How Nnedi Okorafor is redefining the sci-fi novel with Death of the Author

The award-winning Nigerian writer wants to bring more African voices into the literary mainstream

Nnedi Okorafor has emerged as one of the most talked–about voices in global science fiction. Getty Images

It’s not often we see an author in the UAE discussing a blockbuster novel at the moment of release. But when Nnedi Okorafor appeared at the Sharjah Festival of African Literature, just days after the publication of Death of the Author, the novel had industry tongues wagging because of a reported seven – figure advance from William Morrow, an imprint of publisher HarperCollins.

No wonder then that Okorafor took the stage with quiet confidence – she already knew she was on to a winner.

Death of the Author is an engaging yet complex and multi – layered story. Part-fiction and part-philosophical treatise, it’s also a novel about a novel. The story follows Zelu, a Nigerian-American author who, after enduring severe personal and professional setbacks, retreats to write Rusted Robots, a speculative science fiction novel set in a post-apocalyptic city where humans coexist with androids and artificially intelligent machines. This inner narrative raises timely questions about human autonomy as we edge closer to the threshold of machine consciousness.

Released on January 14, Death of the Author debuted on many US bestseller lists and received a glowing endorsement from Games of Thrones author George R R Martin. While pleased with the initial hype, Okorafor is even more content with readers engaging with the work’s existential themes.

“I am trying to expand the idea of what a science fiction novel can be,” she tells The National. “Because this book literally has chapters written by a robot – as part of a novel about post-human robots inhabiting the world – but it is all presented in a clearly literary way.”

More than a genre trope, Okarafor uses this android – named Ankara – to explore the unnerving prospect of what the world could be once we have all perished. “What humanity will always leave behind is our stories and Ankara basically goes around mining and collecting them,” she says. “Those stories go on to be separate from their authors. They remain and exist and these robots go on to basically worship them.”

The plot is partly a rebuke to the central theme of Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay – from which the novel takes its title – in which the French literary theorist argued that true appreciation and understanding of a text only occurs when divorced from the author’s biography and intentions.

Okorafor is not a fan of the view – “I despise that essay” – stating that it strips writers of their agency, particularly those from Africa whose cultures have been increasingly commodified at the expense of personal narratives. It also explains why she chose not to use the novel’s original title – The African Futurist – as it risked being misunderstood for Afrofuturism, a contentious concept Okorafor has been actively challenging in her writing for the past five years. According to her, Afrofuturism is problematic because it explores African-themed science fiction through an American lens. A more suitable alternative, she argues, is the self-coined “African futurism” – a subtle yet significant shift that places African voices at the centre of their own narratives.

“It is about removing the United States from the centre of the conversation when it comes to African – rooted science fiction,” she says. “Now, I’m Nigerian-American. I was born and raised in the United States, so it’s not like I have anything against America – but I do find this approach problematic. African Futurism, which I believe Death of the Author truly belongs to, is about telling stories rooted in African culture and viewed through an African lens. It’s about establishing that connection and making it clear to readers that this is where these stories begin, before they either remain here or branch off elsewhere.”

This more expansive view, she notes, will lead to even more diverse stories coming into the spotlight – something the success of Black Panther proved there's a real appetite for. “It showed that the audience is ready for these stories and many African authors have known that,” she says. “It’s about opening up space for more stories like the ones I’m telling, and like the ones many African and diaspora writers in science fiction and fantasy are telling right now. What we’re doing is broadening the perspective, helping people get used to greater diversity and to more varied kinds of black stories.”

Hence Okorafor’s move to bring some of her stories to the screen. She is writing the screenplay for her 2014 novel Lagoon, an alien invasion tale set in Lagos, as part of a development deal with Steven Spielberg’s production company Amblin Entertainment. This follows the indefinite delay of the planned HBO television adaptation of her Nebula Award-winning 2010 novel Who Fears Death. “This is a lesson I learnt from my experience with HBO in that I have to write my own screenplay,” she notes. “It’s not just about having creative control; it’s about recognising that I write stories that are new and unfamiliar to many people, and they need me there to help guide the process.”

Okorafor hopes her burgeoning profile and association with Hollywood royalty could usher in more African stories to the mainstream. “Honestly, what I want is to open more doors for others,” she says. “One of my biggest hopes for Death of an Author is that it gives us – from authors to publishers – the space to try different kinds of things, unexpected things that go beyond what people are used to.”