And, on the issue of climate, I have some recent recommendations for the Five Best Books on African Climate Change SF here. Also of note, my short story A Pall of Moondust (Omenana 2021) has been republished in THE BEST OF BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION 2021, see here. Additionally, from the US, in THE YEAR’S TOP TALES OF SPACE AND TIME 2, see here.

Glimmerings of hope? From all of those/us at the vanguard of pushing for better futures for all, including our fragile, living planet. Onwards, stewards of the Earth – let us reclaim our emerging futures…

Nick Wood: September 2022

Many of us live in Broken Bodies, in a Broken World.

One way I found to manage my own Broken Body, was to get involved with health professionals and patients working within the area, i.e. pelvic pain. I published a few articles; and then got invited by Pelvic Pain Matters to present on How to Manage This (no easy solutions, unfortunately.) For anyone interested on managing chronic health condition (and perhaps even pelvic pain in particular) you can have a look here.

Publisher Luna Press interviewed me for my short story collection LEARNING MONKEY AND CROCODILE here. (Yes, I know, I have Covid lock-down hair.)

Finally, I presented at the behest of the Psychology of South Africa’s (PsySSA) Climate and Environment Psychology group (CEP). The topic? Writing fiction to tackle climate change: i.e. WRITING STORIES TO CHANGE THE WORLD. The presentation can be viewed here, and it includes an inspiring contribution from Faeza Meyer, founder member of the African Water Commons Collective (AWCC).  I have attached slides FYI too, as there was a technical hitch halfway through and no one got to see the outstanding cover Vincent Sammy did for WATER MUST FALL. A picture to represent our Broken World indeed, but with a woman emerging from the Earth to heal.

Women are our best and brightest hope for change – let’s do what we can daily to lift their voices and participation in our society, wherever we may live. And to Halting Damage/Earth Trauma and Healing, in these times of broken bodies within a Breaking Earth.

And what heals and soothes better than WATER?

May Water Fall!

Water is Life. Water For Life.

Nick Wood

Congratulations to all the other shortlisted novels and stories in other categories – I’m especially thrilled to see Club Ded by Nikhil Singh, who is an outrageously multi-talented writer, artist and musician. Ivory’s Story by Eugen Bacon (a considerable writing talent) is there too – and, although shortlisted in the ‘short’ category, Ivory’s Story is a noteworthy extended narrative. That is, given it is a full-length novella, I’m sure it will be one to watch in that specific category for the upcoming Nommos – the African SF Awards. And African short SF is well represented on the BSFA shortlist by the Dominion anthology – congrats to all, including editors Zelda Knight and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki!

And, speaking of short African SF, Wole Talabi has his latest Top 10 African SF short picks for 2020 here. The Nommos Awards also include a comics/graphic novel category and that is certainly a burgeoning scene amongst many African creatives. I have a 2019 South African comics article in Vector (the BSFA critical magazine) here. Brainwavez have a 2020 update here.

But, roaring into 2021, is Bishop Q, a well drawn and smartly plotted tale of a man caught up between the problems of his past and the loyalties of his present. In episode 1 we learn that – although it looks like he can time travel – his past may not be quite so easy to escape. A cracking start for what looks like a very promising South African speculative fiction (SF) comic. An initial review, entitled Bishop Q is a Love Letter to South African Comics is here. All speed and power to Motlatsi Kane’s new comics venture.

Finally, for 2021, Tade Thompson has a new upcoming novel, which will may well be a smart and electric subversion of Space Opera? It’s entitled: FAR FROM THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN (Orbit Books). Tendai Huchu has just released the first of his Edinburgh Nights series, entitled THE LIBRARY OF THE DEAD and, another upcoming delight for sure, is due from Chikodili Emelumadu. Dazzling (2021): Treasure, a young girl who has lost her father and is taken in by a spirit, finds her life intertwined with Ozoemena, another girl who becomes part of a Nigerian Leopard Society — whose members are normally men. For updates, follow @chemelumadu

And for those who love shorter novella lengths, look no further than Luna Press‘s upcoming series, which includes Dilman Dila‘s The Future God of Love. Or try Eugen Bacon’s new collection Danged Black Thing.

May you and your families stay safe and well – and may 2021 be a much better year for all, than 2020!

Nick Wood (February 2021)

My novel WATER MUST FALL (2020) is eligible for any SFF awards that this year may yield, although there were many fine novels published during the Covid pandemic. Water Must Fall is set in 2048 and posits a world in which end-state capitalism has tightened its grip on essential human resources, such as land and water, so that only a concerted global uprising can resist this. It is set in Southern Africa and the dry-west in America, referencing an earlier ‘The President Who Shall Not Be Named‘ (no guesses needed!) for disrupting the union of the USA. I am busy (through bouts of chronic illness) on a sequel, EARTH SHALL RISE, where indigenous and decolonial ownership of the uprisings introduce new and kinder/shared ways of being-in-the-world (and, ultimately, planetary survival). Let’s say YES to hope!

Nick Wood

January 2021

Speaking of viruses, a recent South African SF pandemic book is Ilze Hugo’s THE DOWN DAYS: the novel’s central question – what happens when people start laughing themselves to death? (A laughing pandemic – but there’s nothing funny about laughter that kills, surely? Read it to find out, but be careful your lips don’t start to twitch.)

I have kept alive my own nonfiction writing and activity, so I have an introductory interview with Karl Monahan from Pelvic Pain Matters, talking about chronic male pelvic pain here: This is the year ongoing poor health has finally caught up with me. With the addition of another chronic illness (eyes), I secured early ill health retirement from my clinical psychology training role at the University of East London. So, what then for 2021? I plan to write ‘A Survivor’s Guide to Male Pelvic Pain:’ for all those many men (and women) who endure the stigmatised suffering of this terrible condition, in a society where chairs are ubiquitous and there is scant knowledge of sitting disabilities.

I’ve also written more about racism within British clinical psychology this year, brought into further sharp relief by the murder of George Floyd in June, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. I have been pleased to see the recent ‘taking of the knee’ in British sporting events but dismayed at the opposition who argue they ‘don’t agree with the politics of it’ but ‘still support anti-racism.’ Given anti-racism is the beating heart of the political message of BLM, if you ‘don’t agree with the politics of it,’ you are clearly allying yourself with the status quo. And, with the political status quo in the west surreptitiously supporting implicit white normativity – with white supremacy as just the more visible arm of current institutionally racist systems – then you are clearly not embracing anti-racism. And so The Struggle goes on…

Water Must Fall (WMF), released into a viral vacuum this year and set in 2048, references the organisation ‘Black Lives Still Matter’ – but it was written more than a year before the resurgence of publicity around the BLM organisation, triggered by the murder of George Floyd. So although ‘taking the knee’ in the book may now look very hackneyed, it was written during a time when it was a lesser known story, almost solely around the NFL betrayal of Colin Kaepernick. That’s the problem in writing near future fiction – your future risks being taken over by the fast moving present and becoming ‘yesterday’s lunch’. A novelist much better able to address the quick arrival of the future-present is Cory Doctorow – his latest novel Attack Surface is turning out to be a manual towards shaping the arc of a better future. Read it – no longer feel so helpless – and act!

For Racism in clinical psychology within the heart of the old empire (published online in the South African Journal of Psychology, November 4th), click here: (if frustrated by paywall, contact me for a copy.)

May 2021 involve humanity grasping the Climate Nettle firmly and finally, in a way that signifies a clear transition to a socially just and more equitable future for all the planet’s inhabitants. Something I hope to foresee in my planned sequel to Water Must Fall – EARTH SHALL RISE.

But for now, to all those, whose stories have been tragically ended by the Corona Virus (and the lack of responsiveness from many elected leaders, one thankfully outgoing early next year, whatever his lawyers might say – who have compounded this.)

A Luta Continua, as sung by Mama Afrika:

Nick Wood
December 2020

So, in the spirit of sharing resources more humanely and equitably, I have linked up with Amnesty International (South Africa) to share my profits from WATER MUST FALL with their TURN ON THE TAP initiative. I have contributed a Blog to their drive, which forms a background comment to WATER MUST FALL: Water Wars: Whose Side Are You ON?

The COVID caveat question, of course, is WILL my book make a profit? Given the devastating impact of the virus on smaller independent presses in particular, such as the sterling, seemingly indefatigable Ian Whates behind NEWCON PRESS, there is the real possibility that my book, as well as others from a batch of more brilliant authors, might struggle to even pay its costs.

So, to mitigate this, NEWCON have launched a one week only GRAND SALE, with a second book going at half price, AS WELL AS a FREE MYSTERY BOOK being thrown in – now how can you resist that??

There I go, monetising things…!

Anyway, this is the list of books and authors for sale at NEWCON;

Soul Chaser – Rachel Armstrong

The Bone Shaker – Edward Cox

The Shapes of Strangers – Ian Creasey

Edge of Heaven – RB Kelly

Tales from the Spired Inn – Stephen Palmer

A Hazardous Engagement – Gaie Sebold

Chivalry – Gavin G. Smith

Serpent Rose – Kari Sperring

Water Must Fall – Nick Wood

And another book of mine, my short story collection (along with several essays) LEARNING MONKEY AND CROCODILE, gets favourably reviewed at STRANGE HORIZONS (Issue 3, August 2020). The concluding paragraph from the reviewer Duncan Lawie:

“He certainly writes science fiction well: as I hopefully made clear in the opening to this review, these stories evoked an emotional response in me; they made me want to turn the page, to understand more about the worlds they are set in, to care about the characters I discovered. And that means this middle aged white guy identified with all the variety in the volume. Wood’s stories are clearly founded in the canon of western SF; but they are just as clearly influenced by his personal story, and by his desire to show that all of the world can be part of the future. Strongly recommended.”

A ‘middle aged white guy’ huh – guess that partly fits the bill, but, like all of us, I’m a lot more than a few labels! But thanks for an insightful review, Duncan!

Also just published from the British Psychological Society is a special issue on Climate Psychology within the August 2020 edition of Clinical Psychology Forum. Given this is indefinitely free, the editors have given us permission to disseminate. So, if of interest, feel free to download below.

In this virulent heating climate, stay safe!

Nick Wood

August 2020

For an academic coverage, I have kind permission from Prof. Jane Bryce at the University of the West Indies to highlight and make available her (2019) paper ‘African Futurism: Speculative Fictions and ‘Rewriting the Great Book.’ This article appeared in Research in African Literatures , 50(1), Spring, and the original source is acknowledged and located in the title link to the paper, directly above.

Abstract: This paper examines a number of African-authored narratives (novels and film) in the light of recent thinking about futurism and the role of speculative fiction as a means of envisioning the future. Uppinder Mehan, co-editor of the first ever anthology of “postcolonial science fiction and fantasy,” So Long Been Dreaming, notes that postcolonial writing has rarely “pondered that strange land of the future” and warns, “If we do not imagine our futures, postcolonial peoples risk being condemned to be spoken about and for again” (Mehan, 270).

Kodwo Eshun, in a seminal essay, expands on this to argue that, while the “practice of counter memory as . . . an ethical commitment to history, the dead and the forgotten” has traditionally relegated futurism to the sidelines of black creativity, this has been progressively challenged by “contemporary African artists . . . [for whom] understanding and
intervening in the production and distribution of this dimension constitutes
a chrono-political act” (292). The paper proposes that this chrono-political act (what in literature we now call speculative fiction) has its roots in African modes of storytelling that draw on myth, orality, and indigenous belief systems that lend themselves to the invention of personal mythologies, the rewriting of history in the light of future realities, and the use of extra-realist or magical phenomena as part of the everyday. Since these elements characterize many novels not thought of as speculative, this suggests that futurism has been a strain in African writing from its inception. The turn from mythic revisioning to speculative fiction as a distinct and recognizable genre in the 21st century has notably been embraced by women writers such as Nnedi Okorafor and Lauren Beukes, in whose work gender/femininity is a determinant in the projection of imagined futures.

The paper examines how speculative narrative strategies in a range of texts are brought to bear on specific historical situations on the African continent (those characterized, for example, by genocide, civil war, cross-continental migration, urban dereliction, xenophobia, violence, and the occult) and the potential futures to which they point. The paper argues, therefore, that such narratives, rather than being relegated to the category of fantasy, deserve attention as key indicators of futuristic thinking.

Africa owning its own future then, by experimenting with fictional extrapolations in Africanfuturisms.

And, for further exploration of Afrofuturism V Africanfuturism, coming out later this year (August, 2020) in America is Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century, by Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek.

The debates roll on, into the future…

Nick Wood /April, 2020

As for WATER MUST FALL, the now virtual launch is taking place here, alongside other fine books worthy of your attention. Look through, sample, and enjoy! Today (April 7th) is World Health Day – to your health and happiness, in unsafe times.

At the NewCon Press launch site, you can watch me reading the opening of WATER MUST FALL. (I’m generally wooden with fear, in front of a camera, but I do me best.)

As emerges clearly in WATER MUST FALL, this world is an unequal place, so this virus will impact on the most disadvantaged, the hardest off all. To all of those struggling to make this world a safer place for everyone, this reading is dedicated – heroes indeed, *salute!* Here’s to survival and the creation of a kinder, more equitable, carbon light and communal world. We write and read, to make our dreams real.

Nick Wood, April 2020.