by Clarke, Neil
But there would be time for that later. For now there was a conversation Hannah had wanted to have for a long time. Smiling at the retreating backs of her mother and daughter, she flashed the little flashlight in response.
About the Author
Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog. She is currently working on a novel about the Tam Lin ballad, Ojibwe mythology, and hockey.
“If It Scares You, Write It: A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” by Jeremy L. C. Jones
Nnedi Okorafor is the award-winning author of Zahrah the Windseeker, The Shadow Seeker, and Long Juju Man. Her writing is beautiful, relentlessly weird, and utterly engrossing.
“I enjoy nonsense and weirdness,” Okorafor said. “Carnivorous hummingbirds, for example. An enormous wormlike creature moving beneath the sands who is obsessed with the number ten, not the typical numbers of seven, one, or three… ten. Spontaneous forests. Sparkling lizards that can infest a house giving it unlimited electricity but also the problem of constant static. A mosque made of glass and solar cells which blooms with fragrant periwinkle daisies on its roof at midnight every night. I love those kinds of things.”
For good reason, Okorafor’s fiction has been called “highly original” and “endlessly imaginative”. Her work has been favorably compared to that of Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson for her deft blending of contemporary and traditional themes and forms. Reviews of her writing praise her courageous female characters and her breath-taking descriptions.
Okorafor is a spontaneous writer who writes with urgency, and as a result her stories read like magical evocations of living beings.
“When a story comes to me, I have to write it or it won’t let me rest,” Okorafor said. “The characters are real to me. I hear their voices. Their actions affect me. The places I write about exist. I’ve felt the sting of their sand storms and smelled their forests. The creatures really do bite, snarl, sing, spit, sting, etc. When I’m writing, I’m there and I enjoy being there.”
Okorafor’s novels Who Fears Death (DAW) and Akata Witch (Penguin) are due out in 2010. Her chapter book Iridessa and the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog (Disney Press) is also scheduled for release next year. Her short story, “From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7″ appeared in the May 2009 issue of Clarkesworld.
Below, Okorafor and I talk about urban grasshoppers and a girl who chooses to do it on her own.
When you look out on the literary landscape, where do you see yourself?
That’s a good question. I still don’t really know. I’m not a perfect fit anywhere.
From what seed or seeds did your novel, Zahrah the Windseeker, grow? And can you share the story of its cultivation?
Zahrah the Windseeker started with a place. Ginen–an entire planet populated with foliage. This world came to me long before Zahrah the Windseeker. I initially wrote a novel called Ginen. This was never published. In that novel, I detailed Ginen–the people, the cultures, the advanced plant technology, the bloated overly patriarchal chief, his miserable wives, and of course the forests and their flora and fauna, there was so much in that novel. I even wrote a field guide to keep track.
When I finished the novel Ginen, I still wanted to spend time in that world. I’d written another book called The Legend of Arrö-yo which was about a woman who could fly, a windseeker named Arrö-yo.
You see, I just write. I have stories and they are all connected and each story is more of the puzzle I’m putting together for myself. At some point, Zahrah came to me. She was a young girl who was nothing like Arrö-yo, except that she, too, was a windseeker. Arrö-yo was from earth but Zahrah was from Ginen. And Zahrah lived near a really wild forest. I knew she had to go in there. The story practically wrote itself.
My subsequent novel, The Shadow Speaker, eventually ends up in Ginen, too… albeit in a different part.
What did writing Zahrah the Windseeker teach you about the craft that helped with writing The Shadow Speaker?
That‘s hard to say because I wrote two novels in-between Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker. I think each novel that I write helps me hone my craft that much more. I will say that writing Zahrah the Windseeker taught me how to write in first person. I originally wrote it in third. My editors asked me to change it to first. I’m always up for a challenge, so I said, sure. After I did Zahrah, I developed a taste for the first person narrative. The Shadow Speaker is in third but my forthcoming adult novel, Who Fears Death, is in first. That is a direct result of the work I did on Zahrah the Windseeker.
What is the appeal of a near future earth ravaged by bioterrorism? What does a somewhat apocalyptic setting let you do as a writer that a more normal, present-day earth wouldn’t?
I love the idea of the earth rebelling. I love the idea of human beings having no clue WTF is going on. I love the idea of the laws of physics going haywire. Human begins seek to control, they seek to be at the top of their self-created hierarchy, above all creatures. We’re arrogant as hell even though we don’t know what’s going on half the time.
Also, I have an obsession with chaos and destruction. Tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, sudden, unexpected horrible change. Writing it is my way of facing it.
The post-apocalyptic world that Ejii lives in is my worst nightmare. There is little control or predictability. People can’t even predict the weather. The weather forecasts have to come with the reminder that it is N.I.U.F, “Not Including Unpredictable Factors”. In Ejii’s world, one must learn to move with the earth, by its rules to survive, as opposed to forcing the earth to conform to one’s own rules as we do today. This makes for a different kind of story and different kinds of characters.
How did you go about building the world(s) of Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker? How do you balance the exotic and the familiar? Invite the reader in so thoroughly? Your descriptions are utterly breath-taking!
I see the world as an exotic place. Just last week, I was walking through campus when I saw a giant grasshopper sitting on the wall. I’m a professor at Chicago State University, a university smack dab in the south side of Chicago. So this was an “urban grasshopper”, I guess. My urge was to stop and catch it and examine it. See how it behaved. Feel the strength of its legs when it leapt from my hand. Look at it up close and note every design on its body. This is a creature that we see all the time but when you look at it, really look at it, you see its exotic beauty. I still maintain a sense of wonder when I look around me, I guess. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I tap into this when I write and describe things. I’m drawing from observations I’ve made of things in real life.
You’ve spent much of your life in the Chicago area. What does Chicago mean to you as an artist? In what ways does it feed your creativity?
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio but I have lived in the suburbs of Chicago since I was about six. Living in the suburbs of Chicago gave me lots of space and a lot of empty weed-filled lots to explore. It’s in these empty lots, forest preserves and nature centers that I cultivated my love for flora and fauna.
Also in these suburbs I experienced a lot of extremely blatant racism. In the 80s of South Holland, Illinois it was like the 60s. My family was one of the first black family to move into that neighborhood. Thank goodness I was a fast runner. I learned early what it was to save my own ass from the bad guys. Then when we moved to Olympia Fields, Illinois, it flipped to experiencing discrimination from black Americans for being African and for “acting white.”
I was a sort of outcast in multiple communities. So I grew up with little interest in “fitting in”. I just did my thing. And I’m still doing that.
Your protagonists Ejii and Zahrah are certainly different characters in different novels, but in their heart-of-hearts, what do they share? How are they similar?
They’re both really brave girls. With Zahrah, you see her go into that forbidden forest. She cries and sulks and flees from things, etc, but I remember thinking as I wrote her story that I could never
do what she did. Have you ever been in a forest at night? Imagine it. Deep in an enormous really wild forest, away from civilization, alone, seeking out something terrible as opposed to running from it. This girl chooses to do this on her own. That’s totally insane! I love it.
Ejii is a bit more hardcore than Zahrah. I especially learned this when I wrote the early scene where she gets in a fist fight with her cousin (who was a boy about her age). This was not an innocent fight. It was absolutely vicious. And in getting into it, Ejii was throwing off all the cultural baggage that normally should have stopped her from doing such a thing. She eventually, by her own choice, goes out into a dangerous environment- in this case a post-apocalyptic Sahara Desert. She, too, possesses a deep deep courage.
As you mention above, you are always up for a challenge and you embrace spontaneity and weirdness as a writer. What does “courage” mean in terms of writing, of being a writer. Or, put a little differently, what would you/do you tell your creative writing students about courage and writing?
If it scares you to write it, then you should definitely write it. My forthcoming novel Who Fears Death is full of moments and situations that I wanted to pull back from or skip over. I didn’t want to look at certain issues, practices or situations. But I knew that if I was feeling that way then that’s where the good stuff was, so I faced it. When I wrote these parts, I was plagued with nightmares, felt depressed, etc, it was pretty awful. But after having the courage to face what scared me, I was able to produce a work that went beyond my usual type of writing. Now I have to face the fear of my mother reading it but that’s another story, ha ha.
And, lastly, what is just beyond the horizon for you?
As it says at the very beginning of Erykah Badu’s “New Amerykah Part On” album, “”More action. More excitement. More everything.” I’m just getting started.
About the Author
Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor living in his wife’s hometown. He is on the board of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Hub City Writers Project, and is the interview editor for the Southern Nature Project. In July of 2008, he and Jeff VanderMeer launched Shared Worlds at Wofford College, a creative writing and world-building sumer program for high school students.
“Bartitsu: The Martial Art for the Steampunk Set” by Nick Mamatas
Certainly, you have your hat and coat. A wolfshead walking stick or a fan in the Japonisme style. The corset, and the goggles. Absolutely a crazy mustache or muttonchops for the males, and a silly feather-laden chapeau of some sort for the ladies. Totally inappropriate boots, yes. Perhaps even a steam-powered zapgun of some sort, all brass and Tesla coils, just for show. But you’re not truly ready for the thrilling future of the Victorian past without knowledge of antagonistics, the very techniques of fighting. So if you’re into steampunk, you may well need to learn the art of gentlemen (and also of suffragettes!), bartitsu! It ain’t pulp fiction, baby.
Bartitsu was the brainchild of Edward Barton-Wright, an English engineer who, while in Japan, was taken with a demonstration of jujutsu — itself almost a catch-all term for systems of Japanese grappling with a dash of striking. He quickly took up the art himself. After learning a smattering of judo (sport-oriented grappling) as well, he returned to England and soon set about making himself a public expert on matters of self-defense for the urban upper classes. Barton-Wright’s earliest public demonstrations and publications displayed simple jujutsu skills, but soon he expanded his system. Adding boxing, savate (French kickboxing), canne de combat, and a smattering of Western wrestling styles to the Eastern arts, Barton-Wright unveiled bartitsu to the world in 1898.
One could call bartitsu the first modern mixed-martial art and it was certainly one of the first self-conscious attempts to mix Western and Eastern self-defense techniques. Barton-Wright recognized that fights have various ranges. The cane — and no gentlemen ever went without a walking stick of some sort — extends one’s reach and lets a fellow defeat an opponent without dirtying his hands or coat. At a closer range the fist and foot come into play, and jujutsu and wrestling are necessary to deal with one’s opponent’s boxing skills. Barton-Wright also realized the importance of expert coaching. In the same way a modern mixed-martial artist might have a separate boxing coach, Muay Thai coach, and Brazilian jiujitsu (1) coach, Barton-Wright’s training hall featured an all-star staff. From Japan came jujustoka Yukio Tani; savateur and cane fighter Pierre Vigny was brought in from Switzerland, as was wrestler Armand Cherpillod. Barton-Wright’s training hall also featured top-of-the-line gym equipment and various quack electro and thermotherapy devices, including a Nagelschmidt Apparatus — an electric chair used to excite the muscles and melt off fat through the magic of voltage.
Barton-Wright wrote magazine articles that offered up much of the same hype seen in martial arts rags today, though couched in the peculiar idiom of Victorian popular journalism. This lead to baroque subheads such as “How to Avoid any Risk of being Hit on the Fingers, Arm, or Body by Retiring out of the Hitting Range of your Adversary, but at the same time Keeping Him within the Hitting Range of your Own Stick.” (If you’re following along at home, the trick is to swing your left arm back while swinging your right arm, cane in hand, forward, to bop the guy on the head.) And this being the Victorian era, there was a fair amount of thematic worry about those horrible little proletarians, malodorous street urchins, and dreadful lunatics with razors, all of whom were in need of a quick disarming.
Tony Wolf, combat choreographer and author of two-volume Bartitsu Compendium, explains, “The perception at the time was that members of the educated classes were at increasing risk from street gangsters…Barton-Wright also stressed that skill at Bartitsu would be useful when traveling overseas, to countries where one ‘could not expect fair play.’” Indeed, what would be the point of being steampunk if you couldn’t pop your monocle right off your face in horror at the mere existence of lower social orders? Barton-Wright had a tip for a gentleman who used bartitsu techniques to get an opponent down. Once the attacker was on his knees or helpless, Barton-Wright advised, “Belabor him as you will!” It was a simpler time. Less litigious anyway.
If bartitsu sounds too good to be true, it was. The Bartitsu Club only lasted a few years before collapsing. Enrollment was very high, but so too was tuition cost. Ego was almost certainly a factor. Barton-Wright was, by many reports, a fit man and a good fighter, but likely didn’t have half the skill of his specialist coaches. He named the martial art after himself, wrote many an article for Pearson’s Magazine and performed plenty of public demonstrations of his martial prowess but, as Graham Noble noted in Journal of Asian Martial Arts, “whenever real grappling was called for — against a tough wrestler, maybe, who doubted the whole thing — it was the Japanese who went onto the mat.”
The club fell apart, and Barton-Wright even claimed to have beaten Tani in a fight after an argument with the jujutsu instructor. By 1902 the bartitsu club wasn’t even history. The coaches went into business for themselves, jujutsu proper became a major fad in England, and Barton-Wright all but vanished. He poured money into his electrotherapy ideas, but his finances never recovered from a 1910 bankruptcy case. Gunji Koizumi, writing for the magazine Judo, visited Barton-Wright in 1950 and reported that the old man was still tinkering with electrotherapy devices of his own invention. A year later Barton-Wright was dead and buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. There is a brief mention of him in fantasist Robert Aickman’s memoir, The Attempted Rescue, though he is described only as a “famous physiotherapist and judoist” who put too many sugar lumps in his tea. Bartitsu was nearly entirely forgotten, except for one reference that wasn’t even spelled correctly.
In 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle succumbed to the pressure to bring his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, back to life. The only snag was that Holmes died in the 1893 story “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” having gone over Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty. In “The Adventu
re of the Empty House” Holmes explained that he freed himself from Moriarty’s bear hug thanks to “baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me.” Baritsu was obscure enough — the missing t is due to either a typographical error or some worry about intellectual property — that many publishers simply inserted the word “jujutsu” in the sentence to have it make sense. It was not until the 1990’s that the connection between the mythical baritsu and the real bartitsu was made, and today we are in the midst of a revival of the martial art.
Most neo-Bartitsuits are martial artists with an interest in history, as opposed to historical recreationists with an interest in martial arts. Wolf, who designed various fighting styles for The Lord of the Rings films, was a teenage taekwondo champion in the 1970s, and also explored “capoeira, aikido, kickboxing, five-animal kung fu, amateur wrestling, hapkido, old-school shoot wrestling, pro-wrestling, Filipino stick and knife, etc.” before becoming fascinated with the idea of resuscitating dead martial arts. One of the leading lights of the bartitsu revival movement, Wolf estimates that “there are probably fewer than fifty regular practitioners worldwide. That number would jump into the mid-hundreds if we count people who have attended short term seminars or who train occasionally.” The few bartitsu schools that exist tend to be based around one or two of the core arts, with the rest of the bartitsu curriculum a matter of recreation and experimentation.
Despite the low number of artists, and the gaping holes in our understanding of how Bartitsu was actually supposed to work, the martial art might be ready to explode thanks to a plucky little film called Sherlock Holmes, to be released in the US on Christmas Day. Wolf says, “The major benefit of the movie for [bartitsu] will be to firmly establish a link between 19th century London and martial arts in the popular imagination, and we’ll happily ride that wave.”
