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Tag: Nnedi Okorafor
Some Theses on Monsters; occasioned by reading, and in place of a review of, Margrét Helgadóttir and Jo Thomas, eds, African Monsters (Fox Spirits Books, 2015)
[A version of this piece appeared on the Salvage website]
We live in a world being made monstrous.
By us. Inhuman and obscene (and anthropocene). Not merely unhomely but uninhabitable.
And it is a time of monsters.
Aliens and kaiju, zombies and mutants, giant robots and costumed freaks lay waste to our cities. Rumbling urban smackdowns between unknowable forces scorch the Earth for those with an eye to the main chance. Property developers. Gentrifiers. Buy-to-let landlords. Their snouts in the tattered remains of a public purse no longer really intended to serve the public. At the same time, politicians and journalists casually – and with the most deadly of intentions – label people on our borders and estates and social security as not really human at all.
Monsters mean.
They are good for thinking with – from Marx's vampire capitalists and cyborg factories to the brain-eating undead ghouls that shamble relentlessly across all our post-millennial screens, large and small, dragging the mechanisms by which biopolitical states of exception operate out into plain sight.
Even though monsters might not exist they are the most material of metaphors, and more than mere metaphor.
They matter and make meaning.
Monsters refuse monstrosity.
In Tade Thompson's 'One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight', a deliberately self-interred then accidentally disinterred West African vampire tells his tale. He turned his back on the human world, but had to return to it to learn how to be in a world to which he could never belong. With chilling composure he observes armies clash and people kill for reasons he cannot fathom. He remembers a tale he was told in childhood in which – reworking Dracula's voyage to Britain – one of the vampire kind, taken unknowingly, broke free in a slaveship and killed everyone onboard. Despite this, the monster, it is clear, was not the real monster. Like the protagonist, the monster refuses – rather than denies – monstrosity. The monster resists and refutes it. He buries himself. He walks away.
'He had the combined face of a pig and a monkey, which comforted her.' And so it should. All of us.
Even if we must rip this line from Dilman Dila's 'Monwor' completely out of context.
You must look closely to spot the monster. Although it's not hard.
The eponymous and implied monster of Tendai Huchu's 'The Chikwambo' is a motley being, an exquisite corpse: it has 'the face of a new born baby', albeit with 'the head dangl[ing] to the side as if stitched up to the neckless body', and the 'hands' of a 'monkey, the legs of a baboon and [a] torso made of a patchwork of cloth and dried animal skins, fur from rabbits and cows'. A Chikwambo is created by huroyi, or witchcraft, usually for a businessman looking to get rich. All he needs to do is feed it with a relative's blood and 'that blood metamorphose[s] into money'.
It's a labour-power equation. The Chikwambo can eat or die; the businessman should fuck off and die.
Likewise, in Chikodili Emelumadu's 'Bush Baby', there's a wastrel gambler turned thief, the gwei-gwei pursuing and torturing him for stealing its mat, and the men who lied to the wastrel gambler thief, tricking him into stealing from the forest-spirit even though they know it will cost him – agonisingly – his life. Spot the monster.
Is there some calculus by which we can determine the moment at which the becoming-monstrous occurs? At which capital is embodied and the capitalist becomes capital?
When the monster is monstrated and the line is drawn, the monstrator is always on the wrong side of it.
See Apartheid (cf. James Bennett and Dave Johnston's comic 'A Divided Sun').
Monsters are the world.
In Zambia's Ndola sunken lakes the Ichitapa lurks. If your shadow falls on the water, the monster will cut it from your body, and you will fall into the water and be devoured. There were thing here before us, Jayne Bauling's 'Severed' tells us, things we cannot account for. Things that will remain long after we – individually and as a species – are gone. They predate us, and they pre-date us, and they will be our post-.
There might be a time when the only ethical thing left for us is, as a character in Vianne Venter's 'Acid Test' seems to think, a radical green accelerationism. Bring it all down, and let the world return.
(Delightfully, and perhaps instructively, Ndola is a twin town of Aldershot.)
Your description of the monster misdescribes the monster and destroys it.
In Joe Vaz's 'After the Rain', strange and deadly things emerge from the abandoned mines swiss-cheesing the ground beneath Johannesburg. Even the bugs in the mountainous mine dumps fear these creatures. They prey on township folk, like some contorted repressed returning, a reminder of the suffering and immiseration and state violence under Apartheid and since.
Mistaken for 'long skinny men with dog-heads', the creatures turn out to be dogs, 'standing on long hind legs, balancing [their] weight on the tips of [their] paws', a correction that is also mistake. Whatever they are, they are that, not something or some other thing that they resemble. Not the isomorphic protagonist, who got out as a nine-year-old back in 1986 and only now, thirty years later, returns.
But this is what happens when the monster ventures from its lair into normalcy.
Its angularity, its awkward and improbable being, its ferocity and anguish, get domesticated. Like a dog.
'History is what hurts', Jameson tells us, failing to add: 'That, and monsters'.
They hurt and they hurt. They are in pain, and they bring pain.
Like the witch in Sarah Lotz's 'That Woman' and the women who support and protect her because justice is not going to come from patriarchy or the state. Like the daughter of the old witch in Joan De La Haye's 'Impundulu', who unleashes her just rage and anguish – and the eponymous lightning bird – not only on the man who raped her and made her miscarry but on all those who would take his side. On what we, often glibly, call rape culture and patriarchy.
As if naming them contains them.
The other has just as much right (and wrong) as the self.
Which doesn't mean it's easy or comfortable, as Su Opperman's grotesque comic 'The Death of One' shows us.
Although maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe what I should be paying attention to is the page split into four panels, across the top two of which the man says 'the death of one is…' and across the bottom pair of which the sawtooth-beaked, bird-headed man-thing with too many eyes concludes '…is life to the other'. This is not some Lion King circle-of-life pablum, but a call for the dissolution of the monadic subject (and his comedy sidekick, the rational economic actor). An invocation of full communism.
'If you see a monster at your doorstep', Grandma says in Nnedi Okorafor's 'On the Road', 'the wise thing to do is shut the door'. Grandma is wrong.
The other is not really other, Lacan says, it just reflects and projects the ego. The Other is radical alterity. It cannot be identified with. It cannot be assimilated. It is unique and beyond representation and it is also the system of representation – the symbolic – that mediates the relationship between the radical, unassimilable alterity of subjects. The Other we first encounter is – quelle surprise! – the mother, defined of course by her phallic lack, which in turn figures the signifier that is always missing.
'There is an abyss between this world and the next,' the narrator of Toby Bennett's 'Sacrament of Tears' writes, 'I fear my nephew looked deep and could not make sense of what he saw'.
But perhaps the abyss is not a vagina, and the vagina is not an abyss.
Perhaps difference is not a lack at all.
Perhaps difference is an opening-out, a flowering into the realm of monsters. Which is where the monadic phallic white subject already, unbeknown to himself, lives. Along with us all.
Perhaps, like the queer, monster-embracing protagonist of Nerine Dorman's 'A Whisper in the Reeds', we should not focus so much on the monster entering our world but instead on going away from here with the monster. On becoming monster.
Because difference is an opening-out onto that place beyond, which is called hope or utopia.
Not just full communism.
Full-on communism.
Posted on April 28, 2016 April 28, 2016 Categories African/Afrodiasporic culture, Books, Horror, Monsters, Sf, Speculative AfricasTags Chikodili Emelumadu, Dave Johnston, Dilman Dila, fredric jameson, jacques lacan, James Bennett, Jayne Bauling, Jo Thomas, Joan De La Haye, Joe Vaz, Margrét Helgadóttir, Nerine Dorman, Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Lotz, Su Opperman, Tade Thompson, Tendai Huchu, Toby Bennett, Vianne Venter2 Comments on Some Theses on Monsters; occasioned by reading, and in place of a review of, Margrét Helgadóttir and Jo Thomas, eds, African Monsters (Fox Spirits Books, 2015)
African Science Fiction 101: update 2
The months since my last update have been crazily busy with other things, so there has been little time for research and even less time for actually reading any of the goodies I've uncovered. Most of which are annoyingly inconvenient sizes and shapes to lug around with me over my Xmas perambulations. But I thought I would post another list before Xmas (and before that teetering pile of books in the corner falls over on top of me).
First up, I should mention the hugely embarrassing omission of Amos Tutuola from the article that started all this (and my indebtedness to Paul March-Russell for drawing it to my attention in such a generous way). Truth is, I have never read anything by him, though The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954) and Feather Woman of the Jungle (1962) may well be squeezed into the suitcase. As might D.O. Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga (1939), translated by Wole Soyinka(!) – the first Yoruba-language novel, said to be an influence on Tutuola, not least in its fantastical landscape in which the supernatural is as real and present as the natural world.
While we're in the margins of what might be considered sf, I have had a load of things recommended to me that might be more appropriately labelled 'weird' or 'slipstream':
Tawfiq Al-Hakim, The People of the Cave (1933) – a play based on the seven sleepers of Ephesus, who sleep their way into the future; their story is told in the eighteenth surah of the Qu'ran
Bertène Juminer, Bozambo's Revenge (1968) – satirical alternate history in which Africans have colonised a swampy Europe full of idle, childish, pallid natives
Gamal al-Ghitani, The Zafarini Files (1976) – in a crowded corner of Sadat-era Cairo, a sheikh uses magic to take away men's sexual potency
Olympe Bhêly-Quénum, Snares without End (1978) – there is an essay about him at Weird Fiction Review
Ivan Vladislavić, The Folly (1993), which seems to have a nice salvage vibe to it, if not exactly salvagepunk
Calixthe Beyala, How to Cook Your Husband the African Way (2002) – begins with a black woman explaining how she turned white, but not in quite the way I initially thought it was going to go
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (2004) – a murder mystery involving a trader in memories and identity creation
Ondjaki, Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret (2008) – a wonderful poetic novel, one of the best things I've read this year; there is something fantastical about it, but there is not any fantasy in it…
Franklin Rosemont and Robin DG Kelley, eds, Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora (2009) – does what it says on the tin
Fiston Mwanza Mujilla, Tram 83 (2014) – according to reviewers it is 'Blade Runner in Africa with a John Coltrane soundtrack' that 'transfigures harsh reality with a bounding, inventive, bebop-style prose' and depicts 'a world so anarchic it would leave even Ted Cruz begging for more government'
A. Igoni Barrett, Blackass (2015) – Furi Wakiboko wakes up one morning to discover he has turned white; well, all but one part of him has…
The more obviously genre works that have come my way include:
Charlie Human, Apocalypse Now Now (2013) – an urban fantasy thriller in Cape Town's supernatural underworld
Masha du Toit, Crooks & Straights (2014) – YA urban fantasy in which Cape Town provides a home for magical refugees
Sarah Lotz, The Three (2014) – global thriller with horror/fantasy edge
SL Grey, Under Ground (2015) – while a lethal virus sweeps the world, the folks hiding out in a plush subterranean survival bunker find they have brought horror with them
Rob Boffard, Tracer (2015) – set on the falling-apart space station housing the last of humanity above a devastated Earth
Ivor W. Hartmann, ed., AfroSF volume 2 (2015) – contains five novellas by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood, Mame Bougouma Diene, Dilman Dila, Andrew Dakalira, and Efe Tokunbo Okogu
Jo Thomas and Margrét Helgadóttir, eds, African Monsters (2015) – contains fifteen stories and a comic strip by, among others, Dilman Dila, Nerine Dorman, Tendai Huchu, Sarah Lotz, Nnedi Okorafor, Tade Thompson, Nick Wood
(Should also mention Tade Thompson's debut novel, Making Wolf (2015), although it is a crime thriller, not sf/f.)
One of the things I am interested in starting to trace is the role of speculation and futurity in African political discourse, which has recently led me to:
JE Casely Hayford (aka Ekra-Agiman), Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation (1911) – a novel which apparently includes a vision of a future pan-Africa
Camara Laye, A Dream of Africa (1966) – a novel which apparently does the same
Taking of awkwardly shaped and sized books, as I was some time back, one final goody I stumbled across, which provides some useful context for thinking about African sf/f is Readings in African Popular Literature (2002), edited by Stephanie Newell. It reprints some critical articles, but also some fiction and comics and various pages from Drum magazine.
Posted on December 12, 2015 December 17, 2015 Categories African/Afrodiasporic culture, Books, Crime, Horror, Monsters, Sf, Speculative AfricasTags A. Igoni Barrett, Amos Tutuola, Andrew Dakalira, Bertène Juminer, Calixthe Beyala, Camara Laye, Charlie Human, D.O. Fagunwa, Dilman Dila, Efe Tokunbo Okogu, Ekra-Agiman), Fiston Mwanza Mujilla, Franklin Rosemont, Gamal al-Ghitani, Ivan Vladislavić, Ivor W. Hartmann, JE Casely Hayford, Jo Thomas, John Coltrane, José Eduardo Agualusa, Mame Bougouma Diene, Margrét Helgadóttir, Masha du Toit, Nerine Dorman, Nick Wood, Nnedi Okorafor, Olympe Bhêly-Quénum, Ondjaki, Rob Boffard, Robin DG Kelley, Sarah Lotz, SL Grey, Stephanie Newell, Tade Thompson, Tawfiq al Hakim, Tendai Huchu, Wole Soyinka3 Comments on African Science Fiction 101: update 2
African Science Fiction 101: update
This is really just a note listing some of the African sf that has been published since I wrote 'African Science Fiction 101' – and some of the books I just plain missed when I researched it. Hopefully, this summer I will have time to read them…
Dr Satan's Echo Chamber – double issue (12/13) of Chimurenga (2008). An all-faxion issue on black technologies no longer secret, plus 13 associated documents. Copies still available.
Khairy Shalaby, Travels of the Pickle and Sweet Vendor (1991; trans 2010). Egyptian timeslip narrative, which seems to have a different title on the cover than in the listings where I found it, and my copy is still in the post, so this mystery will remain temporarily unresolved…
Iain S. Thomas, Intentional Dissonance (2012). Post-apocalyptic dystopia by South African author.
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria (2013). Debut fantasy novel written in South Sudan by a remarkable American short-story writer of Somali and Swiss/German heritage.
Rachel Zadok, Sister-Sister (2013). A road-trip through an apocalyptic alternative (or near-future) South Africa.
Chibundu Onuzo, The Spider King's Daughter (2013). This keeps being recommended to me – but I cannot find any reference to it containing fantastical elements (despite the title), so I guess I should read it and then either replace this explanation or cut it from this list…
Dilman Dila, A Killing in the Sun (2014). Solid collection of ten short stories playing across distinctions between sf and fantasy, modernity and tradition, superstition and indigenous knowledges, by the Ugandan author and filmmaker. I think this is the first single-author collection of African sf.
Nerine Dorman, ed., Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa (2015). Anthology of nineteen stories – the third to come out of Short Story Day Africa's annual competition – at the more literary end of genre. Only a couple of duds in it. (I should have a review of it – and the previous entry – forthcoming soon.)
Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix (2015). Prequel to Who Fears Death.
In terms of short fiction, issue three of Omenana has just come out, and the second volume of Ivor Hartmann's AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers is imminent. There is also forthcoming this year an anthology called Imagine Africa 500, which apparently will contain ten sf stories by writers from Malawi and ten from writers from other African countries.
Crumbs (Miguel Llansó Ethiopia/Spain/Finland 2015) is currently doing the rounds of film festivals before, hopefully, a wider arthouse and DVD release. According to imdb, 'Our figurine sized supermen hero embarks on an epic surreal journey that will take him across the Ethiopian post apocalyptic landscape in search of a way to get on the hovering spacecraft that for years has become a landmark in the skies'.
In 'Africa SF 101', I mentioned A Beast in View (1969), by exiled anti-Apartheid activist Peter Dreyer, and Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981), set in a near-future in which resistance to Apartheid is becoming open revolution. What I missed completely were a number of novels by South Africans anticipating the end of Apartheid, ranging from the earnest to the satirical to the trashy: Anthony Delius, The Day Natal Took Off (1960) Gary Allighan, Verwoerd – the End (1961) Andrew McCoy, The Insurrectionist (1979) Frank Graves, African Chess (1990; recently revised and reissued).
There are several similar novels from outside of Africa: Iain Findlay, The Azanian Assignment (1978) – the only novel by this Australian author
Randall Robinson, The Emancipation of Wakefield Clay (1978) – looks like a further example of the American cycle of 'Black Power Sf', but with the revolution displaced from the US
Larry Bond, Vortex (1981) – about the size of a housebrick, and just as smart; as well as a dramatis personae, it has a glossary giving details of all the different weapons and weapons systems it mentions
In other news, 'African Science Fiction 101' has been translated in two parts for the website of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association, China's largest association for science fiction practitioners and fans. If you want to see it, go here and here.
Posted on June 24, 2015 December 17, 2015 Categories African/Afrodiasporic culture, Books, Sf, Speculative AfricasTags Andrew McCoy, Anthony Delius, Chibundu Onuzo, Dilman Dila, Frank Graves, Gary Allighan, Iain Findlay, Iain S. Thomas, Ivor Hartmann, Khairy Shalaby, Larry Bond, Nadine Gordimer, Nerine Dorman, Nnedi Okorafor, Peter Dreyer, Rachel Zadok, Randall Robinson, Sofia Samatar, World Chinese Science Fiction Association4 Comments on African Science Fiction 101: update
African Science Fiction 101
This is a slightly different version of an overview essay I was invited to write for the SFRA Review – the published version, along with other goodies, can be found in the pdf of # 311 (Winter 2015). There are updates here and here.
In almost every imaginable way, I am not qualified to write this piece. I am neither an Africanist nor an expert on African literatures and cultures, and my English degree is sufficiently ancient (and Leavisite) as to have been completely untroubled by critical engagement with world literature, orientalism, postcolonialism, diaspora, globalization, hybridity, the subaltern, and so on. However, thanks to the patience and generosity of many others who made the learning curve of editing the 2013 "Africa SF" issue of Paradoxa rather less steep than it otherwise would have been, there are some things I can pass on. As with that project, this essay is intended as an invitation – to engage with unfamiliar writers and texts, to broaden our vision of sf, and to look together to a global future.
But can we speak of "African sf"?
Africa covers nearly 12 million square miles and has a population of more than a billion (over 20% of the Earth's land surface and 15% of its population). It stretches from the northern temperate zone to the southern temperate zone and contains, in effect, 65 countries. Its peoples speak somewhere between 1000 and 2000 languages (and multilingualism is commonplace). In the light of such numbers, the adjective in "African sf" runs significant risks: of homogenizing diversity; of creating a reified, monolithic image of what it might mean to be "African"; of ghettoizing the sf of a continent as some kind of subset or marginal instance of a more "proper" American or European version of the genre; of patronizing such sf as somehow not yet fully formed, "developing" rather than "developed"; of separating such fiction from the wider culture(s) of which it is a part; of colonizing such cultural production by seeing it not through its own eyes but through those of Americans and Europeans.1 In teaching African sf, one way to avoid some of these problems might be to focus more closely on a single African country, enabling a more detailed and nuanced exploration of a particular culture (or set of intersecting cultures within that nation), but hitherto only South Africa and Nigeria have really produced enough sf in English for that to be feasible.
There are vast differences between – and within – North and sub-Saharan Africa. Across the continent, the influence of Arabic, European, Islamic, and Christian cultures has played out in myriad ways, as have colonialism, postcolonialism, and neo-colonialism. There are important distinctions to be drawn between – and within – indigenous and settler cultures, both in Africa and in diaspora. There are complex questions to be asked of the many hybridities thrown up at the lived interfaces and interweavings of these cultures and identities.
For example, at what point does an immigrant "count" as an African, or an émigré cease to "count" as one? Should Manly Wade Wellman, that stalwart of the US fantastic pulps from the late 1920s onwards, who was born in what is now Angola, be considered an African sf writer? How about Doris Lessing? She was born in Persia in 1919, lived in Southern Rhodesia from 1926-1949, before settling in the UK, where most of her fiction was written. How about Buchi Emecheta, born in Nigeria in 1944 but resident primarily in the UK from 1962? Or Scottish-born Jonathan Ledgard, the East African correspondent for The Economist and director of The Future Africa Afrotech Initiative, who currently lives in Africa? Or Nnedi Okorafor, who was born in Cincinatti to Igbo parents and maintains close ties to Nigeria? While such questions have no straightforward answers, there is much to be gained by thinking collectively about them. My own instinct is not to try to nail down a rigid schema, but to keep matters fluid, relationships open, and potentials in play, and to recognize the specific conjunctural value of "African sf" as a temporary, flexible, non-monolithic, and, above all, strategic identity.
All of the stories and novels discussed below were either written or have been translated into English. There are undoubtedly works in indigenous languages, as well as in Arabic2 and other European colonizer languages. In terms of which texts are in print, a course on African sf would have to focus on fiction from after the post-World War 2 independence struggles, with the possibility of shifting emphasis from "literary" to "popular" fiction the closer it draws to the present; it is difficult to imagine an sf course that would contain so many Nobel laureates and so much experimental prose, while at the same time requiring students to find the value in pulp. Such a course would probably be suitable only for upper level undergraduates or postgraduates, which indicates the importance of incorporating African sf into general courses on sf, African literature, children's and YA fiction, and so on.
I have noted whether pre-1980 out-of-print texts are held by the British Library (BL), Library of Congress (LC), the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside (E), the Merril collection at Toronto Public Library (M), or the Foundation collection at Liverpool University (F); post-1980 texts are much easier to find second-hand.
Was there African sf before World War 2?
All the examples I have found are by white South Africans, and only one of them (Timlin) is currently in print.
Joseph J. Doke's The Secret City: A Romance of the Karroo (1913; BL, E) is a Haggard-inspired lost race novel, written by the Johannesburg-based Baptist clergyman who also wrote the authorized biography of Gandhi. In the frame tale, Justin Retief, a Cape Town settler, discovers a manuscript describing the adventures of his grandfather two centuries earlier. In the framed tale, Paul Retief witnesses the destruction of the millennia-old Nefert, a forgotten outpost of the ancient Egyptian empire, while rescuing his abducted wife, Marion, believed to be a reincarnation of the legendarily cruel queen Reinhild. The prequel, The Queen of the Secret City (1916; BL, E), tells of the rise to power (and the struggle over the soul) of Reinhild – again taken from a manuscript discovered by Justin. It is positioned as an overtly Christian refutation of pernicious Nietzscheanism, but rather clumsily, as if an afterthought. Both books are rare and costly.
Archibald Lamont's South Africa in Mars (1923; BL, LC) is a posthumous account of encounters with the deceased great and good – including Shakespeare and Cecil Rhodes – on Mars, and involves a supernatural interplanetary scheme to save South Africa from its own failings. The brief description in Everett Bleiler's Science Fiction: The Early Years (1990) astutely "wonders why the book was written" (418). It is not too expensive second-hand.
British-born William M. Timlin emigrated to South Africa in 1912, aged twenty, where he became an architect and, more notably, an interior designer of picture palaces. His only novel, The Ship that Sailed to Mars (1923), is considered one of the most beautiful children's books of the period – and one of the rarest. 2000 copies were published in London, priced at five guineas (250 of them were exported to the US, and sold for twelve dollars each). In 1926, Paramount announced a film adaptation, to star the now largely forgotten Raymond Griffith, but it went unmade, and the book was not reprinted until 2011. It contains 48 pages of text – not typeset but replicating Timlin's calligraphy – and 48 paintings, telling the story of how fairies help the Old Man build a ship to travel, in a roundabout way, to the red planet, and of the fantastical civilization he finds there. Timlin's whimsical blend of sf and fantasy recalls the films of Georges Méliès, perhaps, or Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, though without the latter's manic energy or sometimes sharp bite; visually, it is much closer to Arthur Rackham.
Leonard Flemming, a farmer and occasional journalist, included the brief story 'And So It Came to Pass' in A Crop of Chaff (1925 BL), a collection of slight vignettes and humorous pieces. It is slight, but not remotely humorous. After whites have been eradicated, black people and coloured people turn on each other, destroying the human race.
Another early South African sf novel, published just after WW2 is When Smuts Goes: A History of South Africa from 1952 to 2010, first published in 2015 (1947; BL, LC, E, M) by Arthur Keppel-Jones, a professor of History at Witwatersrand University. Intended as an intervention into post-war South African politics, it projects a future in which Anglophone government is overthrown and replaced by a fascist Afrikaner state. The white Anglophone population deserts, or is hounded out of, the country. Black Africans eventually achieve a rather compromised victory over their oppressors, but prove incapable of building or maintaining a modern, thriving nation. Overall, it is one of those oddly racist anti-racist books, reiterating that old nonsense about British colonialism being more benevolent and efficient than that of other European nations. Nonetheless, it is worth the effort of finding one of the reasonably-priced second-hand copies.
First encounters
For a class on African sf, a provocative opening exercise – I am entirely indebted to Isiah Lavender III for this idea – would be to read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) alongside Nigerian Chinua Achebe's debut novel, Things Fall Apart (1958). Although neither is sf, both do science-fictional things. Conrad's novel is somewhat reflexive about the colonial adventure fiction of the period, but remains deeply problematic in its depiction of Africa and Africans (as Achebe's devastating critique in his 1975 lecture "An Image of Africa" (1978) persuasively demonstrated, single-handedly changing the way the novel is understood). Conrad depicts the journey into Africa as also one into a prehistoric past, transforming a common colonial trope of travelling backwards along the path of progress into something more akin to Verne's A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864). The abandoned relics of previous colonial incursions into the continent suggest there is nothing inevitable about "progress," while also echoing the "last man" tradition of a traveler finding Europe in ruins. The recurring sound of distant blasting and especially the image of a French battleship blindly shelling the jungle indicate the violence of colonial conquest and render modernity absurd. And if we can now also see the sf structures and moments in Conrad's tale, Achebe's novel – which is set in a fictional Igbo village in the late nineteenth century, and tells of the coming of white people, Christianity, and colonial governance – can also be read as a science-fictional account of first contact but from the other side.
Ideally, I would add Nigerian Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi (1983) into this mix. Told primarily from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of Shavi, an isolated African kingdom, it depicts the arrival of a group of albinos in a "bird of fire" – in fact, westerners fleeing what they fear is a nuclear war – and of the various, increasingly tragic, misunderstandings as both peoples see the other through their own cultural standards and preconceptions. Perhaps inevitably, colonialism wins; the Shavians certainly do not. However, as the novel is out of print, an alternative elaboration on this exercise might be to introduce two of the very best stories about colonial encounters American sf has produced, Sonya Dorman's "When I Was Miss Dow" (1968) and Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild" (1984), which draw out in more overtly science-fictional ways some elements of colonial ideology – especially around gender, sexuality, reproduction, cooptation, and cooperation – that are central to neither Conrad nor Achebe.
Irreal Africas, postcolonial fictions
One place to look for traces of African sf is in critical volumes which would never dream of using the term, or would at least prefer not to, deploying instead a de-science-fictionalized discourse of utopia and dystopia, and labelling anything irreal as some kind of postcolonial magic realism or avant-gardist experimentalism. Gerald Gaylard's After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism (2005) is a treasure trove in this regard. Without Gaylard, for example, I might never have come across South African Ivan Vladislavić's satirical, often Kafkaesque short stories collected in Missing Persons (1989) and Propaganda by Monuments (1996), many of which – for example, "The Omniscope (Pat. Pending)," "We Came to the Monument," and "A Science of Fragments" – contain sf elements. (Both volumes are out of print, and second-hand copies of Flashback Hotel (2010), the omnibus edition intended to make these stories accessible once more, are even harder to track down.)
Who Remembers the Sea (1962; BL in French, LC) – written by Algerian Mohammed Dib while exiled in Paris for his opposition to the French colonial occupation of Algeria – is set in a phantasmagorical city that constantly shifts and changes. Strange beasts roam the city, and violent conflict brings death and devastation. Apart from several more or less straightforwardly realistic flashbacks to the narrator's youth, the novel is told in an elusive manner. It is replete with neologisms and neosemes, used with the consistency one would expect of sf world-building, even if the objects to which they attach are not brought into clear focus. Events and entities never quite seem to hold still. The revolution, if that is what it is, happens offstage, just out of sight. Each chapter seems to have forgotten the preceding one, and sometimes this is the case with paragraphs, too. It is a remarkable account of living under occupation.
In the Egyptian Moustafa Mahmoud's slender The Rising from the Coffin (1965; LC), an Egyptian archeologist visits Indian Brahma Wagiswara, and then timeslips (or perhaps merely dreams) his way back to the era of the Pharaohs, in which Imhotep seems also to be Wagiswara. Scientific and spiritual worldviews are brought into collision, only for the narrator/protagonist to learn that they are not necessarily contradictory. Mahmoud's The Spider (1965) was translated and serialized (1965–66) in Arab Observer, but I have been unable to locate any copies.
The Ghanaian [B.] Kojo Laing writes complex, experimental confections using sf, fantasy, and realist elements. Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) brings two immortal communities – Tukwan, a fantastical community in Ghana, and Levensvale, a disentimed Scottish village – into complex contact with each other. Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars (1992) is discussed below. Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters (2006) is his largest, most sprawling, and most difficult novel to summarize, but it does involve, among many other sf elements, genetic engineering that makes it increasingly difficult for rich and poor countries to interact. Nigerian Ben Okri's even more massive The Famished Road (1991) is easy reading in contrast. In a ghetto of an unnamed African city, the abiku (spirit-child) Azaro is constantly pressed by sibling spirits to return to their realm. In this often oneiric blend, sf imagery recurs.
The novels I would choose to teach, though, are Congolese Sony Labou Tansi's Life and A Half (1977) and Kenyan Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow (2006).
The former, set in the fictional republic of Katamalanasia, tells of resistance to a murderous dictator called The Providential Guide, and of the numerous, equally deadly and deranged offspring who compete to replace him. It culminates in an apocalyptic war that involves such superscience weapons as mutant flies whose sting turns their victims into radiant carbon, radio-flies with beam weapons, the radio-bomb, and the real rifle of peace. It is brief, hyperbolic, brutal, and comic.
Thiong'o's novel, set in the fictional state of Abruria, is much more accessible, but much more massive. An irreal burlesque, indignant at the state of postcolonial Africa, it excoriates brutal domestic corruption and its interrelations with a global economic system constructed to serve the interests of the former and neo-colonialists. For example, in one strand, a government minister jockeying for position plans to build the tallest building in the world – so tall, in fact, that Abruria must develop a space program in order to take the President, by rocket, to its penthouse.
An alternative for those daunted by the sheer size of Wizard of the Crow might be Ivorian Ahmadou Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote (1998), which recounts the life of a shapeshifting dictator and the history of African decolonization/neo-colonization. Utterly fantastical and in some ways completely true, it is shorter yet more grueling than Wizard, but lacks Thiong'o's humour and overt sf elements.
Pulp Africas, cyberpunk Africas
There are a number of African texts which we can think of as being closely related to western pulp traditions. Ghanaian Victor Sabah's brief, self-consciously naïve 'An Imaginary Journey to the Moon' (1972) was collected in Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss's variously titled Best SF: 1972 (1973) and again in Aldiss and Sam Lundwall's The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (1986), although editors seems reluctant to detail where it first appeared. South African Claude Nunes – sometimes with Rhoda Nunes as co-author – published a couple of short stories, 'The Problem' (1962) and 'Inherit the Earth' (1963) in, respectively, John Carnell's Science Fantasy and Science Fiction Adventures magazines in the UK, before seeing a pair of short novels, Inherit the Earth (1967) and Recoil (1971), as halves of Ace Doubles in the US. The Sky Trapeze (1980) was published in the UK. All three novels are available on kindle. They are competent enough, and their depiction of struggles between humans and posthumans of various sorts could be seen as commenting on Apartheid. However, they are so grounded in American sf – apocalyptic wars, androids, mutants, psi powers, group minds, interstellar travel – that their occasional African settings and traces of a South African perspective are rather overwhelmed.
The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012) and 3 (2014), edited by Lavie Tidhar, include stories from Gambia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Ivor Hartmann's AfroSf: Science Fiction by African Writers anthology (2012) contains 22 new short stories from across the continent (including Gambia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and, primarily, South Africa). This groundbreaking collection displays various, often quite complex, interrelations between African content, settings, and culture, and US pulp traditions, protocols, and story types. A sequel volume of novellas is forthcoming.
There are also a number of thrillers with significant sf elements. The popular and prolific Kenyan David G. Maillu, winner of the 1992 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, wrote several sf novels. The Equatorial Assignment (1980) introduces special agent 009, Benni Kamba. He works for the covert pan-Africanist security organization NISA (National Integrity Service of Africa) in the struggle against neo-colonial power, here represented by Dr Thunder's SPECTRE-like operation, which is engaged in removing any remotely effective African head of state and replacing him with a puppet ruler. The influence of the James Bond films (rather than Ian Fleming's novels) on this slight and rather crudely written YA novel is clear. Every woman 009 meets is beautiful and sooner or later ends up in bed with him, though only one of them subsequently betrays him (but her confused feelings for him then lead to a moment of weakness which enables him to triumph). Operation DXT (1986) is a sequel, while Kadosa (1975; BL) is an sf romance, in which the eponymous alien woman visits contemporary Kenya. Nigerian Valentine Alily's Mark of the Cobra (1980) is another Bond-inspired short YA novel: Ca'afra Osiri Ba'ara, aka the Cobra, has developed a devastating solar weapon, and only Nigeria's Special Service Agent, SSA2 Jack Ebony, can thwart his plans for global domination. The villain even acknowledges when he is quoting from Live and Let Die. A Beast in View (1969 BL, F), by anti-apartheid South African exile Peter Dreyer, was banned in South Africa on publication. In this rather more literary near-future thriller, the League of South African Democrats uncover a scheme to frack oil from shale by detonating a nuclear bomb in the Karoo region.
However, probably the best route into thinking about African sf in relation to western pulp sf is through cyberpunk.3 South African Lauren Beukes' first two novels, Moxyland (2008) and the Clarke Award-winner Zoo City (2010) are both cyberpunk-ish – the earlier more obviously so, but I would recommend teaching the stronger, later novel, which might also be considered as urban fantasy, not least since the best critical work on Beukes also focuses on Zoo City.4
A brilliant, and rather more challenging, companion novel is Ghanaian [B.] Kojo Laing's experimental Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars (1992), whose phantasmagorical tale has a cyberpunkish setting. Set in 2020, it tells of the war between Major Gentl and the mercenary Torro the Terrible, with the fate of Achimoto City and perhaps all Africa hanging in the balance. It is dense, fantastical, poetic – and, I have just discovered, no longer in print.
Perhaps, then, the Egyptian Ahmed Khaled Towfik's Utopia (2008), often considered proleptic of the Arab Spring, might do instead. Cyberpunk elements lurk in the background of a world divided between the walled enclaves of the rich and the masses of impoverished and disenfranchised peoples living in the ruins. A young man from the former ventures into the latter for kicks, runs into trouble, returns, but doesn't really learn anything. Or maybe Efe Okogu's novella 'Prop 23' in AfroSF, which reworks elements of Neuromancer and biopolitical perspectives in a future Lagos.
Or, from among Afrodiasporic texts, The African Origins of UFOs (2006), the afro-psychedelic noir sf novel by British-Trinidadian poet and musician Anthony Joseph (his reading of extracts on the 2005 Liquid Textology CD is also highly recommended). Or perhaps Parisian-born Tunisian Nadia El Fani's film Bedwin Hacker (France/Morocco/Tunisia 2003), a low-key political thriller about neo-colonial power relations in which a French Intelligence agent tries to track down a North African hacker. It is available on DVD – whereas Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Les Saignantes/The Bloodiest (Cameroon 2005), which plays with cyberpunk imagery in much more challenging ways, is not.
I have not read Ghanaian J.O. Eshun's The Adventures of Kapapa (1976; F), about a scientist who discovers antigravity, nor have I been able to find a copy of Journey to Space (1980),5 a novella by Nigerian Flora Nwapa, who is widely regarded as "the mother of modern African literature."
The Arizonan writer Nancy Farmer spent 17 years living and working in Africa – South Africa, Mozambique, mostly Zimbabwe – where she started to publish fiction. After winning the 1987 Writers of the Future gold award, she returned to the US. Her debut novel, The Ear, The Eye and The Arm was published in Zimbabwe in 1989; the much-revised 1994 version won numerous awards.6 Set in 2194, it tells of the abduction of General Matsika's children, of their adventures in Harare's various communities, and of the search for them by the three hapless, mutant detectives of the title.
It is tempting to select Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker (2005), The Shadow Speaker (2007) or Akata Witch (2011) as the YA novels to teach; they are highly-regarded and easily available, and they nicely trouble distinctions between sf and fantasy. However, a course on African SF might be better served by her adult novels, and by instead looking at YA sf from other writers: Zambian-born naturalized South African Nick Wood's The Stone Chameleon (2004) and Botswana-resident South African Jenny Robson's Savannah 2116 AD (2004). The former is a relatively slight adventure novel in a post truth-and-reconciliation South Africa of 2030. Race is no longer an issue, apart from all the ways it continues to be one. Kerem, the fifteen-year-old protagonist, and a handful of friends from his new school, find themselves standing up to a neighborhood criminal gang – complete with heavies genetically altered to incorporate physical traits of wild animals – and questing for an ancient source of power that will heal the African communities desolated and divided by European colonialism and its long aftermath. Robson's novel, aimed at older readers, is a little longer, more complex and more accomplished. It imagines a 22nd-century Africa in which the majority of humans – called, dismissively, "Homosaps" – live on reservations so as to enable the continent's flora and fauna to recover from global anthropogenic ecocatastrophe. The teenage Savannah, and her new boyfriend, D-nineteen, who is one of the mysterious "gens" – that is, he has been genetically engineered so that, at the age of eighteen, his organs can be harvested and, ostensibly, transplanted into struggling animals – discover all is not as it seems. Both novels are also susceptible to readings from animal studies and biopolitical perspectives.
The borderlines of sf
In Africa, as elsewhere, fiction often lurks right on the edges of the genre. For example, The Last of the Empire (1981) by Senegalese Ousmane Sembene – not only a leading African novelist but also "the father of African Cinema" – is a political thriller about a military coup in a newly independent African nation; it is also almost a roman à clef about Senegal, satirizing its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, with whom Sembene often butted heads. This hesitancy about the nature of the novel's setting gives it an oddly science-fictional air. A similar science-fictionality haunts the Zimbabwean Dambudzo Marechera's The Black Insider (written 1978, posthumously published 1990), in which autobiographical reminiscences are told from within a derelict university building outside of which a war rages. The non-specific location of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), which takes place in a frontier settlement as war between the Empire and the barbarians looms, draws it even closer to sf.7 In contrast, South African Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) is clearly set in the near-future, with resistance to Apartheid becoming open revolution. Despite this specificity, the novel feels perhaps less science-fictional than Waiting for the Barbarians since its focus is on the shifting relationship between a liberal white family and their black African servant who shelters them in his village, a remote home to which the pass system would only otherwise have permitted him to return every two years.
J.M. Ledgard's Submergence (2012) juxtaposes the lives of James and Danny before and especially after they meet one Christmas and fall in love: a British spy, and a descendant of Thomas More, he is abducted by jihadists in Somalia; a biomathematician, she studies microbial life in the Hadal depths of the Atlantic ocean. Occasionally too precious for its own good (it is the kind of novel in which one character will quote Rilke in German to the other), it establishes a series of genuinely effective contrasts between the immediacy of James's experience and the sublime spaces and times of Danny's.
I would, however, select a couple of debut novels to probe our understanding of the relationships between genres, the ways in which texts are comprised of multiple generic elements and tendencies – and to question the process of using Anglo-American categories to consider African novels.
Nigerian Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You By Chance (2009) won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, a Wole Soyinka Prize, and a Betty Trask Award.8 It is a fast-paced comedy of desperation in which the well-educated Kingsley lacks the right connections to get a job as an engineer. When his father falls ill, and essential medical treatment proves too costly, Kingsley – now also responsible, as the opara (first-born son), for the wellbeing of his whole family – finds himself propelled into the world of 419 scammers. If it had been written by William Gibson or Neal Stephenson, no-one would think twice about treating it as sf.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes was born in the UK and raised in Ghana. In The Tail of the Blue Bird (2009), Kayo – who trained in the UK as a forensic pathologist and worked as a police Scenes of Crime Officer – returns to Accra, hoping to pursue similar work. The Ghanaian police are uninterested in hiring him until the girlfriend of a government minister discovers baffling remains – they might be human, or not – in a distant village. Caught up in the potentially fatal machinations of an ambitious police officer and the webs of everyday urban violence and corruption, Kayo finds a rather different kind of community, with a deep history and traditional wisdom. The novel never quite becomes sf, and its treatment of forensic science refuses the absurd certainties of CSI, but fantastical elements emerge.
Alternative and future Africas
All of the books in this section would work well on an African sf course – and since I do not actually have to choose between them, I will not.
French-resident Djiboutian Abdourahman A. Waberi describes an alternate world In the United States of Africa (2006), in which Africa is the global superpower and Europe a mass of uncivilized tribes constantly fighting each other. This kaleidoscopic novel is not an alternative history as sf normally understands it – there is no jonbar point of historical divergence, nor is it entirely clear whether pre-colonial African civilizations just continued on in to the present. Furthermore, its descriptions of European internecine strife are not an inaccurate description of the continent's actual history – Waberi merely refuses to drape it in the self-serving narratives of civilization and progress, instead imposing upon it the kind of supremacist myths that typify many European treatments of Africa. Malaika, a French girl adopted by an African doctor when he was working on an aid mission in the benighted continent, returns as an adult to her birthplace in the hope of finding her mother and a clearer sense of her own confused identity. This is a dazzling book, sharp and funny, and there is no way a synopsis can do it justice.9
The Nigerian-American Deji Bryce Olukotun's Nigerians in Space (2013), largely written and much of it set in South Africa, is an intriguing thriller focused less on the neatly decentered scheme around which it is organized than on its aftermath. In the early 1990s, a politician recruits top scientists from the Nigerian diaspora to return home as part of the "Brain Gain" intended to transform the country through high-tech innovation; in the present day, it transpires that only one of the scientists escaped assassination before the project – or was it just a scam? – could cohere.
Nnedi Okorafor's World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death (2010) is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which technology and magic operate side by side, and in which dark-skinned Okeke are oppressed by light-skinned Nuru. Onyesonwu, the child of a Nuru woman raped by an Okeke sorcerer, learns to use her powers to prevent the genocide her father plans. Similarly structured to her YA novels, Who Fears Death is about rape, female genital mutilation, violation, trauma, the legacies of violence, the justifications for violence, ethnic struggles, gendered power, political and ethical responsibility, among other things, and wisely avoids proffering easy solutions.
In Lagoon (2014), Okorafor leaves behind her YA structure for a fast-paced thriller, and offers a more optimistic vision of a future Africa – or, more precisely, a future Lagos. By her own account, she started the novel as a response to the infuriating District 9 (Blomkamp US/NZ/Canada/South Africa) but, as she wrote, it transformed into something else. Aliens land in the lagoon, bringing chaos – a gang wants to kidnap the aliens, evangelical Christians want to convert them, an underground LGBT group sees in them a harbinger of revolution, the government is too slow and corrupt to respond effectively – and transformation; and Nigeria for once appears in the global mediascape as something other than a source of oil and location of violence.10
Lagos 2060 (2013) edited by Ayodele Arigbabu, collects eight stories developed out of a workshop in 2010, Nigeria's golden anniversary year, concerned with imagining Lagos, already Africa's most populous city, a century after the country's independence. The stories contain different futures, though with some elements in common, and address global warming and other ecological concerns, nuclear disasters, the continuing role of foreign capital in determining the national economy and thus daily life, the nature of a post-oil Nigerian economy and state, the potential secession of Lagos and balkanization of the Federal State, the polarization of the wealthy and the impoverished, and developments such as the Eko Atlantic City as a moneyed enclave. They are quite pulpy and sometimes crudely written – further evidence of the need Tade Thompson described for regular paying markets for sf in Africa in order for writers to develop their craft – but they represent an important step in the development of African, and specifically Nigerian, sf.
African sf is already at least a century old. It is – as I hope this undoubtedly incomplete overview suggests – wonderfully diverse and increasingly common. It challenges us to rethink our understanding of the genre, and how we think about the past, the present, and the future. It deserves – indeed, demands – our attention. Not as a poor relative in need of charity, but as an equal from whom we all have much to learn.
[There is an update here.]
It has been argued, for example, that the European success of Sony Labou Tansi's debut novel, Life and a Half (1979), was indebted in large part to its misidentification as "magic realist," a categorisation that produces significant misunderstandings of both the novel and Congolese culture (labelling it as sf shifts how it can be understood but of course invites exactly the same criticism). At "Imagining Future Africa: SciFi, Innovation and Technology," the closing panel at the third annual Africa Writes festival at the British Library (11-13 July 2014), British-Nigerian Tade Thompson raised a related problem: without regular, paying markets in Africa for sf of African origin, African writers are likely to orient their fiction towards US or European markets rather than pursue more indigenous forms and concerns. (December 2014 saw the launch of Omenana, a free bimonthly online magazine of African and Afrodiasporic sf, edited by Mazi Nwonwu and Chinelo Onwualu; and January 2105 saw the launch of Jalada's online Afrofutures anthology.)
For example, the SFE's "Arabic sf" entry refers to untranslated sf by the Egyptians Tawfiq al Hakim, Mustafa Mahmud, Yusuf Idris, and Ali Salim, the Libyan Yusuf al-Kuwayri, the Tunisian Izzaddin al-Madani, and the Algerian Hacène Farouk Zehar, who wrote in French (as did Algerian Mohammed Dib, whose sf novel I discuss in this essay). Some of Tawfiq al Hakim's sf has been translated into English. His "In the Year One Million" (1947), depicts a sexless, immortal, future humanity rediscovering love, mortality, and religion; it is included in In the Tavern of Life and Other Stories (1998). Some of its themes are developed in his four-act play Voyage to Tomorrow (1957) and his one-act play Poet on the Moon (1972), both of which can be found in Plays, Prefaces and Postscripts of Tawfiq Al-Hakim, volume two: Theater of Society (1984). In the former, a doctor and an engineer, both facing execution, are offered reprieves if they will pilot an experimental rocket into the depths of space. After a fatal crash, they find themselves revived as immortal beings on an empty alien world, faced with the emptiness of eternity. They return to Earth, somehow human once more, and find that during their three-hundred-year absence, the world has become a utopia of peace and plenty – and that humanity faces a similarly meaningless future. In the latter play, a poet maneuvers his way onto a lunar expedition. He alone is able to perceive the alien inhabitants, living at peace since becoming sexless, and to recognize that his fellow astronaut's discovery of the Moon's mineral wealth can only result in colonial devastation.
Ghanaian Jonathan Dotse has been working on a cyberpunk novel, Accra: 2057, for several years, although it remains unclear how soon it will be completed.
Beukes' subsequent novels, The Shining Girls (2013) and Broken Monsters (2014), combine serial killer thrillers with sf and fantastical elements. They are a useful reminder – as is Doris Lessing's sf, which I have omitted from this outline since her work is already well known – that we should not expect African writers necessarily to set their fiction in Africa.
WorldCat notes copies are held by four German universities and by Northwestern in the US.
Her other sf includes the bleak, near-future diptych, The House of the Scorpion (2002) and The Lord of Opium (2013), set on the contested US-Mexico border. The Warm Place (1995), the Zimbabwe-set A Girl Named Disaster (1996), and the Sea of Trolls trilogy (2004-2009) are fantasy.
His In the Heart of the Country (1977) features a fleeting UFO appearance.
Nwaubani's mother is a cousin of Flora Nwapa.
Africa Paradis (Sylvestre Amoussou Benin/France 2006) conjures a broader similar near future after the collapse of Europe, the newly-risen African superpower is plagued by the problem of illegal immigrants from Europe; it is available on DVD. Yet another version of this role-reversal milieu features in the final and longest film in Omer Fast's Nostalgia (2006), a triptych shown as a gallery installation. It is more nuanced than Amoussou's feature film, but pretty much unavailable unless you are near a gallery where it is showing. Even though both films would work well as accompaniments to Waberi's novel neither of them is in its league.
A somewhat less compelling vision of apocalyptic transformation can be found in The Feller of Trees (2012), by Zambian Mwangala Bonna, who lives and works in South Africa and Botswana. In it, Berenice struggles to reconcile her Christian faith with the political machinations necessary to unite and save Africa when the continent begins to sink.
Posted on February 5, 2015 December 17, 2015 Categories African/Afrodiasporic culture, Books, Sf, Speculative AfricasTags Abdourahman A. Waberi, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, africa, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ahmed Khaled Towfik, Anthony Joseph, Archibald Lamont, Arthur Keppel-Jones, Arthur Rackham, Ayodele Arigbabu, Ben Okri, Brian Aldiss, Buchi Emecheta, Chinelo Onwualu, Chinua Achebe, Claude Nunes, Dambudzo Marechera, David G. Maillu, Deji Bryce Olukotun, Doris Lessing, Flora Nwapa, Georges Méliès, Harry Harrison, Ivan Vladislavić, Ivor Hartmann, J.M. Coetzee, J.M. Ledgard, J.O. Eshun, jalada, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Jenny Robson, John Carnell, Jonathan Dotse, Joseph Conrad, Joseph J. Doke, jules verne, Kojo Laing, Lauren Beukes, Lavie Tidhar, Leonard Flemming, Manly Wade Wellman, Mazi Nwonwu, Mohammed Dib, Moustafa Mahmoud, Mwangala Bonna, Nadia El Fani, Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Farmer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Nick Wood, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, Omer Fast, Ousmane Sembene, Peter Dreyer, Rhoda Nunes, Sam Lundwall, sf, Sony Labou Tansi, Sonya Dorman, Sylvestre Amoussou, Tade Thompson, Tawfiq al Hakim, Valentine Alily, Victor Sabah, William M. Timlin, Winsor McCay19 Comments on African Science Fiction 101


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20 Jul 2020 20 Jul 2020 nasarawaeye
COVID-19: Gov Sule Presents Revised 2020 Budget Of N62.96bn To Assembly For Approval
Gov. Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, has presented a revised 2020 budget of N62.96billion only to the state house of assembly for consideration and approval due to the effects of coronavirus on the economy.Rt. Hon Ibrahim Balarabe Abdullahi, the Speaker of the House announced this after Hon Tanko Tunga (APC-Awe North), the Majority Leader of the House read the governor's letter during the House Proceedings in Lafia on Monday.Balarabe Abdullahi, who said that the revised budget tagged"Budget of Inclusive Development" was necessary as Coronavirus pandemic has affected the socio-economic activities of the state, the country and the world at large.According to the speaker, in furtherance of it support to Engineer Abdullahi Sule's administration to succeed, the House has expeditiously passed the 2020 appropriation amendment bill of the sum 62.96billion naira into first and second reading respectively.The speaker said, "A bill for a law to amend the Nasarawa State 2020 appropriation bill of N62,968,348, 139.00 only for the services of Nasarawa State has scaled first and second reading at the House." The accelerated passage was due to the importance of the budget to the development of the state as a result of COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world." The recurrent expenditure is N31,943,912,285.00.billion only while the Capital expenditure is N26,465,632,374.00 billion only and the consolidated revenue fund charges is N4,558,803,479.00 billion,only" he said.The speaker committed the revised budget to the House Committee on Finance and Appropriation for its necessary action and to report back to the House on Wednesday, July 22nd.Earlier, Hon Tanko Tunga, the Majority Leader of the House while presenting the governor's message, urged his colleagues to give the budget an accelerated passage in the interest of development.Hon Danladi Jatau (PDP-Kokona West), the Minority Leader seconded the motion.Hon Mohammed Okpoku (APC-Udege/Loko) and Hon Suleiman Yakubu(APC-Awe South) while contributing on the issue said that the revised budget is timely considering the effects of COVID-19 in the society.It would be recalled that the governor had on Dec. 4, 2019.presented a 2020 bugdet proposal of N100.52 billion to the Assembly for consideration and approval.Sule, who tagged it as "Budget of Inclusive Development", said that it was anchored on his administration's policy of transparency, accountability and prudence.The state assembly subsequently passed the appropriation bill into law on Dec. 23, 2019 after raising it from N100.5 billion to N108.4 billion.
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Please join The Arc South of the James for a Potluck Picnic.
Saturday, Sept. 8, at 5 p.m.
Lakeview Park (503 Lake Avenue), Colonial Heights.
Hot dogs, hamburgers, ice and cups will be provided.
To RSVP, please send an email to tomsusancoon@aol.com.


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Q: Sum the quantity for all duplicates of a distinct value
Hi everyone,
I'm trying to sum the quantity of individuals for all the duplicates of a distinct location.
I've counted the number of duplicates each of those distinct values has. Now I need that number to reflect the sum of the quantity. For example, where there are 4 duplicates of a distinct location, I need the last column to show the number 13 on the 5th row.
Quantity |   Latitude     | Longitude   | Distinct locat° |  N° of that locat° | Quantity at 1 location
1        |   34°03'59.7"S |23°22'35.2"E | Distinct        |          1         |    ?
9        |   34°04'32.9"S |23°22'20.0"E |                 |                    |    NA
1        |   34°04'32.9"S |23°22'20.0"E |                 |                    |    NA
2        |   34°04'32.9"S |23°22'20.0"E |                 |                    |    NA
1        |   34°04'32.9"S |23°22'20.0"E | Distinct        |          4         |    ? (will be 13)
1        |   34°10'60.0"S |22°09'27.5"E |                 |                    |    NA
5        |   34°10'60.0"S |22°09'27.5"E |                 |                    |    NA
1        |   34°10'60.0"S |22°09'27.5"E |                 |                    |    NA
2        |   34°10'60.0"S |22°09'27.5"E |                 |                    |    NA
1        |   34°10'60.0"S |22°09'27.5"E | Distinct        |          5         |    ?
1        |   33°42'47.1"S |26°37'05.6"E | Distinct        |          1         |    ?

The above example is only a few rows but I have over 2900 rows and 390 distinct values. Some of them have 20 duplicates with various quantities, so I need a formula.
Does anyone know how to do that?
Thanks in advance.

A:
=IF(D2="Distinct";SUMIFS($A$2:$A$12;$B$2:$B$12;B2;$C$2:$C$12;C2);"NA")

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Dental & Maxillofacial Clinic is a specialty practice committed to providing our patients with the highest possible standard of dental care available. Our mission is to go beyond the preservation and maintenance concepts of general dentistry; we design each treatment plan to provide for an uncompromised functional and esthetic solution. We strive to provide a level of care that encompasses every dimension of the patient's well being, technologically and in the human arena. No effort is spared to assure that the treatment environment is comfortable, comforting and strictly sterile conforming to the highest of standards accepted globally.
Our goal is to inspire the confidence and trust that bring character to an artistically restored, healthy smile.


text:
Q: Maintain an empty directory structure in git that ignores any files in them I have a directory structure that a third party library requires to have as a workspace, so I want to have that file structure present in my repo.  However, if there are any temporary files in those directories, i never want to actually commit them.
so, for example, I might have:
/data
|----/dir1
|----/dir2
     |----/dir3

and the existence of those directories is required for the program to run successfully, but I would not want to accidentally commit a 5GB temporary data file or something like that.
So, what I did was add a .gitignore at the root of the /data directory with the following contents:
*
!*.gitignore
!*.keep

The idea being that it will ignore everything in both the current and all child directories, except for any file ending in .gitignore and .keep
I then add a .keep to each of my directories:
/data
.gitignore
|----/dir1
     .keep
|----/dir2
     .keep
     |----/dir3
          .keep

I then run git add --all for good measure, and run git commit
result:
new file:   data/.gitignore

but all of the .keep files were ignored.  What did I do wrong?

A: You're running afoul of this (from gitignore).

It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded. Git doesn't list excluded directories for performance reasons, so any patterns on contained files have no effect, no matter where they are defined.

I don't know how to work around it in Git.
However, this indicates your program is quite fragile. Your program should be robust enough to create those directories itself. Alternatively, your build system should create them.

A: Instead of adding your patterns to the .gitignore file at the root of your project directory structure and then going around adding .keep files under each sub-dir to get Git to add the directory structure itself, I'd recommend adding a separate .gitignore file inside each sub-directory rather than the project root.
Your .gitignore file would look at follows:
# ignore everything in the current dir
*

# except this file
!.gitignore

You'd use these carefully and in the specific (sub)directories where you want to ignore all content without having to mess around with additional extensions. Note that you can still keep your .gitignore file at the project's root with its own set of patterns. Just watch out for potential conflicts.
Your structure would look as follows:
/data
|----/dir1
     .gitignore
|----/dir2
     .gitignore
     |----/dir3
          .gitignore

Workaround: git add -f <filename>
As noted, if all the .gitignore files have the * wild card and are set to ignore everything, Git will apply these settings to child directories. In the example above, the dir3/.gitignore file would never be processed by git add due to the wild card in dir2/.gitignore.
One possibility to work around this is to force Git to add the .gitignore files in the sub-directories.
In the example above, you can use git add -f dir2/dir3/.gitignore to force Git to add the file. This will allow you to get the directory structure you want, while at the time time avoiding future content from being tracked in those directories.


text:
Illinois Becomes Latest US State to Recognize Blockchain
SEC Charges Individual with Orchestrating Offering Fraud
SEC Announces Settlement With Longfin Founding CEO
Members of U.S. Congress Request Further Input from IRS Following the U.S. Tax Authority's Guidance on Airdrops and Hardforks
Bahamas Introduces CBDC
SEC Settles Charges With Issuer Over Unregistered ICO
Crypto Firms Shutting Down Because of European AML Requirements
EU Publishes Statement on Stablecoins
IRS Begins Notifying Owners of Cryptocurrency of Potential Failures to Report Income and Pay Taxes
30 August 2019 by David Zaslowsky 1 Min Read
In July, the IRS announced that it had begun sending letters to taxpayers who may have failed to properly report income and pay any tax associated with cryptocurrency transactions or who did not properly report such transactions. The IRS expects to send more than 10,000 letters before the end of August. Taxpayers who have not properly reported their cryptocurrency transactions are, where appropriate, liable for tax, penalties, and interest, and in certain cases, may be…
SEC Fines SimplyVital for Unregistered ICO
20 August 2019 by David Zaslowsky 2 Mins Read
On August 12, 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled charges against a New England-based blockchain company for offering and selling approximately $6.3 million of securities to the public in unregistered transactions. According to the SEC's order, in late 2017, SimplyVital Health, Inc. publicly announced its plan to conduct an ICO to raise money to further its development of Health Nexus, a "healthcare-related blockchain ecosystem." SimplyVital offered a new token called Health Cash,…
SEC Obtains TRO Against Organizer of "Fraudulent" ICO
On August 13, 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced on fraud charges against a Brooklyn individual and two entities under his control who allegedly engaged in a fraudulent scheme to sell digital securities to investors and to manipulate the market for those securities. The SEC filed charges against Reginald "Reggie" Middleton, a self-described "financial guru," and two entities he controls, Veritaseum, Inc. and Veritaseum, LLC (collectively, Veritaseum). The complaint, alleges that the Defendants…
Texas Renews its Cryptocurrency Crackdown
9 August 2019 by David Zaslowsky 2 Mins Read
Texas has been one of the more active states in the United States when it comes to cryptocurrency enforcement. The Texas State Securities Board was the first state securities regulator to enter an enforcement order against a cryptocurrency firm and, to date, the Securities Commissioner has entered 24 administrative orders involving 62 individuals and entities. In June, the State Securities Board started an investigative sweep of suspect cryptocurrency offerings after the price of bitcoin nearly tripled over a period of…
© Copyright 2020 – Blockchain


text:
5.2 Counting by Territory and Prisoners in Area Rules III
We have seen that the game has a boundary at which the outcome is not affected if one player is allowed to play twice consecutively. Let's consider whether a game played by area rules III can be counted by territory and prisoners.
Let n1 be the number of black stones played on the board up to the first pass (including handicap stones in a handicap game), and let n2 be the number of white stones. After this pass, play continues until the end of the game. Let A1 and A2 be the numbers of black and white stones on the board at the end of the game, and let B1 and B2 be the numbers of black and white stones removed by capture. Let C1 and C2 be the numbers of points surrounded by Black and White, respectively.
Let N1 be the total number of stones played by Black, including handicap stones, and N2 be the total number played by White. Then,
N1 = A1 + B1 and N2 = A2 + B2.
Black's and White's scores t1 and t2 are calculated as follows:*
t1 = A1 + C1 - (n1 - n2)/2
t2 = A2 + C2 + (n1 - n2)/2
The difference T between the two scores is:
T = t1 - t2 = (A1 - A2) + (C1 - C2) - (n1 - n2)
But (A1 - A2) = (N1 - B1) - (N2 - B2) = -(B1 - B2) + (N1 - N2), so
T = (C1 - C2) - (B1 - B2) + (N1 - n1) - (N2 - n2)
If the scores s1 and s2 are counted by territory and prisoners as follows, the difference will agree with territory rules III:
s1 = C1 - B1 + (N1 - n1)
Think about what these equations mean. C1 is territory, B1 is prisoners, and (N1 - n1) is the number of black stones played after the first pass. The score in area rules III is being redefined as follows:
Score = surrounded points - prisoners + (number of stones played after first pass until end of game)
In general, after the first pass in area rules III, the player with fewer remaining moves will be able to play some extra moves in order to match the number played by his opponent. We can make this a requirement: the two players must play equal numbers of moves after the last competitive move; that is,
N1 - n1 = N2 - n2
Adding this requirement does not alter the outcome, and the two players' scores become:
s1 = C1 - B1
In practice mistakes can easily be made in counting the number of stones played by the two players after the last competitive move, so playing the same number of stones after this point is a practical procedure.
We must remember, however, that the players cannot always play equal numbers of stones after the last competitive move. There are cases in which one player cannot play anywhere on the board. In these cases, the player should be allowed to play a move that immediately becomes a prisoner. That is, the player should be allowed to pass and give one stone to his opponent as a prisoner.
The rule can therefore require equal numbers of moves after the last competitive move, with the provision that one stone be given to the opponent as a prisoner for each pass after the last competitive move. There will rarely be cases in which one side has nowhere to play, so usually the players can actually play equal numbers of stones.
We have arrived at an important conclusion: go scored under area rules III as the sum of stones and territory can also be counted using territory and prisoners. This shows that the game is exactly the same, whether the object is to play more stones or to take more territory and prisoners. From the standpoint of traditional territory counting, it also means that if the number of moves played after the so-called end of the game is added to each player's score, the addition of this rule enables unusual positions to be completely resolved through actual play without causing any loss of points.
Another point to note here is that when the last competitive move is made correctly under area rules III, the number of remaining neutral points (other than one-sided neutral points) should be even. Accordingly, there is a difference from traditional territory rules, under which the last competitive move can occur even if the number of neutral points is odd. To make the neutral points truly neutral in territory rules, it will be necessary to add further changes to area rules III.
Implicit in these formulas is the provision that in a handicap game played under area rules, the handicap stones are not counted as part of Black's area. This is the standard Chinese practice.


On April 29th, the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh (WPDT CTP) was made available via http://developer.windowsphone.com, which means developers can now build Windows Phone 7 apps on the final release of Visual Studio 2010 (VS2010). While this update is primarily intended to enable development using the final release of VS2010, there are a few new things as well including a new WP7 emulator image, new/changed APIs, known issues fixed, and more.
Additional release details can be found on the site linked below.


Have you guys heard of UNIQLO? They are a Japanese clothing company that is huge in Japan that has somewhat recently come to the States. I say somewhat recently because they have actually be here since 2005 with a few stores having opened but it was a bit of a soft launch until recently. They are doing so well that they have started expanding like crazy and I'm thrilled to be hosting a Girls Night Out at their latest new store opening here in the Philadelphia area – UNIQLO at the Montgomery Mall in North Wales.
If you live in the area and want to join me for shopping and a girls night out, this event is open to the public and I would love to see you! You can RSVP here or by clicking on the invite. There's going to be some fun giveaways so if you live nearby, don't miss it!
So UNIQLO was kind enough to send me some cool pieces to try on to wear to the event on Thursday so you guys can get a sneak peek into what I'll be wearing here!
By the way, UNIQLO isn't just for women – they make men's and children's clothes too. I got a couple of cute outfits for my boys that I will feature in future post. In the meantime – what I loved about what they sent me is the versatility and the price. Nothing here will break the bank and I think these are great transition pieces – good for warm weather in the summer but you'll see how I changed it up to make them fall pieces.
Here I am wearing the women's ponte sleeveless dress (sale price, $39.95)and the IDLF Courduroy Jacket ($89.95). I added in some tights and ballet flats for that photo.
Here's that same Ponte dress without the jacket – I wanted to show off the pockets to you guys. The material on this dress was a heavier material – nice for the fall.
They also sent me this Women's Flare Sleeveless Dress which is $19.90. It's a thinner material – I was actually wearing a white bra and you could see it A LITTLE bit up close. No biggie (that's not the bra but the size sticker that is showing – forgot to take off for the photo!) I like this dress a lot for the price and for layering. The wine color seemed great for the fall too.
Showing it off with the blazer over it.
Up close with the blazer – cute buttons.
And I wanted to show it to you guys with boots too. Not sure how I will go Thursday – depends on the weather! We're in that fall weather pattern where it can be 75 or it can be 40 out depending on the day.
What do you guys think? Cute, right?
If you're in Philly, please join me Thursday! And for those of you who aren't, you can shop UNIQLO online and there happens to be a coupon code right now – use NEW20 to get $20 off $150 purchase.
I love and want that Ponte dress! I have seen the sign, but didn't go in because I wasn't sure what it was – now I have a reason to go in.
Can I just say that i ADORE your style?? I love all these looks especially that ponte dress! The colors also are so fabulously rich and fall-like! definitely heading to my store at the mall!!
So fun to find a new shop with fresh looks just in time for Fall! Wish I lived closer but good to know you can shop online too ~ good luck with the event!
What a cool event and yes, SUPER cute. LOVE Uniqlo!
Love those Ponte dresses!! They look so comfy and are great staples you can dress up or down!
Cute! I love that dress!


Minuteman Press of Downtown Buffalo has picked up from its location near the corner of Chippewa and Delaware and has reopened inside the recently renovated Elsinghorst Building at 136 Broadway, Suite 101 (across from the Colored Musician's Club).
This is another big boost for the Michigan Avenue corridor, which borders the Medical Campus and is a cross-city connector that ties together neighborhoods bounding Main Street and Ellicott with the waterfront. According to owner Greg Schlaich, locally owned Minuteman Press will now have 2,700 square feet of office, production and storage space to work with. "With the larger space our customers now have the ability to come in and consult with our designers on their print jobs. We have easier access from Route 33 and I190 and we have more convenient parking available. The larger space will allow for future growth increasing the services we'll be able to provide to our customers," said Schlaich.
Constructed in 1866, the three-storey "Italianate" block Elsinghorst Building also houses three fully occupied contemporary apartments upstairs. The addition of Minuteman Press fills the building and brings additional services to the Central Business District, including a full service printer with consultative design assistance, finishing and mail services.
Minuteman Press of Downtown Buffalo is open Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm.
For more information, please visit www.dtb.minutemanpress.com. Parking lot adjacent to the building.
Previous article Dark Star Orchestra tonight!


My Children! My Africa! by Athol Fugard. Generational conflict over the most effective means for ending apartheid in South Africa, leads to an explosive confrontation between a gifted but impatient black township youth and his devoted but "old fashioned" black teacher. The unexpected involvement of a young white woman who befriends and learns from both men, strips away the political trappings to reveal the human trauma at the heart of South Africa`s tragedy.


A 3-in (75-mm) calibrated stainless steel element with two stainless steel chemical tees and an electronic d/p transmitter provided with remote seals is about $3500.
PARTIAL LIST OF SUPPLIERS ABB Kent-Taylor Inc.
The segmental wedge flow element provides a flow opening similar to that of a segmental orifice, but flow ob struction is less abrupt (more gradual), and its sloping entrance makes the design similar to the flow tube family. It is primarily used on slurries. Its main advantage is its ability to operate at low Reynolds numbers. While the square root relationship between the flow and pressure drop in sharp-edged orifices, venturis, or flow nozzles requires a Reynolds number above 10,000, segmental wedge flowme-ters require a Reynolds number of only 500 or 1000. For this reason the segmental wedge flowmeter can measure flows at low flow velocities and when process fluids are viscous. In that respect, it is similar to conical or quadrant edge orifices.


text:
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;

namespace StreamDeckSharp.Internals
{
    internal class Throttle
    {
        private readonly Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
        private long sumBytesInWindow = 0;
        private int sleepCount = 0;

        public double BytesPerSecondLimit { get; set; } = double.PositiveInfinity;
        public int ByteCountBeforeThrottle { get; set; } = 16_000;

        public void MeasureAndBlock(int bytes)
        {
            sumBytesInWindow += bytes;

            var elapsedSeconds = stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
            var estimatedSeconds = sumBytesInWindow / BytesPerSecondLimit;

            if (sumBytesInWindow > ByteCountBeforeThrottle && elapsedSeconds < estimatedSeconds)
            {
                var delta = Math.Max(1, (int)((estimatedSeconds - elapsedSeconds) * 1000));
                Thread.Sleep(delta);
                sleepCount++;
            }

            if (elapsedSeconds >= 1)
            {
                if (sleepCount > 1)
                {
                    Debug.WriteLine($"[Throttle] {sumBytesInWindow / elapsedSeconds}");
                }

                stopwatch.Restart();
                sumBytesInWindow = 0;
                sleepCount = 0;
            }
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
London Fashion Week drops fur from runway
London Fashion Week will drop fur from its runway this season, after organizers confirmed that no designers ...
Posted: Sep 7, 2018 11:37 AM
Updated: Sep 7, 2018 11:37 AM
London Fashion Week will drop fur from its runway this season, after organizers confirmed that no designers are planning to use the material at this month's event.
The British Fashion Council (BFC) made the announcement after asking the 80 designers featured in the program whether they will be showing real fur.
Continents and regions
"The BFC survey results reflect a cultural change based on ideals and choices made by designer businesses, international brands as well as consumer sentiment," the organization said in a statement.
The decisions were "also encouraged by the stance of multi-brand stores who are moving away from selling fur," the statement added.
British fashion house Burberry said Thursday it would stop using real fur in its collections, joining brands including Gucci, which dropped fur from its collections last year.
London Fashion Week has been targeted by animal rights activists in recent years. A protester invaded the catwalk during Mary Katrantzou's show at February's festival, which featured faux fur, and shouted "Shame on you, London Fashion Week!"
A campaign calling for the event to drop fur had been launched by activist group PETA UK and British singer Paloma Faith last week.
Faith said on Twitter: "I am so overwhelmed and elated that fur has been banned from London fashion week!"
However, the BFC has not itself imposed a ban on fur being used, and insists it will support choices made by brands at the biannual event.
"Our tradition doesn't really change; we're supporting the designers' creativity and we don't consider that we're in the position to ban fur," a BFC spokesperson said.
London Fashion Week: Sex in the age of #MeToo
The Political Runway: Fashion, gender and politics in America
58-year-old plus sized model takes the runway by storm for New Orleans Fashion Week
http://wgno.com/2018/03/22/58-year-old-plus-sized-model-takes-the-runway-by-storm-during-new-orleans-fashion-week/
Planes at London's Heathrow Airport grounded due to runway lighting failure
Southwest plane slides off runway
Milan Fashion Week: An Instagram-worthy extravaganza
London Underground Fast Facts
Coal Drops Yard: Thomas Heatherwick transforms Victorian London landmark


The Adams County Board of Commissioners each year is responsible for approving an annual budget that outlines projected revenue and expenditures in the coming year.
The Board of Commissioners consists of three members and constitutes the chief governing body of the County. The Commissioners, together with their County Manager and directors, manages the County organization with the mission of providing quality government service in an efficient cost effective manner. The Commissioners are elected every four years and are responsible for setting policy for the fiscal management, and the administration of County affairs. The Commissioners serve on the Salary, Prison, Retirement, York-Adams Joinder for MHIDD and Election Boards as well as sitting as the Board of Assessment Appeals. They appoint members to participate on various boards and commissions affiliated with the county.
We invite any residents to contact the Board or any Commissioner with your ideas, thoughts or concerns.
It is an honor for us to serve the residents of beautiful Adams County and thank you for that privilege!


text:
Ceratosolen megacephalus är en stekelart som beskrevs av Grandi 1916. Ceratosolen megacephalus ingår i släktet Ceratosolen och familjen fikonsteklar. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Fikonsteklar
megacephalus

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home / News / White House Reportedly Asks Energy Companies to Lower Prices
White House Reportedly Asks Energy Companies to Lower Prices
The White House has asked energy companies to help lower fuel prices amid a worldwide rise in energy costs, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Oil and gas companies have spoken with the White House in the preceding days regarding the request, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. One of those sources said the Biden administration has been internally discussing ways to lower fuel costs.
"We are closely monitoring the cost of oil and the cost of gas Americans are paying at the pump," a White House official said in a comment. "And we are using every tool at our disposal to address anti-competitive practices in U.S. and global energy markets to ensure reliable and stable energy markets."
However, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she was "not aware" of reported discussions between energy companies and the White House.
"I'm actually not aware of any contact with oil and gas companies around this particular issue," Psaki told reporters at a White House press briefing.
The report comes after U.S. oil prices rose above $80 a barrel for the first time in seven years on Monday. The average gas price in the U.S. is currently $3.29 per gallon, according to AAA.
In an effort to counter rising fuel costs this summer, the Biden administration asked OPEC+ nations to increase production. That request was rejected. The administration had previously implemented policies to curtail some domestic production, including a ban on new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and the cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline.


text:
Q: How force datanode and resourcemanager to use IP instead of hostname? I am running hadoop stack with composer, in the web ui, the services datanode and resourcemanager are showing with hostname instead of IP. Have a way to configure it to use IP?

My hadoop environments:
CORE_CONF_fs_defaultFS=hdfs://namenode:8020

HDFS_CONF_dfs_webhdfs_enabled=true

YARN_CONF_yarn_log___aggregation___enable=true
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_recovery_enabled=true
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_store_class=org.apache.hadoop.yarn.server.resourcemanager.recovery.FileSystemRMStateStore
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_fs_state___store_uri=/rmstate
YARN_CONF_yarn_nodemanager_remote___app___log___dir=/app-logs
YARN_CONF_yarn_log_server_url=http://timelineserver:8188/applicationhistory/logs/
YARN_CONF_yarn_timeline___service_enabled=true
YARN_CONF_yarn_timeline___service_generic___application___history_enabled=true
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_system___metrics___publisher_enabled=true
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_address=resourcemanager:8032
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_webapp_address=resourcemanager:8088
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_scheduler_address=resourcemanager:8030
YARN_CONF_yarn_resourcemanager_resource___tracker_address=resourcemanager:8031


Tried Nasal Sprays? Still Suffering from Sinus Congestion? Relief May Be a Few Nasal Drops Away.
Up Your Nose Drops is a small, cottage industry business and is made up of people who suffer from irritated sinuses and chronic sinus congestion due to colds and allergies. We were once users of J's Nose Drops. When they stopped producing their nose drops we we're at a loss and spent close to a year researching and working by trial and error until we finally figured out J's Nose Drops magical formula!
In the Fall of 2014, we perfected our sinus formula and began giving samples of our nose drops to our colleagues, friends and family to try--they made great holiday gifts! Soon, people started asking where they could buy them and we were blown away by the positive feedback. However, what delights us most is that our nose drops are helping other people clear nasal congestion, heal inflamed sinuses, and provide a new alternative for those dissatisfied with nasal sprays and other remedies for sinus infection.
Today, we receive orders from all over the U.S. Mostly, people learn about our nose drops through word of mouth. This is how we really know they work! The greatest compliment we can receive is hearing from a customer that they heard about our products from someone they know!
Personally, I haven't suffered through itchy and irritated sinuses in over three years! Our nose drops work better that any nasal rinse, nasal drop, or nasal spray I've ever tried and they're so easy to use and travel with. Up Your Nose Drops were created to help people like me who suffer from irritated, inflamed, and infected sinuses. They're specially formulated to be non-addictive, non-drying, and fast acting. So what are you waiting for? Order your drops today and liberate your sinuses!
Wishing you and your sinuses happiness!