Just a brief blog update really, as I head out to visit family in Cape Town again soon. Firstly, it’s very exciting to see a new online African SF magazine launched, called ‘Omenana‘, with a great mix of stories and non-fiction (interview and review article). The TOC for Issue 1 is: Editorial:  Speculative Fiction in Nigeria: The ...

This past month has been a busy month with some great SF Conventions having come and gone, viz. Nine Worlds and the WorldCon in London, LonCon3. So, without further ado, a brief report back. I was called on at the last minute to join the African SF panel at Nine Worlds as a panelist Tade Thompson ...

Kudos to The Future Fire and Kathryn Allan for pursuing a Disability in SF anthology entitled ‘Accessing the Future’. There has been a recently published generic anthology, looking at essays and ‘realistic’ fiction, entitled ‘Criptiques’: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/criptiques-kickstarter-disability-anthology-caitlin-wood This book is available at: http://criptiques.com/ However, there has been limited engagement of the SF genre with ‘disability’ and ...

I have further updated my series of essays on ‘Science Fiction in South Africa’ with a fascinating précis of a Ph.D. thesis completed by Dr. Elzette Steenkamp on ‘Identity, belonging and ecological crisis in South African speculative fiction’. For those of you may want access to the full Doctoral thesis, completed at Rhodes University in ...

AfroSF vol. 2 is a ‘GO!’ I believe and due out later this year, around September-October time. Tade Thompson and my co-written novella ‘The Last Pantheon‘ is indeed onboard this African collection of SF novellas. This month, I have updated my SF in Africa series with my SA speculative fiction essay for Pornokitsch – published online ...

We’re back from SA earlier this year, having gone to the Cape Town mourning concert for Nelson Mandela with my family. A huge loss indeed, but life goes on and many varied and moving tributes were made: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/flash-mob-pays-surprise-tribute-to-mandela-in-south-african-mart-203741638.html I finished reading Carole McDonnell’s ‘The Constant Tower’ – a fantasy epic with well-drawn characters and an implicit ...