Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Binti

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

It's our first Novella! Better late than never, we're back with Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. We talk culture, home, and the value of diversity. This book was a happy little break between what came before, and what comes next. Enjoy!patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. Well, welcome everyone to Sword, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about politics and themes hiding in our genre of fiction. As always, I am Asha and I'm with my my co-host Kethel. How's it going? Howdy. We're here today talking about, I think, our first novella of the podcast. I don't count the ones who walk away because that's just like a short story. This is in that gray space between short story and novel.

is in that gray space between short story and novel. Yeah, it's a novella. And the name is Binti, written by Nnedi Okorafor. Binti is, again, a novella of African futurist science fiction? Horror, maybe? A little bit of fantasy. A little bit of fantasy, which we're going to get into. It is the author, Nnedi, is the child of first-generation Nigerian immigrants to the U.S. and has really leaned into, again, her African heritage and knowledge of African culture for the story of Binti.

I'll say off the bat, I enjoyed it. It was fun. It was was a fun like it was an enjoyable little story you know what i mean like it's not very long it's obviously it's a novella it's quite short but even with that i found a lot of it just it was just nice yeah it it's like a palate cleanser in a lot of ways from i mean the fifth season being so well, like extremely like no crash, which we didn't like for other reasons. Yeah.

We didn't like for, you know, particular reasons. Then we had the fifth season, which was really good, but also like heavy, really sad is long and sad and heavy. And then you get to Binti and it's just like,

Ooh, Ooh, it's like getting a treat. You know what I mean Binti and it's just like, Ooh, Ooh, it's like getting a treat. You know what I mean? It was like a little treat. It's, it's a little treat of cool, like universe imagery,

like sci-fi imagery, very colorful imagery. Oh yeah. Very colorful. Mixed with a very like at, at one initially bleak but eventually extremely optimistic story about cooperation, finding home away from home, and the value of diversity. Yeah. Yeah.

The diversity and inclusion, why like those sort of like you know your differences make you the same type deal in a lot of in a lot of instances um the power of cooperation and peace is very big here as we'll talk about later you know ursula le Guin would be proud and I feel like this is going to be a nice little you know again I could call that little treat because uh the book after this is parable of the sower so we have this like nice little treat here in the middle of february a nice deep breath ah yeah and then back to it before we have to go back under the water again um so binti is it's a novella about a our heroine um named binti who actually you don't really hear her name until like halfway through the book it's like it's like two thirds solid like two

thirds of the way through the book when the medus finally are like what are you called and they're like and she's like okay and rattles off her full title her full name um which i we both consumed this via audiobook um which is a mouthful for my white ass mouth yeah i will not be attempting the longer version um so also because it's not written down so like without looking at it like written it would be impossible for me to pronounce anyway. But Binti is a girl from a somewhat insular tribe of people known as the Himba. And now the Himba are a real people. They exist now in real life.

And all of, not all of, obviously the sci-fi stuff isn't real. and all of all of not all of the obviously the sci-fi stuff isn't real but all of like the cultural touchstones that she talks about with binti having with like her people like her ochize which is the the sort of clay dirt mixture that she puts in her hair and on her skin that is that's that's real that's a real thing that the himba people do they are native to the namib desert area which is sort of northern namibia southern angola and there are real people that really have these traditions you can you know look it up they cover their skin and their hair in this mixture just the way binti does like throughout the throughout the novella and it's one of the main i would say it's one of the main themes it's also it's important because it's a cultural thing and it's a thing that makes you

stand out from all the other humans but through that it's an important like thematic storytelling thing about you know contact with home you know the idea of like representing your home and your culture and carrying your culture with you and what it means to like still be your culture uh displaced somewhere else which is you know pretty easy theme coming from somebody who is a child of first generation immigrants and to to top it off like the the og is is almost the the clay that clay that she puts into her hair and on her skin. It serves this function as a symbol for these core themes. It's shown to be something that doesn't just serve a symbolic purpose. doesn't just serve a symbolic purpose.

Like partway through the story, it's revealed that the OJZ actually heals the wounds of the Medus, just giving it an actual functional importance. Yeah. And yeah, so not only is it thematically important, it's functionally important, but I, like a lot of short stories,

I think where they're trying to fit a lot in, in like a, lot of short stories, I think, where they're trying to fit a lot in and like in a short space. The fact that it is physically functional is an outgrowth of like it's thematic purpose. Right. It's it's it's the she is a stranger not only to other humans, but to the Medus and all the other alien races, but that like her strangeness and the inclusion of these cultural practices is both beneficial psychologically and physically. Right. Like the idea that this melding of cultures and accepting of other cultural traditions will physically be beneficial for people, not just psychologically beneficial. just psychologically beneficial. It's an outward representation of the inward theme. And not just one theme either. It represents home, but it also represents diversity. It also represents like personhood,

like your individual personhood because of how important it is to her for how she relates to the other people around her and for her survival yeah so it's it's mentioned almost constantly throughout the book and it even the way that she puts it into her hair molds her hair into the shape that convinces the Medus that she's different into this shape that reminds the Medus of their own tentacles, which, which makes me think partially that that's probably where she got the idea. Yeah. I think,

I think in and of itself is probably seeing the hair and thinking that looks kind of like a tentacle. Yeah. I think the outgrowth was, you know, it was like, I want to have, or I want to have a, like a character who's an outsider, I think the outgrowth was, you know, it was like, I want to have, or I want to

have like a character who's an outsider, you know, like from, you know, his himba. Well, what are the, what are the enemies or her antagonists look like? Well, we need to have something that connects them because she's connected to other humans by being human, but separated them by her himba practices. She's separated from the Medus by being human, but then connected to them by her himba practices she's separated from the medus by being human but then connected to them by the fact that she has a hairstyle different from any human they've ever encountered and you know her like that and the og and stuff like that gives her the point of connection with the medus that is the thing that separates her from the rest of humanity which is smooth storytelling yeah it's a lot of stuff rolled up into like a singular like cultural practice that sort of

tight storytelling is what's necessary for novellas like this and is partially the reason I think this won the Hugo for best novella is how tightly written it is and how singularly focused it is on the themes that it's trying to present. Everything in it is geared towards the theme and geared towards the ideas being presented. There are no wasted words or scenarios or anything going on in this text. Like everything is directly moving the plot forward and every part of it is directly related to one, if not more of the themes like at all times,

which I wish I could be that efficient in like anything that I do. Yeah, that's all. That's always kind of like, it's the damn. Could I ever really do something like that? Like just sitting down to write something and being simultaneously in awe and also a little bit disheartened. Cause you're like,

dang, that's really good. That's really well done. Damn. I couldn't throw that together. And so, you know, Well done.

Damn, I couldn't throw that together. No, I couldn't. And so, you know, Binti is the first of the Himba people in this future world, even where space travel is common. People live on multiple planets. There are multitudes of intergalactic species that people interact with, at least humans can interact with out there in the universe. You know, the Himba are very much like we live at home and we stay at home. Binti, being an outstanding mathematician and harmonizer, gets accepted to go to Umza Uni, which is a planet-sized university where all the smartest math geniuses go well i think it's just the the the pinnacle of scientific and and it doesn't necessarily she's going to math she's going to math but there's also like

scientists and historians and other sorts of stuff it's funny because like they're actually entire cities for departments yeah like you go to the city where they do weapons testing or and development like you go to the city where they do archaeology you go to like the part of the city that does math like you just live in math city on umza uni which is a place and a planet it just makes me think of dr who's library where it's just a planet-sized library. It's like an entire continent of biographies. She's the first one to go. She's on a ship on the way there. They get attacked by the Medus who murder everyone except her.

She's protected by her Aidan, her little magical space science implement. It is never fully explained sure but it doesn't need to be fully explained it's literally just like a it's a plot reason for her to stay alive it's a plot device basically um it also is tied into her culture though it's like all of them have one hers just happens to be made of a specific substance that they weren't really sure what it is. But whatever it is, it really ticks off the Medus. Yeah, the Himba people, as a cultural thing in this story, have a thing for collecting ancient technology. And just sort of hanging on to it like a good luck charm.

And they call them an Adon. And hers just happened to have fallen from space, I think. Yeah, that's the assumption. It's sort of implied because she found it in the desert. No one knows what metal it's made out of. And she's just like, I don't know, I just like it. They kind of keep it again like a worry stone. You know what I mean?

Or like a good luck charm. Hers is apparently can kill a Medus if they touch it or if they get too close to it it also can like connect her to them so she can speak to them which is the first one of the maybe the first time that's happened or one of the few times yeah it's like hundreds of years or something yeah it's implied that there are people who can talk to the medus but um or could in the past or could in the past but it just has been a very very very long time um since that has happened long enough that it's faded out of like living memory there's like there's there's um people at umza who can speak medus yeah that's just that's because they haven't been at war

with the medus for like you know 600 years or whatever yeah um i think what's something kind of interesting to point out is that at umza uni you have all these different groups of people working together we say people meaning generally various alien races. Various alien races working together much more cooperatively than the humans were on Earth. Yeah, because you hear about like the sort of the racism that happens between the main cultural group you encountered called the kush and the himba you know there's like all sorts of non-subtle like racism objectification between like the kush and the himba you know the kush considered the himba to be primitive and backwards and and it says that in history it treated them as little better than slaves um yeah so i mean you have like when she first goes to like the spaceport you have like kush women just like grabbing her hair and like snickering and like

snickering and stuff which let's be honest as the child of nigerian immigrants who grew up in the midwest of america i'm sure she had plenty of experience with random adults and children just coming up and asking to touch her hair. Yeah. Like if you're not, if you didn't grow up, I don't know if it's everywhere in America, but like in the Midwest,

particularly if there was like one person who had like a nonstandard white person hair, everyone was like, Oh, can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Can I touch your hair? Like if you grew up in the Midwest, you understand that's kind of how it was.

At least they're asking. Hopefully it's not like that anymore. At least they were asking. At least they were asking, I suppose. But like it was a thing. So like her saying that that's what, you know, that's what happened to Binti in the spaceport to me was very unsurprising. into Binti in the spaceport to me was very unsurprising. Also, if you can't picture it, you should definitely just Google a picture of the Himba people

to see what it means when she talks about the plates in her hair, like with the ojize like rubbed into it. It's a very, very interesting like and cool look. Yeah, they do all sorts of stuff with it. You know, they cover their entire body with it stuff like that i think the point about uh racism and that sort of thing still being present between like native groups like you know what i mean like between people of the same species is what i was what i'm trying to say um yet they're not being as much between entire

alien species um is really interesting just as a as a as a concept usually you'd think of it as like the other way i feel like a lot of people think of it as being like a very independence day thing where it's like oh we would unite and forget our differences to fight some greater enemy um it's debatable but um it's also explained that like the this sort of war between the medus and the kush is like kind of the kush's fault yeah and like it's you know specifically the medus don't have this fight with like any other of the races in the galaxy that you're that we're aware of it's mostly just with humans and specifically with the kush and she goes out of her way to explain that the the kush have found a way throughout almost all of earth's like educational systems to include information about the medus in standard curriculum

just and not just like minor information like biological information because they consider it so important to be able to fight them yeah they so the the kush are almost just depicted just flat out like there's the worst there's kind of shit there's kind of shit just kind of shit and i don't i don't know if the book ever explicitly describes their ethnicity i think at one point she does mention that they look as though they are allergic to the sun you're right some of them are described as being like unable to be in the sun like ever like incredibly pale so yeah so some of them they're just white some of them just be white that's true and that's probably that's i mean that's the deepest the race politics get gets in this uh

it doesn't really delve into that because it doesn't it doesn't get just mentions oh you know what if her older brothers really kind of holds a grudge against the kush for the way the kush treat the himba people she thinks he goes a little far in his anger towards them but she also understands where it comes from which again then sort of like informs her for how to deal with the one medus that she gets to to talk to to oku like because she understands his personality because that's her brother's personality and so she understands his like i intensely hate humans like even though i haven't interacted them with myself you know personally that much she sort of understands that sort of generational and cultural um angst that oku has

and helps her you know interact with it when they are able to speak you know yeah honestly you just mentioning oku's name kind of makes me think about, it makes me think about just how noticeably African this story is, like at least in its etymologies. It's like general construction. Yeah, it's not only are the Himba people real people from Africa, not only is the first part of the story set in Africa, not only are the Kush like the most dominant group of people, and we we listened to an audiobook that was narrated by someone with a pretty thick west african accent i'm not sure the specific location but at the same time even though we were hearing it with this accent like a lot of the names the words are clearly more african inspired than Western inspired and like, like European inspired names.

Yeah. Like when she's inventing, like inventing the names for, for aliens or for alien races. Like the fact that the, the place they're going is UMSA uni, right? Like that's,

you know, more African inspired. The Medus are the Medus. Yeah. The Medus is more African. The alien whose name she learns is named Okwu. It's O-K-inspired name. The Medus are the Medus. Yeah, the Medus. The alien whose name she learns is named Okwu. It's O-K-W-U. It's Okwu.

The tentacles are called Okoku. All of these are words that are much more, again, even though they're made up words, they're much more of an African-language family- family inspired background as opposed to i don't know this just sounds like german or english but weird yeah jr or tolkien would not have come up with these names no because he's explicitly basing his stuff off you know old norse and anglo-saxon yeah And you know what I mean? So like it's very, and so many people, especially Western writers have based their stuff off of him that like when

you get something that's entirely from a language family, not related, it's striking about how many things in the story that changes. Yeah. Yeah. You really do come to notice how much, honestly, how much fiction is kind of missing like a diverse

like even in the world building like you can have a diverse like cast of characters in a diverse setting but like if the names all still sort of sound like they came from like an american game of dnd you know like that's a lot of fiction is missing that um what what a range of of of names and cultures you can be inspired by yeah just uh wider inspiration in general so it it's it's kind of refreshing to to get it because even with even i think with the fifth season. A lot of those names were too. I don't think we talked about it though.

Yeah. But even with the fifth season, like Jemisin is, you know, like fundamentally American. Much more further removed from immigrant status than Nettie is. And is drawing more of her stuff from western like fantasy fiction than netty who's very intentionally pulling from things that aren't european fantasy fiction yeah intentionally eschewing any sort of european light trappings in her in her fiction so this this gets even further away from traditional like traditional western european fantasy tropes then or or fantasy conventions conventions that's that's probably a better word than even in k jemisin did yeah it's very like an

intentional de-centering of the west in the fiction which is great is it it's nice it's fun it's it's a nice change of pace and it's and it's kind of ironic because last time with the fifth season you had mentioned that it almost fits Le Guin's definition of a thought experiment more than it's like science fantasy um and this one before before we started this episode we had the a bit of a conversation about how this is almost the science fantasy in the opposite direction. It's basically just a little fantasy tale. Yeah, it's much more strongly representing sci-fi aesthetics than the fifth season was, which fit more,

but at the same time following a more fantasy-style story. It's less of a thought experiment, more of a fish out of water experiencing a new world. Adventure story. Yeah, it's an adventure story. You're right. Even though they're both sort of in the same category, like one of them, fifth season, skews so much more towards the science fiction of science fantasy. You know, what if you lived on a plane, a planet where the tectonics shifted constantly

and some people could control that? What, then what, right? Whereas this is like, she can almost, she's so good at math, it's almost magic. And also she's going to be the first one of her people to ever leave home and she's going to be the first one of her people to ever leave home. And she's going to encounter the wider world. She's going, to harken back to our baseline episodes,

she's going off into fairy. Into fairy. She's going into fairy. She's going into, you know, the wider world. And encountering other peoples. Encountering other scenarios. And, you know know going on an adventure it's very much an adventure exactly she's very much like it's very much a little like a little

like fantasy fable tale than it is science fiction of any kind the most science fiction of it is the again like you said it's more of just like the setting, like there's spaceships and you go into space. That's like, and there's other alien races. That's like the science fiction bit of it. The whole, the story construction itself is more of a little fantasy. Yeah, it's just, it's, and it's a very optimistic piece of fantasy too,

which like we were saying before, is a bit of a breath of fresh air but it is it's it's almost you know it would make leguin pretty happy uh a very pacifist resolution to these problems um it doesn't feel out of place or unearned but at the same time um is very optimistic. Yeah, I mean, you see sort of the conflict in her a little bit early on after the Medus come aboard and kill everybody, except her and the pilot. You know, you hear her say multiple times from her father and her that if she has to fight, she will, right?

If I have to fight, I will. You know, I won't go down. You know, she's not going to die without a fight. Yada, yada, yada. It's important to her character that she's like willing to do that sort of thing. But when it comes down to it, that's not the path that she would ever choose is the path of violence. choose is the path of violence. And her first instinct is to like, aside from defending herself, obviously, is like, well, let's talk it out. Let's figure something out. When she looks at what's coming for like coming up based on what's happening,

the solution that she comes up with is let me help you i can make this right peacefully no more people have to die for this which again not very common or sci-fi or fantasy and the fact that the the the umso uni staff just do it too honestly the most staff just do it too honestly the most that's why you had to have it staffed by like aliens aside from like one or two humans because if it's staffed by humans we know what happens when they're staffed by humans you get the british museum yeah which is just like yeah sorry we've got it now tough titties yeah and that's and that's essentially i mean that's essentially what happens you know it's like the up to that point, that was almost like the way it happened initially. The stinger was retrieved in a very non-consenting way.

But the university apparently didn't know that. Well, either didn't know or didn't know. Or didn't know that well either didn't know or didn't know or didn't know um it may i think it's just how cynical we are hey you and i both go yeah they sure didn't know but it's also possible in her world it's possible they just didn't know yeah i mean it is a planet sized university so i'm sure slit uh i'm sure shit slips through the cracks there we go especially between like just a professor that is tenured in some school in some area and like the people that sit on the board and and they they are willing to dole out punishment very quickly they're they were like, they stole this thing.

Well, they're going to get found. They will be kicked off the planet. They will be found, stripped, exiled. And you're like, oh, good. I wish our academic establishment would behave that way. Geez Louise, if only. But I think that, again, I do not think it's a mistake that the universities like chair and main staff are generally non-human in order for this resolution to work.

Yeah. I mean, it's not just that they're non-human it's, it's also that they're an extremely diverse makeup of people. Yeah. Which is, I think aside from home is this book's other main theme as we Yeah, which is, I think, aside from home, is this book's other main theme, as we discussed,

which is diversity and how good it is for everyone involved. Fundamentally, the main reason that the Medus don't essentially slaughter the entirety of... Or at least a large number of people on umza uni or at least attempt to kill a lot of people on umza uni is diversity like like diversity saves them um the fact that binti is not kush leads to the series of events that lead to a negotiated resolution to this conflict. She was the only visibly non-Kush person on that ship. And her, her cultural like behaviors or why she had the Adon in the first place,

which protected her long enough for them to recognize that she was different. Her hair, you know, being long was close to tentacles, which allowed them to do the stinger thing. So she could get tentacles so she could speak to them and also prove that she was dedicated to helping them. Her difference in her, like literally the resolution when they're at the university, she basically just like gives her like life story. And this story of difference and alienation and home is like convinces the professors that it's right to give the thing back it's it's very touching very heartfelt and earnest earnest that's a really

good word for that yeah it's it's a very earnest story about a fish out of water whose very position as a fish out of water is what saves her and a lot of other people's lives. The Medus do kill a lot of people at the beginning of the story. They sure do kill a lot of people. They sure do kill a lot of pretty innocent people. Innocent young people who are just going, trying to go to school.

Just going to school. They're like in their teens, like late teens early 20s yeah binti's a little older i think she's like 18 19 something like that she's older not older i younger uh very headstrong person for being that young oh for sure it's you know the first one of her people to ever like leave the planet yeah she had well maybe not to ever leave the planet but the first one to ever go to umzu uni and well one of the first ones to leave the planet because like people were talking smack

about how if she leaves like it's going to bring shame upon the entire family. And yeah. And we're talking about like this, like how diversity is important. It comes at every angle. So number one, even though her, her culture and her people, the Himba, there are lots of things that she loves about them and she carries with her that absolutely save her life and are useful for like everyone. It's also portrayed as being somewhat insular and, you know, conservative. Like they're still worried about not doing the wrong thing that will like make it so you can't find a good husband. Like you'll get like leaving will get you like shamed and separated from your family for like leaving the community. So like, despite there being some aspects of her culture, which she really enjoys, she is also critical of a lot of the more backwards facing

or conservative aspects of her culture, which I think is a pretty insightful point that I think is often best made by immigrants from somewhere else to a new country, which gives them a better lens to critique the culture from which they came. Yeah, and honestly, more permission. No more permission. On the one hand, you feel that attachment to the culture that you came from that now makes you different

from everyone where you live now. But you still have that lens to look at the culture you came from and say, yeah, I miss, you know, being around other people that have, you know, ochize or, you know, people that think like I do. But I also don't miss the fact that, like, you know, if I got caught washing in water one time, it'll ruin my marriage prospects and ergo the rest of my life. Oops. my marriage prospects and ergo the rest of my life. Oops. So diversity and like being able to adapt is shown as good from the perspective of her own culture.

It's then shown as being good from the perspective of dealing with the Medus because she has to get them to understand that not all humans are the kush and not even all of them deserve to just be murdered on sight. It's not really their fault. This diversity then shown when you get to Umza Uni, the fact they have this diverse staff allows them to make the proper decision to return the stinger in a peaceful way. And then even extend an olive branch and allowing Oku tou the first medu student of the university so oku and and binti are both like firsts for their people like all of these from every possible angle this story attacks it's telling you the benefits of having a diverse society and not just yeah not

just diversity in like society but also diversity in individuals, diversity in interactions and viewpoints. In thought. It is a story about diversity and its value. And it is valuable. And a little bit of a meditation, like I was just saying, on your culture setting you apart and wanting to hold on to that while also wanting to leave behind the parts that you don't like and this is represented in two different ways in by the end of the story both with Binti receiving her Okoku so with her getting those tentacles showing this attachment of the new this this integration of the new, that for leaving her home, she is now forever changed.

In a way that might be seen as not great by the people that she came from, but at the end of the day, is ultimately a good thing. the day is ultimately a good thing yeah and and is if if somewhat off-putting is admired by everyone in the place she lives now yeah it's it's a symbol of what she went through and a symbol of how she managed to deal with it and it's like in in a weird way it's like she leveled up kind of yeah um and it also is shown in the making of the ogz on the new planet so she finds clay on umza uni and the right and the right chemical balance of oil and makes her her own ojize and not only does it work on her as ojize like for its intended purpose it also does the same thing that her ojize from home does which is heals medusa's wounds so it's it's just another example of like the of how of how neatly she keeps using these symbolic physical representations of the themes that are trying to be presented here um that one being you know bringing your culture with you bringing your home with you as opposed to and even if it changes some it can still be that same

connection to home that you had before yeah it's like it's different but at the end of the day it's part of the same thing it's part of the same growth it's part of the same cultural touchstone despite how much she's changed she's still binti and she's still Himba. Yeah. It's like at the end of the day, she's still Binti. And it makes me super curious to read the other two. Yeah, there are two more in this little trilogy, you know, which we may talk about. We might just read them for fun because, again, it's not like, you know, it's a big time investment to read them, I would assume. No, they're both longer than this one, but not by a whole lot. Yeah. Honestly, I mean, now you're the one with the creative writing degree or whatever, but I would say that if you were talking to a class of young writers and you

want to talk about efficiency in portraying theme through, I want to call it action, but you know what I mean? Like being able to manifest in your story through like physical action and effect the theme of your story. Like it's hard to find, I think it'd be hard to find one better than this. Like how tightly it's all wrapped together and how you never go more than like a paragraph without being reminded of it, but in a way that still flows. It is a masterclass on symbolism. So yeah, there's just so many specific symbols that are used throughout the entire story that are there specifically to focus the themes that are trying to be given to you, diversity and home. Yeah, just a super neat little package super short super enjoyable the book if you get it in if you get it printed the book is 96 pages long

yeah um the audio book was like two and a half hours maybe yeah just about and it was it was read very well. You know, the audio narration was great. Having, you know, somebody with, you know, an app with the West African accent helps a lot. I think someone who can pronounce the words better than we can. I only can do it because I listened to the narrator say, Oh geez. A many, many times. Yeah. At that point. I still don't think I'm saying the word for tentacle, right? The okoku.

I don't think I'm even saying that one properly, but it's close enough. But no, she's got, this author has many other works out. There's other novellas. You can read the other two books of this trilogy. She's got other books. I think she might even have some novels out at this point. Yeah, she's got full length novels out out i'm interested to check those out in

the future for just how tightly well written this one was like as like a as like a teaser to her writing it definitely makes me go well damn now i want to read her actual like full-length novels the uh the cover of the third book i think in the series, it's either the second or third book, all of the covers have a little splash quote from Neil Gaiman talking about how the book will make you fall in love with Binti. One of them, the second one has a quote from Ursula Le Guin on the cover. Oh, Hey, it says the more vivid imagination. Sorry. There's more vivid imagination in a page of Indetti Okorafor's work than the whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics.

Wait, so wait, Le Guin said there's more vivid imagination, a page of Indetti Okorafor's work than in a, than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics. So Le Guin read these. So when we said she liked them, we were right. We were right. Wow.

These are some of the last things she would have read if she was reading Binti. Yeah, because that's the quote from her second one, Binti Home, which was released in 2017. And that's literally a year before she died. I am very interested in reading more from Ndedi Okorafor.

You know what I mean? I'm very much more interested in reading her full-length novels now. So, go out and read more, everybody. This was a wonderful little story. It's wholesome it's yeah again it's earnest sans a lot of bloody death like right at the very

beginning right at the beginning so they call it science fiction horror honestly the horror is really just kind of like that opening bit where everyone gets killed um but like and the medus are kind of terrifyingly gross yeah the medus are definitely gross you mentioned to me how you thought of them as like tentacles yeah and just from the description i kind of thought of them as like in my head i was just picturing like tentacles with like slightly more translucent tentacles or something you know like that's kind of what i was thinking in my head or maybe there's a it's a dnd monster um a classic dnd monster that's like a floating jellyfish with like a bird beak oh it's like yeah i know what you're talking about it's like a grell or something if i'm right i'm gonna be so mad about my, my life. Yeah.

It's a growl. Oh fuck. Yeah. Imagine it. I didn't want to be right. Yeah. Imagine a grill, but like,

I don't know, more translucent with like a head that poofs like gas out of it. It's like a, yeah, it's like a brain with a bird beak and tentacles. Yeah. I think everyone, I think it's about all we have to think.

That's about all we have to say for this one. It's fairly short. It was fun. It was nice. This was a nice little again, a little moose boosh, a little treat for us in the middle of this month. Just a little optimistic snack.

Yeah. Before we get back into the heavy stuff again, you know. But thank you so much for listening. If you like, we have to say you can support us on Patreon. If you so choose, we release about an episode a month about a non book topic. The last month was we talked about sort of environmentalism in fiction and stuff. We talked about Princess Mononoke and Fern Gully and Avatar.

In the past, we've talked about Akira and everything, everywhere, all at once. For this month, for February, I think we can announce that the bonus episode this month, which will probably come out at the end of the month, is we are going to talk about Get Out. Which I'm excited for because I haven't actually seen it yet. Yeah, Kethel has not seen Get Out yet,

so he's going to watch it for this episode. I'm excited because I've wanted to see it for a while. I just never got around to it. Yeah, so we're going to watch Get Out for this month. You can follow us on Twitter, us or the show. If you like it, you can do the podcast thing everyone asks for and give us

a review on a podcast platform. That's cool. Apparently that's helpful somehow. I don't understand how algorithms work and I refuse to learn, but I'm told it's useful. Please stay tuned again for our final episode of Black History Month, which is going to be Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Big one.

Big one. Next month for March is going to be Hope vs. Despair. It's going to be Hope Month. And then the month after that, it's going to be C.S. Lewis month after that's going to be cs lewis month where we talk about the chronicles of narnia and christianity and fiction specifically uh there's this real heavy-handed kind so uh thank you all for listening we appreciate you and uh goodbye bye bro Goodbye. Bye. Bro.

Are you fucking real, man? Come on.