BLACK AFRICAN SF

   Only a small amount of sf is published in the Black African nations. What follows is more a sampler than a full survey, since very few researchers have even looked at the topic.Much of what is published is in English, and most of that is juvenile. Typical are the novelette Journey to Space (1980 chap), by the Nigerian Flora Nwapa, and a novel about a scientist who discovers ANTIGRAVITY, The Adventures of Kapapa (1976) by the Ghanaian J.O. Eshun. One of the rare sf books for adults, a play, is The Chosen Ones (1969) by Azize Asgarally of Mauritius; it is set partly in the 30th century.More common are adventure and spy novels for adults containing sf elements, much in the style of the James Bond movies based on Ian FLEMING's books. Such is The Mark of Cobra (1980), by Valentine Alily of Nigeria, in which a secret agent fights against a multimillionaire seeking world domination by use of a "solar weapon". David G. Maillu of Kenya is a prolific writer of adventure novels, of which some are sf; in his The Equatorial Assignment (1980), for example, a secret agent penetrates a criminal conspiracy which is trying to control the whole of Africa by the use of fantastic weapons. More sf can be found in the so-called Onitsha market literature; a typical example is the Nigerian adaptation of George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) done by Bala Abdullahi Funtua in the mid-1970s.Sf in other languages is rare. Sony Labou Tansi is Congolese; his NEAR FUTURE sf novel, set in a fictitious African country in 1995, is in French: Conscience de tracteur ("Consciousness of the Tractor") (1979). Another adaptation of Orwell, this time of Animal Farm (1945), is Pitso ea liphoofolo tsa hae ("The Meeting of the Domestic Animals") (1956); this, by Libakeng Maile, was published in the Southern Sotho language. A children's sf book written in Hausa, one of the languages of Nigeria, is Tauraruwa mai wutsiya ("The Comet") (1969) by Umaru A. Dembo; it tells of the travels in space of a small boy, and of his encounter with a friendly ALIEN.

   JO