Monday, March 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun



Deji Bryce Olukotun's "After the Flare" is an interesting novel in that it combines heavy SciFi elements (as well as some kind of fantastical elements) with issues/politics facing modern real-life Nigeria.  The book is set in a world in which a massive solar flare disrupts technology all over the world except for a narrow corridor of land, which happens to coincide with parts of Africa such as Nigeria - resulting in a flood of Nigerian-influenced technological advancement.  As such, when a lone astronaut is stuck on the now failing International Space Station, it is up to Nigeria to build the rocket that will get her home. 

This is a short book (not even 300 pages) but it is incredibly ambitious - in addition to the plot of the Nigerian space program trying to successfully launch the rocket, you have several other major plotlines, and major themes of individual and cultural identity are a big part of this book.  That said, I kind of think the book is too short, everything comes to a head very quickly at the end and I don't really think the book manages to pull it all off.  The book is never boring and worth a read, but never quite reaches its potential.

Note: Technically After the Flare is the second in a series (Trilogy?), after Olukotun's prior work, "Nigerians in Space," but the book is basically stand alone (from my understanding, since I haven't read NiS, it seems like some characters are shared between the books, but that's basically it).  So you can start reading this book without any prior knowledge.


-------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
When a massive solar flare hits the Earth, technology around the world and in orbit is mainly fried.  This includes the International Space Station, which begins a slow collapse Earth-ward, with one cosmonaut unable to evacuate and forced to remain.  But a small strip of the Earth's geography finds itself unharmed by the flare, including Nigeria.  And so an infusion of technology, often influenced by Nigerian culture (including the use of animal-like technology or cybernetically enhanced real animals) comes to the country and it is Nigeria that starts a space program to rescue the astronaut before the ISS collapses to Earth.

Kwesi Bracket, an African American former NASA engineer, is a part of the Nigerian space program, mainly focused upon building a water tank to simulate space activity.  But when a seemingly ancient artifact is found and then stolen by a local who seems to disappear into the Earth, Bracket, along with fellow scientist Seeta, finds that the works of an Ancient people might possibly interfere with the launch of the rocket.  Meanwhile, Bracket has to try not to run afoul of local politicians, whose support is crucial for the mission but could be withdrawn on a whim.

Still, those aren't the only factors facing the launch.  A fundamentalist militant group known as the Jarumi (Boko Haram) is encroaching upon the area of the spaceport, and the local police force is ill equipped to stop them.  And a group of Woodabe women, led by rape-survivor Balewa, has discovered objects known as "songstones" which they are able to manipulate to create fantastically powerful energy fields.  When all of this comes to a head, will the Space Program be able to succeed or is the astronaut doomed to fall to her death with the Station?
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Again, "After the Flare" is incredibly imaginative and ambitious for a novel that is so short.  The very concept will naturally remind some people of Seveneves (although a sudden Solar Flare is more believable than the moon just randomly exploding) but the book makes that concept mainly work.  The technology includes "geckophones" which basically are sentient phones that can scamper about like a gecko, cybernetically enhanced animals such as spiders and mosquitos which can spy and hack into technology.   There's also a traditional African currency (the Cowries) which are essentially the new bitcoin-like measure of currency.  In short the worldbuilding of this near future is very very interesting.

The characters are not quite up to the same stuff.  80% roughly of chapters follow the point of view of Bracket, who's an okay protagonist but isn't that much of a stand out.  And the relationship between Bracket and his love interest Seeta isn't particularly written well, which doesn't help.  The other 20% follow Balewa, the tribal woman rape survivor who tries to lead her people in the new world with the power of the songstones she's discovered.  Balewa is honestly a far more interesting character than Bracket, but her chapters are so few and far between that they often kind of feel like they're from a different book entirely.

The linking thread seemingly between most of the plot arcs is a theme of identity.  Bracket is a mixed-race African American whose skin is relatively light-colored and is referred to by his African co-workers repeatedly with a word that means "White."  The geckophones allow their users to set profiles of themselves as members of different nationalities and ethnic groups/tribes, changing how the user appears to other callers, and several characters have theirs set to identities which don't match their actual "real" identity for various reasons. Balewa is attempting to take charge of her life and to convince her group of women to do the same with the songstones and to forge their own identities, rather than simply relying upon some of the traditions of the past which got them into their horrible situation.

The thing is, this theme is definitely interesting, but it seems (to me at least) like the book spends more time noting when it comes up without actually trying to send a message about it.  You're not getting any answers here to questions about identity, which would be fine, except that the book's ending is extremely abrupt, and the pacing is very off - the book spends about its first 20 chapters doing setup and then spends the remaining 9 chapters with the payoff, which might sound fine on paper but just feels out of whack in practice.  It also seems to lose track of which plot threads are important at times - for most of the book, the fact of the stranded astronaut and the love between her and Bracket's boss, seems secondary to the work and issues taking place on Earth, and then the book will try to make it a major issue again (there's an interlude featuring the astronaut which kind of comes out of nowhere).   So the book not taking a stance on the theme stands out more because the literal events that end the book are abrupt and kind of unsatisfying.

I don't mean to slam this book so much, it's certainly very interesting in concept and I suspect I'll try to read another book in the series when it comes out to see if the author executes better.  But the execution in this one is a bit lacking, so it didn't quite fulfill the obvious potential it had.


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