody wins. Writers get a chance to hone their craft, publishers get an income stream, and readers get new and interesting stories that don't outstay their welcome.

These two are good examples. Nnedi Okorafor has written a classic alien encounter story with an enjoyable African sensibility. Kai Ashante Wilson's novella is a sort of fantasy Brokeback Mountain which raises interesting questions about the demands of the heart versus societal norms. Both bring new perspectives to old tropes.

We first meet Binti as she runs away from her family, who do not approve of travel, to become a student at Oomza, a prestigious galactic university. She is a member of the Himba people and wears otijize, a clay-based compound used in place of scarce water, in her hair. Unfortunately, Binti's journey is interrupted as the shuttle she is travelling on is invaded by the Medusae, a hostile race of jellyfish-like aliens. Can Binti's outsider's perspective and culture help her to survive?

What I really liked about this novella is the use of African cultural elements in a science fiction setting. Details like the otjize are more than just colour - they are woven into the plot. Likewise the quasi-magical high-tech devices, such as the astrolabes made by Binti's family and the artefact she owns called an edan, "a general name for a device too old for anyone to know [how] it functions", make the story feel as much like a folk-tale as it does science fiction. Even the brutal violence of the medusae attack feels of a piece with a continent where, alas, appalling acts of cruelty have happened far too often. I think it's fair to say that the resolution of the story has an African precedent too.

A Taste of Honey takes place in the same world as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and shares its curious background of Arabian Nights-style epic fantasy with priestesses who speak the language of high-tech science fiction. The story concerns Aqib, an Oloran beast handler for the Blest, who falls in love with Lucrio, a Daluçan soldier who arrives as part of a diplomatic mission. But Aqib's family and culture do not permit their liaison, and Lucrio leaves when the mission returns to Daluça. We dot through Aqib's subsequent life and see the aftereffects of his first great love.

The language is more restrained than in Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and the setting is more conventional. Daluçan society is Roman in all but name and this felt lazy. But I enjoyed the gender-reversed power structure of the Olorans, and while the plot may sound very Brokeback Mountain, it's not the same.

It says much for the success of the format that my taste for both these authors was whetted and I want to read more from both of them. Tor, however, do need to take more care with their editing. My copy of A Taste of Honey has a number of distracting shortened lines which I am sure were not the author's intention.