arabic science fiction
May. 28th, 2014 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerSo, I went to last year's WorldCon in San Antonio. One of the more interesting people I encountered (first on a panel and then by hounding him longer than was probably polite) was Yasser Bahjatt, a Saudi who gained a taste for science fiction growing up in Michigan. Upon returning to Saudi Arabia, where he now lives, he noticed that science fiction doesn't really exist in most Muslim countries. He further noticed that the correlation between the amount of science fiction published in a country and the amount of patents filed in that country is pretty good. So he decided to take on the mission of creating an Arabic and, more broadly, Muslim culture of science fiction.
As for what is meant by "Muslim science fiction," he gave as an example, "what direction should a Muslim face to pray when on Mars?" He wants Muslim countries to use fiction to explore the implications of technology on their own cultures. And talking with him directly, I got the impression that the patent correlation, which seems a little cart before horse, is a bit of a red herring that he can trot out if the powers that be in Saudi Arabia want to know why he's doing what he's doing. What he really wants is to enhance the ability of Arabs to imagine how things might be different, which will hopefully lead to more people actually trying to make things different.
I think he's got a steep road ahead of him, but I think we should support him, for any number of reasons. You can follow him on Twitter (@YBahjatt), and they do have a book out, called H W J N. They published it in both Arabic and English. Besides the wish to communicate Arab culture to the English-speaking world, he also does hope that acceptance of their work in the broader world will give legitimacy to what they're doing in Saudi Arabia.
I did actually read the book. It was enjoyable in its way, but I do I think they've got a ways to go before they're churning out world-class literature. The main issues that struck me are that the problems faced by the main character get resolved too easily, and the attitudes of most of the characters struck me as rather adolescent.1 But it's a start, and I'll be quite interested to see what else they come up with.
1The only other work I know of (at least in English) that is similar to this insofar as representing a modern attempt at a uniquely Middle Eastern work of speculative fiction is Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, which, at least in the excerpt I read, has the opposite problem in being flamboyantly academic and terribly dense. It's quite sophisticated, but maybe a little too sophisticated for the likes of me. One might also suggest Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed as example of Muslim speculative fiction, but to me it was very solidly in the Western fantasy tradition, just dressed up in vaguely Islamic clothes. I might call it Muslim American speculative fiction, but I don't think that's what people like Bahjatt are going for.
As for what is meant by "Muslim science fiction," he gave as an example, "what direction should a Muslim face to pray when on Mars?" He wants Muslim countries to use fiction to explore the implications of technology on their own cultures. And talking with him directly, I got the impression that the patent correlation, which seems a little cart before horse, is a bit of a red herring that he can trot out if the powers that be in Saudi Arabia want to know why he's doing what he's doing. What he really wants is to enhance the ability of Arabs to imagine how things might be different, which will hopefully lead to more people actually trying to make things different.
I think he's got a steep road ahead of him, but I think we should support him, for any number of reasons. You can follow him on Twitter (@YBahjatt), and they do have a book out, called H W J N. They published it in both Arabic and English. Besides the wish to communicate Arab culture to the English-speaking world, he also does hope that acceptance of their work in the broader world will give legitimacy to what they're doing in Saudi Arabia.
I did actually read the book. It was enjoyable in its way, but I do I think they've got a ways to go before they're churning out world-class literature. The main issues that struck me are that the problems faced by the main character get resolved too easily, and the attitudes of most of the characters struck me as rather adolescent.1 But it's a start, and I'll be quite interested to see what else they come up with.
1The only other work I know of (at least in English) that is similar to this insofar as representing a modern attempt at a uniquely Middle Eastern work of speculative fiction is Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, which, at least in the excerpt I read, has the opposite problem in being flamboyantly academic and terribly dense. It's quite sophisticated, but maybe a little too sophisticated for the likes of me. One might also suggest Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed as example of Muslim speculative fiction, but to me it was very solidly in the Western fantasy tradition, just dressed up in vaguely Islamic clothes. I might call it Muslim American speculative fiction, but I don't think that's what people like Bahjatt are going for.
