Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa by Nerine Dorman

Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa Reviews

• 
  Lukasz

  As an active r/fantasy member, I participate in a yearly book bingo challenge. One of this year's squares - Afrofuturism made me realise I knew close to nothing about African speculative fiction.
  
  Time to change it, and is there a better way than an anthology to hear a variety of voices? Not really. In Terra Incognita, Short Story Day Africa presents nineteen stories of speculative fiction. They feel more literary than pulpy. Each story explores a different theme, from sexual tension/magnetism, through colonialism and revenge to home-coming.
  
  Let's take a quick look at each story.
  
  Leatherman by Diane Awerbuck - ★★★
  
  A tale of longing and dark adventure. Beautifully written, but too strange for my simple-minded self. Plus, I'm not sure if I fancy quotes like this one:
  
  His penis was the only part of him that wasn't covered in hair. It sprang up, freed from the stocking top and smelling of resurrection, eager and eternal and purplish-grey
  
  Not for me, but I'm not saying it's badly written.
  
  Caverns Measureless to Man by Toby Bennett - ★★★
  
  An ok story that develops at breakneck-pace and culminates in a surprising way. Prepare for heavy-capped mushrooms the size of trees and a maggot bigger than a man. And some Lovecraftian horror.
  
  I Am Sitting Here Looking at a Graveyard by Pwaangulongii Benrawangya - ★★
  
  A story about a writer obsessed with coffins, obituaries, death, and poems. Surrounded by illness, old age, and the war he's seen a lot of corpses, but never an angel. It builds the ambience but lacks a strong plot.
  
  Hands by Tiah Beautement - ★★★★
  
  My favourite story in the anthology. An intriguing and suggestively written vampire narrative about power, art and cost of suffering. Great prose, a clear sense of direction, solid story and great ending. An excellent story.
  
  Marion's Mirror by Gail Dendy - ★
  
  Meh. Good writing but a chaotic narrative jumping between worlds and timelines (from present day to birth) didn't convince me. I would say it's an example of the story that desperately wants to be more meaningful than it really is.
  
  How My Father Became a God by Dilman Dila -★★★
  
  An enjoyable story, leaning toward a folktale. Pleasant to read but I see nothing exceptional here.
  
  In the Water by Kerstin Hall -★★★
  
  A light-weight horror story. Solid, with nice visuals (like seeing the monster in a reflection in a drop of water), but ultimately unsatisfying.
  
  Mouse Teeth by Cat Hellisen - ★★
  
  Unsettling and desperate. lsie de Jager, now Elsie Snyman, is an Afrikaner from an Afrikaans-speaking town who is just eighteen but has already lost all her teeth. Her husband cuts himself, and she's afraid one day he will hurt her and then kill himself.
  
  While it touches difficult themes, I could in no way relate to Isie.
  
  Spirits of the Dead Keep Watch by Mishka Hoosen - ★★★
  
  A revenant schoolgirl haunts the teacher who raped her a decade earlier. He somehow believes that their relationship was acceptable, and so in punishment, he must live with her silent presence and no chances to escape. Creepy.
  
  Stations by Nick Mulgrew - ★★★★
  
  A dead man wakes in a changed South Africa. Everything looks different - cities, people, social relations. It's a series of very suggestive, but slightly disjointed vignettes.
  
  Editongo by Mary Okon Ononokpono - ★★
  
  A creation story from the unique perspectives of Calabar’s deities. Wordy and too descriptive. I didn't like it.
  
  CJ by Chinelu Onwualu - ★★
  
  A story of homecoming, reconnection, and metahumans. Positive, but forgettable.
  
  There is Something That Ogbu-Ojah Didn’t Tell Us by Jekwu Ozoemene - ★★
  
  Wrestling with deities, travelling to spirit world. Cool idea, but ultimately unconvincing.
  
  Ape Shit by Sylvia Schlettwein - ★★
  
  Baboons versus humans.
  
  What if you Slept by Jameson Mykl Snyman - ★★
  
  The story of a narcoleptic whose dreams start to resemble his true world.
  
  Esomnesia by Philip Steyn - ★★★
  
  A look at synthetic memory creation and how we strive to transform synthetic into organic.
  
  The Lacuna by Brendan Ward - ★★★
  
  An interesting look at the Philosophy of Language.
  
  The Carthagion by Sarah Jane Woodward - ★★★★
  
  A clever revenge story. In post-apocalyptic South Africa, people can indulge themselves by experiencing all sorts of fantasies through the manipulation of consciousness.
  
  The Corpse by Sese Yane - ★★★
  
  A coroner fascinated with lifelessness steals a corpse from the morgue and hides it in his house to examine it in private.
  
  An interesting anthology for sure, but it'll appeal more to readers with literary tastes than to casual sci-fi readers who enjoy solid plotlines more than the language or vivid imagery. There were only two stories I genuinely liked. As for the others, most were ok, some less than ok. But it's highly subjective.
  
  I consider Terra Incognita worth exploring, especially when you look for a way to discover some new voices.
• 
  Barrita

  Tantos nombres nuevos de gente talentosísima, con historias muy vívidas y que remontan a toda clase de escenarios poco convencionales con criaturas y folklore que no me son tan familiares pero que me parecieron fascinantes.
  
  Creo que aunque hay estilos y temas variados, algo que aprecio de la mayoría de las historias de autoría africana que he leído es el sentido del humor. Es lo que en estos días se llama sassy y/o salty. Protagonistas con astucia y sin reparos en hacer saber su opinión, pero también detrás de la pluma se siente ese tono de querer jugar con las personas sin importar si son parte de la historia o si son audiencia. En estas historias no te toman de la mano y no te van a explicar el final.
• 
  Tiah

  - I am about to ploughed, she told herself. Ploughed and furrowed. -Diane Awerbuck, 'Leatherman'
  
  - When I last saw the light. A cold morning, the sun just a hint on the horizon when we slipped down the ropes into the shafts? The last time I saw the sun? - Toby Bennett, 'Caverns Measure Less to Man'
  
  - I love coffins. - Pwaangulongii Benrawangya, 'I am Sitting here Looking at a Graveyard'
  
  - And this is why hope should never be allowed to breathe. - Tiah Beautement, 'Hands'
  
  - Marion looked in the mirror, and screamed. It was completely blank. She was not there, and neither, for that matter, was anything else. - Gail Dendy, 'Marion's Mirror'
  
  - I dreamt that my father's bruka took me to the stars, where I became a princess in a world whose sky was red like blood. - Dilman Dila, 'How My Father Became a God'
  
  - I felt like a hypocrite, as if I was turning my back on my religion of science and hospitals. - Kerstin Hall, 'In the Water'
  
  - It made complete sense to Elsie that English was the language of witchcraft. Of evil. What else would it be? - Cat Hellisen, 'Mouse Teeth'
  
  - Were you in Heaven then, Antoinette? What was it like? - Mishka Hoosen, 'Spirits of the Dead Keep Watch'
  
  - I was alive. I was dead. That's as much as I knew. - Nick Mulgrew, 'Stations'
  
  - All is new to the babe, for the mantle of flesh has banished her memory beyond the furthest recess of the most distant stars. - Mary Okon Ononokpono, 'Editöngö'
  
  - It used to be just people who could play the piano with their feet. - Chinelo Onwualu, 'CJ'
  
  - I never really understood how a vulture could have an affair with a human being. - Jekwu Ozoemene, 'There is something that Ogbu-Ojah didn't tell us'
  
  - He is waiting for you, not just anywhere. He is seated on your chair on the veranda. You have named him Jonny, despite your intention to shoot him. - Sylvia Schlettwein, 'Ape Shit'
  
  - Day after day and night following night he would live the same lives in both worlds. Doing the same things again and again, and repeating himself over and over. He saw new places before he’d ever been there. He suffered double the indignities and lived twice the disgrace and public shaming. – Jason Mykl Snyman, 'What if You Slept?'
  
  - It is usually a very frightening experience for patients to relive memories inside this space. – Phillip Steyn, 'Esomnesia'
  
  - I can live only where you are in the dark. – Brendan Ward, 'The Lacuna'
  
  - God, it’s like the one thing I really I miss, you know. The sky. - Sarah Jane Woodward, 'The Carthagion'
  
  - It is not unusual for the morgue to lose a body. - Sese Yane, 'The Corpse'
  
  
• 
  Nerine Dorman

  A wonderful selection of African speculative fiction that I had the pleasure of editing, and if you're looking for something that will subvert your expectations of what speculative fiction is, then this one may nibble at your imagination.
• 
  Richard

  #BookWalk | “the granite throat constricting” | Excerpts from Terra Incognita
  
  To celebrate the launch of Short Story Day Africa’s latest anthology, I revisited the stories that I’d previously judged together with Samuel Kolawole (Writers’ Studio, Ibadan) and Jared Shurin (Jurassic London). Fortunately, I had already marked splendid passages in some of the stories, and it wasn’t difficult to lift striking excerpts from all the others. Hopefully, they’ll tempt you to order a copy of this superb anthology, featuring work by some of Africa’s finest experienced and emerging voices. Last year’s SSDA anthology, “Feast, Famine & Potluck”, included the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing – “My Father’s Head” by Okwiri Oduor – so you can rest assured that you’ll be treated to some quality reading, although I urge you to so during daylight hours, to avoid being haunted by the many spirits and powerful images that populate this anthology.
  
  “During her lunch hour Joanna had gone to The Emporium, searching for an outfit that would make her look like the girls she spied on in Mister Pickwick’s: thinnish, hungover, imperfect girls who would skinny-dip in waterfalls with your boyfriend or produce large-eyed love-children with French seamen.”
  From Diane Awerbuck’s winning story "Leatherman"
  
  “Jacob Lunga could feel the granite throat constricting every time he blinked the blood from his eyes. He was bent double and rushing into that darkness as fast as he could – drawn on by the retreating light.”
  From "Caverns Measureless to Man" by Toby Bennett
  
  “I love coffins. But seeing a coffin with a corpse in it arouses in me the feeling that only poetry can evoke. It is the hunger for this feeling that makes me turn to reading every obituary I see. I would take down the date and venue of the funeral of the deceased.”
  From "I Am Sitting Here Looking at a Graveyard" by Pwaangulongii Benrawangya
  
  “She’d been concerned that, only the night before, she’d begun to hear things: a carthorse, for instance, lumbering through the private driveway of the block of flats where she lived. But of course there was no carthorse in Killarney, no leather strapping, no nose-bag, no metal or wooden side shafts.”
  From "Marion's Mirror" by Gail Dendy
  
  “He looked ordinary, but I knew he was a god. I confirmed it the day he showed me the egg-shaped thing. It stood on two bird-like legs that were as tall as a man, and it had a pair of wings that were so large he must have skinned twenty cows to make them.”
  From "How My Father Became a God" by Dilman Dila
  
  “I never had any great faith in traditional medicine. I believed in science and antibiotics and clean, cool, sanitary hospital rooms.”
  From "In the Water" by Kerstin Hall
  
  “Everyone in Flora agreed that it was a terrible thing, a terrible thing to happen to a young girl, and she'd been so pretty before that, they said, but Elsie knew it wasn't disease that took her teeth.”
  From "Mouse Teeth" by Cat Hellisen
  
  “My head is sore and thick just now, my throat rough. I don’t know where anything is, only that I’ve been dead – a long time now, I think, looking at him. But I remember nothing about it. I feel cheated.”
  From "Spirit of the Dead Keep Watch" by Mishka Hoosen
  
  “I looked to my hands. There was no trace of chalk. My nails were bitten as they ever were, but I was clean. I had no bruises, no bones protruding from my skin. My skin had never looked so soft.”
  From "Stations" by Nick Mulgrew
  
  “There is a veil that separates this world from the world of the spirits. It is invisible to all but a few who know where to look. In the oldest parts of this world, the veil is worn thin in places, like a skin stretched taut over the mouth of a drum, and traces of what might be described as magic dance in the rays of sunlight.”
  From "Editöngö" by Mary Okon Ononokpono
  
  “I never had much of an idea what I was going to do beyond leaving this town, but Vi was going to become a mad scientist and would cook up the cure for cancer in some basement lab, and CJ would be Nigeria’s first foreign-born astronaut, hopping from star to star.”
  From "CJ" by Chinelo Onwualu
  
  “So it was little wonder that Ojahdili soon ran out of men to defeat in a wrestling bout and stumbled upon the idea of travelling to the spirit world, for was it not common knowledge that no man had been known to defeat the spirits?
  From "There is Something That Ogbu-Ojah Didn’t Tell Us" by Jekwu Ozoemene
  
  “He is waiting for you, not just anywhere, no, he is seated on YOUR chair on the veranda. You have named him Jonny, despite your intentions of shooting him down. He is the leader of the pack, he is fearless, he deserves a name.”
  From "Ape Shit" by Sylvia Schlettwein
  
  “Hugh sat at the kitchen table wearing his helmet, in a special chair of his own design. It had a seatbelt harness not at all dissimilar to that found in a racing car. Miss Swan strapped him in and returned to the stove to warm some soup.”
  From "What if You Slept?" by Jason Mykl Snyman
  
  “Giving cyborgs memories will enable them to process responses to situations organically. The only problem is that synthetic memory creation is rather a lengthy and unstable process, which hasn’t been perfected yet, but exciting breakthroughs in neuroscience are helping to sidestep that issue.”
  From "Esomnesia" by Phillip Steyn
  
  “I hear a voice that does not flow over the air. It is as if I am repeating the words myself, an echo of something heard only in my mind. It is crisp and cold, a winter voice, a dark voice, like ice on a deep lake.
  From "The Lacuna" by Brendan Ward
  
  “Ever since the great event which had occurred over 200 years ago, when the people of earth fled underground, the main problem that had befallen society was one that was completely unanticipated by the scientists of the day; mass boredom.”
  From "The Carthagion" by Sarah Jane Woodward
  
  “Minutes rushed past his open window and they dragged with them trees and houses and people, and still Bowuk Jana held his breath. He was amazed that he could do this, it was way past a minute, past two minutes, past three minutes, and now he held his breath out of fascination for his ability to do so, the dead dog long forgotten by now.”
  From "The Corpse" by Sese Yane
  
  
• 
  Anna

  I found this book by chance at a used bookstore in Graskop, MP, South Africa last month and knew I couldn’t leave the store without it. I love speculative fiction and am trying to intentionally read more African literature this year. This collection was excellent, though if you don’t understand Xhosa or Afrikaans there will be a couple of stories that are lost on you.
• 
  Kaitlin

  Widely varied writing styles and stories - highly enjoyable, and each story a manageable length so that you could comfortably read one at a time if you were short on time.
• 
  Jetamors

  ... Was there some reason why most of the authors in this were white...?
  
  Anyway, my favorite story from this one was "How My Father Became a God" by Dilman Dila.