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    Home » Nnedi Okorafor Exclusive Africanfuturist Excerpt: Like Thunder
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    Nnedi Okorafor Exclusive Africanfuturist Excerpt: Like Thunder

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    Nnedi Okorafor Exclusive Africanfuturist Excerpt: Like Thunder
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    Nigerian American creator Nnedi Okorafor is a reputation fantasy followers are effectively acquainted with—she’s received Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lodestar Awards—and an excellent larger viewers awaits, since her Who Fears Death is being developed into an HBO sequence. In November, she’ll launch Like Thunder, the sequel to Shadow Speaker in her Desert Magician’s Duology. io9 has a sneak preview to share in the present day!

    David Byrne on New Tech and AI | Gizmodo Interview

    Here’s what Like Thunder is about:

    This brand-new sequel to Nnedi Okorafor’s Shadow Speaker accommodates the highly effective prose and compelling tales which have made Nnedi Okorafor a star of the literary science fiction and fantasy area and put her on the forefront of Africanfuturist fiction

    Niger, West Africa, 2077

    Welcome again. This second quantity is a wide ranging story that sweeps throughout the sands of the Sahara, flies as much as the peaks of the Aïr Mountains, cartwheels right into a wild megacity—you get the thought.

    I’m the Desert Magician; I deliver water the place there’s none.

    This e-book begins with Dikéogu Obidimkpa slowly shedding his thoughts. Yes, that boy who can deliver rain simply by occupied with it’s having some…points. Years in the past, Dikéogu went on an epic journey to avoid wasting Earth with the shadow speaker lady, Ejii Ubaid, who grew to become his finest good friend. When it was throughout, they went their separate methods, however now he’s discovered their quest by no means actually ended in any respect.

    So Dikéogu, extra highly effective than ever, reunites with Ejii. He information this story as an audiofile, hoping it should assist him preserve his sanity or a minimum of give him one thing to go away behind. Smart child, however it received’t work—or will it?

    I can let you know this: it received’t be like earlier than. Our rainmaker and shadow speaker have modified. And after this, nothing will ever be the identical once more.

    As they are saying, ‘Onye amaro ebe nmili si bido mabaya ama ama onye nyelu ya akwa oji welu ficha aru.’

    Or, ‘If you do not remember where the rain started to beat you, you will not remember who gave you the towel with which to dry your body.’

    Here’s the duvet, making its debut right here on io9; the duvet illustration is by Greg Ruth, and the duvet design is by Jim Tierney. An excerpt from Like Thunder follows.

    Image: DAW


    Translating . . .

    Dikéogu Audio File Series
    begun April 8, 2074
    Current Location: Unknown Region, Niger
    Weather: 36o C (98o F), N.I.U.F. (Not Including Unpredictable Factors)

    This audio file has been mechanically translated from the Igbo language.

    Rainmaker

    My identify is Dikéogu Obidimkpa. I’m a rainmaker. Born in Nigeria however made elsewhere. The tattoo on my face is pink and white, the colours of Shango, god of thunder and lightning. My tattoo turned these colours by itself. It was once blue. Shango’s colours go well with me higher.

    I dictate this account of all that occurred after the whole lot has occurred. But it’s all nonetheless taking place. You’ll perceive as you pay attention. For me, tales by no means finish. I recorded these particular recordsdata that I titled “Rainmaker” once I was or am having an particularly camelshit kind of day. When it’s onerous to assume, once I really feel like I’ll simply blow aside or blow away. Making these recordsdata assist. Sort of. In a blood-letting form of approach. So if I sound totally different in “rainmaker” recordsdata, you’ll perceive why.

    A storm got here in the present day. It blew in out of nowhere, however I knew it was coming. I all the time know when a storm is coming. It snapped palm timber like matchsticks. Threw a scooter like a sack of stockfish. It soaked the sand and grass like Noah’s flood. It washed rooftops. It was noisy and wonderful.

    But I spent that half hour on the filth ground of this small home with all of the lizards, spiders, and centipedes. No one might communicate to me. No one might contact me. Only Gambo would have understood.

    When I closed my eyes, I noticed big rolling grey clouds. I might scent the land’s perfume stand up simply earlier than the rain got here. I might scent the clouds as lightning ionized water vapor. I might really feel the air strain drop after which rise.

    I used to be splashed with tens of millions of raindrops. I might really feel what might have been. The destruction. The energy. I might hear the rain and thunder, exterior. First the patter of sand on grass and leaves after which the splash of mud. The howl of wind.

    And once I opened my eyes, I needed to flee. But I couldn’t. Not anymore. I’m in worry’s chasm. Okay, perhaps Ejii would perceive, too.

    My palms tremble simply occupied with it.
    I can’t change what I’m.
    I’m a rainmaker, however largely it rained on me.
    Don’t want to be me. Or to have the ability to do what I do. What I can do may be performed to me when the sky merely wills it.

    CHAPTER 1
    Better Told Than Written

    I’ve seen a lot.

    I would like you to think about it.

    So, as I stated, I’m recording my phrases as an audio file on this rattling close to indestructible e‐legba, a bit of moveable tech so robust it outlasted the apocalypse. Sure, it seems to be fairly crushed up. That’s as a result of it’s taken fairly a beating. But no different private system might do all that this one does, belief me. Recording one thing doesn’t even increase its processor utilization stage, not even by a fraction. And it’s each photo voltaic and lunar. This recording will final.

    Some issues are higher informed than written. Maybe the outdated Africans had it proper in initially making their traditions oral. Plus I’m extra of a talker than a author. I don’t have the endurance to spend hours tapping on keys. Plus out right here in the midst of the desert, I form of just like the sound of my voice.

    And I’m an trustworthy man, not some mumu man. Of all folks, I don’t consider in gossip. Gossip is what bought me on this mess within the first place. You can belief me. It’s okay to let your guard down. I’ll let you know no lies. No exaggerations. Fear no ego. No want for suspension of disbelief. This all occurred and God assist me now.

    My good friend Ejii favored to chuckle about how I barely trusted anybody. She favored to exist within the naïve‐good‐individual‐land the place all people, deep down, are good. I ponder what she thinks now, after so many have confirmed themselves to be cowards, liars, cheats, murderers, and lackadaisical pacifists who’re completely happy to take a seat and watch harmless folks die horrible deaths. Yeah, I stated it. Someone has to. I do know what I’ve seen. I do know what I’ve needed to do. And yeah, this factor is recording.

    The Great Change was this bizarre mixture of a nuclear apocalypse and the explosion of highly effective juju known as “Peace Bombs.” This tousled lots of Earth’s legal guidelines of physics and introduced down the wall between worlds. Then there was a pact of peace. It was written by noble genius baboons with black palms and tender brown fur that smelled like mint and grass. They wrote the pact in a magical language known as nsibidi. This pact pressured a truce between the evil inflated Chief Ette of Ginen’s Ooni Kingdom and the insanely heroic Jaa the Red One of the Sahara Desert. It stopped a warfare of the worlds, particularly between Earth and the jungle planet Ginen. I’m rattling proud to say that I used to be there and part of why the pact was profitable. So was Ejii, in fact. She was a giant deal that day.

    That pact was some severe, deep, outdated mysticism. Even in spite of everything I’ve seen, I nonetheless discover it wonderful. That it occurred in any respect is unbelievable. That it lasted for thus lengthy was nothing in need of a miracle. For a number of months it saved the monster of warfare nonetheless, and for 3 years it held it at bay. But the pact ultimately disintegrated, because it needed to. But so did loads of different issues.

    How do I clarify all that occurred? I’ll make it easy: ultimately, all hell broke unfastened . . .

    CHAPTER 2
    Chocolate Factory

    Right after the historic pact was made, I had essential enterprise to maintain. One drawback solved (quickly, a minimum of), so on to the following one. I used to be targeted, as was my owl Kola. And so was my mentor Gambo.

    We all had causes for happening this mission. For Gambo and me, it was as a result of we’d each truly skilled slavery firsthand. Buji, Gambo’s co‐husband, was only a man who revered justice. When Buji noticed injustice, he had to do one thing about it. The Nigérien Bureau of Investigation, a.okay.a. the N.B.I., got here with us as a result of they had been attempting to cowl their asses and never look like asses. As if they may forestall that. All these years they usually knew nothing about what was taking place within the northern a part of what was once Niger? Camelshit. They knew. And now they knew that in the event that they didn’t do one thing they’d endure onerous‐core sanctions and boycotts.

    Gambo, Buji, Kola, and I had simply left Ejii and Jaa in Kwàmfà. I used to be so excited to be going north with these folks. After all that had occurred. Toward this particular place. A spot I hated.

    Assamakka.

    This place was once a small harmless desert metropolis with mazes of mud‐brick properties, camels, goats, desert birds, scurrying lizards, ladies pounding millet, males kneeling in prayer. But after the Great Change, when nuclear and Peace bombs fell and large swaths of land right here shifted from useless sand to vigorous sand and soil, opportunists made it the central headquarters of the cocoa business. Most of the world’s cocoa used to make chocolate got here from Assamakka and the farming cities round it. And all these locations used low-cost labor. Really low-cost labor. Cheap younger labor. Child slaves.

    There is certainly a motive I hate chocolate. I’ll all the time hate it. I’d moderately die than eat it. Chocolate was combined with blood, sweat, and tears of kids. It was a haunted confection. Way approach again in 2003, Niger handed a legislation making slavery unlawful. And even earlier than that there have been legal guidelines towards youngster labor. These did nothing to cease it, although.

    Even with all of the spontaneous forests and new worlds and other people and creatures dying and altering far and wide . . . you can nonetheless get chocolate. Anytime, wherever. Common brown blocks of easy scrumptious pleasure. Melted or stable. But nobody puzzled the place it got here from. How shocked you all would have been, o.

    All I’ve to say concerning the land alongside the way in which is that it was dry, cracked, and filled with nasty aggressive pink beetles that attempted to burrow into our tents at evening. And they stained no matter you crushed them on. That didn’t cease me, although. I had clothes stained with pink dots to show it.

    This was simply earlier than we met up with the N.B.I. We didn’t see any spontaneous forests and the climate was acceptable— which means it was harsh and scorching through the day however cool at evening. Gambo and I wouldn’t have meddled with the climate regardless, even when we got here throughout a extreme storm. Even earlier than we’d set out for Assamakka, he’d made certain to show me that one ought to alter the climate sparingly or work with the desire of nature.

    “It’s irresponsible to do otherwise,” he stated in his standard low rumbly voice. “A rainmaker who thinks he owns the sky is a rainmaker soon painfully killed by rain, snow, lightning, hail, or all of the above.”

    About two days later, we stopped at a marketplace for provides— a second seize station for water, some new tents (these vile pink beetles had eaten by way of two of ours), inexperienced tea, dried meat (a bunch of desert foxes had stolen a lot of ours), salt for the camels, a bag of millet to make tuagella (these thick crêpes that you just eat with butter or sauce).

    I bear in mind all this as a result of this turned out to be the final time we had been in civilization for months. It was additionally the place I purchased this e‐legba that I’m utilizing to report my voice. Ejii had one which she favored to make use of to test the climate, play video games, learn books, and take heed to music. I consider she misplaced it on the way in which to Ginen, although.

    I used to have an costly one again in my outdated life, earlier than my dad and mom bought me out. This new one which I bought on the market wasn’t practically as dear, however I wasn’t complaining. It did what it wanted to do. Of course, the e‐legba I purchased was nothing just like the souped‐up system it’s now. Not but.

    We continued on our approach, and what would occur subsequent would form the whole lot that led me to the place I’m in the present day.

    About a day after leaving the market, we met up with a person named Ali Mamami. He was the pinnacle of the Nigérien Bureau of Investigation. He was a reasonably intense man. Ali favored to put on flowing clothes that had been so voluminous that you just couldn’t inform if he was skinny or fats. He by no means smiled. He didn’t add sugar to his mint tea or use salt together with his meals. He didn’t take heed to music. The man was like petrified wooden. You surprise what somebody like that has seen to make him that approach. But I didn’t assume he was so spectacular. He’d missed what was happening within the north, for Christ’s sake. Still, I saved out of his approach.

    With him got here twenty N.B.I. brokers—males and ladies specifically skilled for this sort of factor. Before the Great Change, they’d have all carried huge weapons. These folks, how‐ ever, carried machetes, Tuareg‐type swords known as takoba, and excessive‐tech bows and arrows, and had been skilled in hand‐to‐hand fight and wore climate gel–handled uniforms and armed forces boots (you probably did not wish to be close to any of their ft after they took these boots off). Two ladies even had a pair of these Ginen weapons known as seed shooters.

    My good friend Ejii had informed me about these, however I’d by no means seen one till one among these ladies confirmed me. They appear to be hand‐sized greenish brown disks with a notch on the aspect to your fingers. And they had been very gentle. The girl, her identify was Nusrat, clasped it in her hand as she confronted the desert, the top of her brown veil over her head fluttering within the breeze. The different girl, Hira, wore a veil over her head, too. I assume they had been each Muslim. Or perhaps they simply favored the apparel; you by no means know.

    Nusrat grinned, clearly having fun with demonstrating.

    “It feels hard but it’s alive, a plant,” she stated. Her voice was form of low. If it weren’t for the large measurement of her chest (you couldn’t miss it, even with the uniform) and her face (okay, she was fairly enticing), I’d have speculated that she might need been a person. She had an depth that jogged my memory of Gambo, and there’s nothing remotely female about Gambo.

    Nusrat took my hand and held it to the seed shooter. As quickly as my hand touched it, it modified from greenish brown to darkish brown as if it had been some form of plant chameleon. “It responds to touch,” she stated, laughing. “It doesn’t like you. For some reason, seed shooters prefer women. The accuracy is always better when they are used by women. Be very afraid if you come across a man with one, especially if you’re not his target.”

    I frowned, considering of these large flightless birds Ejii had ridden in Ginen. They supposedly didn’t let boys or males trip on them, both. Maybe issues from Ginen most well-liked feminine people to male ones.

    “You stroke the side and it hums,” Nusrat stated, rubbing the seed shooter. It made this sound that was oddly just like the purr of a cat. You might really feel it, too. Like it was extra animal than plant. I’d have thrown the factor away, however I needed to know what it felt like when it shot. “When you squeeze it,” she stated, “your four fingers have to be touching this smooth patch on the front.”

    She pointed the seed shooter on the floor, aiming a number of yards away, and squeezed my hand. I barely felt or heard a factor. Just a tender phht as one thing reddish orange blasted into the sand. Then there was a form of oatmeally scent. POW! There was a small explosion within the sand because the seed popped like a big popcorn kernel. Some huge inexperienced beetles emerged from the sand close by and frantically scrambled away. Imagine what that seed would have performed if the seed had been embedded in somebody’s chest, leg, arm, or . . . head.

    She strapped the factor towards the naked pores and skin of her aspect, pulling her uniform over it. Seed shooters produce extra seeds by feeding on physique warmth. Needless to say, these two ladies had been most likely essentially the most deadly N.B.I. brokers within the Sahara be‐ explanation for their talent and people weapons.

    I smiled. Lethal was what I needed.


    Excerpt from Nnedi Okorafor’s Like Thunder reprinted by permission of DAW.

    Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor might be launched November 28; you’ll be able to pre-order a duplicate right here or right here.


    Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and the whole lot you’ll want to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.

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