SF in Brazil
Latin American SF in The New York Times
Emily Hart’s piece ‘‘Science Fiction from Latin America, With Zombie Dissidents and Aliens in the Amazon’’ was published in The New York Times on July 10, 2023, and claimed the attention of the Brazilian SF community. Hart writes out of Colombia, and deals in her piece with that country and with Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil. Her starting point is the first conference on Latin American SF held in Yale University, on March 3-4, 2023, attended by major US researchers M. Elizabeth Ginway and Rachel Haywood.
Ginway has been investigating some of the topics touched upon by Hart around an SF that employs something from body horror and explores the symbolic Amazon. Regarding Brazil, Hart isolates Afrofuturism and mentions Ale Santos’s dystopian novel O Último Ancestral [The Last Forefather], a runner-up for the Jabuti Award (Brazil’s number one literary award) for Best Entertainment Novel. Santos is published by the local HarperCollins branch, a label most English readers recognize. Sequence A Malta Indomável [The Indomitable Mob] was released in November 2023.
Afrofuturism Embraced by the Biggies
Brazil has more Black people living out of Africa than any other country in the world – as confirmed by a recent national census, acknowledging a record of citizens declaring themselves Afro-Brazilians. Accordingly, Afrofuturism made a splash among some of the biggest Brazilian publishing houses during 2020 and 2021, on the wake of a local public debate on structural racism. Quite the buzz among fans and influencers, and covered with interest by the press, Afrofuturist SF and fantasy (Afrofantastika?) included the publication of N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), an awarded debut novel, seen here after the completion of her Broken Earth trilogy by Morro Branco, a midsized publisher – but the 2021 Brazilian release went out through the giant Record (in its YA inprint, Galera).
Also through Galera, The Gilded Ones (2021) is a fantasy novel by Namina Forna (born in Sierra Leone), the first in her The Immortals series and a debut novel as well, though one originally written for the young-adult readership and launched here almost simultaneously with the English-reading market – which shows how much the Afrofuturism trend became internationally sought after. That Record’s interest has been kindled by Penguin Books’ buying Forna’s novel for six figures after a string of rejections is almost certain.
On the other hand, Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (2020) was released here through Intrínseca (with a translation by Afro-Brazilian writer Jim Anotsu); another quite recent novel, a runner-up for the Hugo Award and a YA contemporary fantasy. A big company, used to placing big hits on the market, Intrínseca enters the Afrofantastika trend with this book – clearly attracted by the fact that it was a national bestseller in the US. It also put out, in 2021, soon-to-be-a-movie high fantasy novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019), by Jamaican author Marlon James.
A number one New York Times bestseller with her Children of Blood and Bone (2018), Nigerian-American Tomi Adeyemi studied West African mythology and culture in Brazil’s Northeast region (Bahia has a large number of Afro-Brazilians with a lot of Yoruba cultural traces). That YA novel of hers and its sequel Children of Virtue and Vengeance (2019) appeared here through Rocco Fantástica, another major house in the Brazilian book-publishing world. Much smaller, Editora Alt released at the end of the year Nigerian-Welsh Natasha Bowen’s Soul of the Deep (2022), having published in 2021 the first in the series, Skin of the Sea (2021).
Mentioned above, Morro Branco did a lot for the trend in Brazil, especially by publishing works by the pioneering and highly respected Octavia E. Butler. In 2021, it brought us, for the first time, Wild Seed (1980), part of Butler’s Patternist series. In the same series but published in 2022, Morro Branco put out Mind of my Mind (1977), and in 2023, Clay’s Ark (1984). Its Christmas book for 2023, though, was The Memory Librarian and Other Stories from Dirty Computer, by singer and actress Janelle Monáe, based on her 2018 album Dirty Computer – an original anthology of stories written with important names such as Alaya Dawn Johnson and Sheree Renée Thomas.
Nnedi Okorafor, who anticipated the trend with her novel Who Fears Death (2010), published here by Geração Editorial in 2014, was also seen in 2023 with her fantasy Akata Warrior (2017), through Galera, which of course already has published Okorafor’s first in the series, Akata Witch (2011).
In the field of pioneering African American SF writers promoted in Brazil, veteran specialty house Aleph released in 2023 Samuel R. Delany’s extravagant space opera Nova (1968). Space opera, by the way, has become Aleph’s cup of tea, and in 2023 it published Ann Leckie’s whole Imperial Radch trilogy – along with several works by John Scalzi (Old Man’s War series) and his Redshirts (2012) parody, and Dan Simmons’s classic Hyperion (1989).
In Afrofuturism, Aleph published in 2023 Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts, about generation ships and race-based social stratification. Aleph also joined other field of feminist SF with Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s anthology Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology – to which a Brazilian story by Aline Valek was added (Aleph’s policy to date was not to publish Brazilian authors, who, apparently, are the ultimate underprivileged group).
Brazilians in Afrofuturism
The mention of Brazilian Afrofuturism by Emily Hart in The New York Times reinforces the centrality of that trend in the so-called Fourth Wave of Brazilian Science Fiction, a concept put forward by researchers Lidia Zuin and Alexander Meireles da Silva – for instance, in his essay ‘‘Sobre Diversidades e Regionalidades: A Ascenção da Quarta Onda da Ficção Científica Brasileira’’ [On Diversities and Regionalities: The Rise of the Fourth Wave in Brazilian Science Fiction], in the Memorare Jan/July 2021 edition. Beginning in 2015, the Fourth Wave would have as its core a fiction centered on identity and representation, and also regional approaches that value Brazil’s areas seen as either colonial provinces or culturally and ethnically backwards.
A local Afrofuturist, Oghan N’thanda, who began publishing steampunk SF as José Roberto Viera a decade ago – with his The Shoah Baronage series – and who has recently focused on independent publishing both in Portuguese and English, with his Afrofuturist series Dystopian Diaspora, for instance, and his steampunk fantasy series The World of Nordara (originally in English). His 2012 O Baronato de Shoah 1: A Canção do Silêncio [The Shoah Baronage 1: The Song of Silence] is regarded as the first Brazilian steampunk novel.
Another pioneer Afrofuturist, Fábio Kabral, was also repositioned within the new trend. His latest novel was the 2021 O Blogueiro Bruxo das Redes Sobrenaturais [The Witch Blogger of the Supernatural Webs], third in a series set in the Afrofuturist megalopolis Ketu 3. It came out through Malê Editora, a house specialized in Afro-Brazilian fiction that also brought in 2022 Sandra Menezes’s novella O Céu entre Mundos [The Sky Between Worlds], about an African colony on planet Wangari, settled by humankind after the wasting of planet Earth.
Raízes do Amanhã: 8 Contos Afrofuturistas[Tomorrow Roots: 8 Afrofuturist Tales] is an anthology organized by Waldson Souza with stories by G.G. Diniz, Lavínia Rocha, Stefano Volp, Sérgio Motta, Kelly Nascimento, Petê Rissatti, Pétala & Isa Souza, and Waldson himself, author of the 2021 novella O Homem que não Transbordava [The Man Who Didn’t Overflow], an ebook through Plutão Livros. The anthology came out at the end of 2021 through Editora Gutenberg and through Plutão (the ebook edition).
Labeled as ‘‘sertãopunk’’ and the author’s first novel, G.G. Diniz’s A Diplomata [The Diplomat] was also out through Plutão in October 2023. Another interstellar adventure that denounces the environmental issues of a dystopian Earth of the future. Diniz is, with Alan de Sá and Alec Silva, one of the founders of the Sertãopunk Movement that claims SF for Northeastern Brazil, a region that was a target of prejudice from the far right during the latest elections, in which authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro lost to center-left candidate (and a man born in the Northeast) Inácio Lula da Silva.
Amazofuturism and Nativo-Brazilian SF
Amazofuturism is a current or movement proposed in 2021 by author Rogério Pietro with his novel Amazofuturismo, launched by the small press Saifers-BR. This would be an SF that leads the Amazon Indigenous cultures to the genre’s futurist realms. Always with Saifers-BR, Pietro followed it up with novelette Amazônia Viva [Living Amazon], an ebook in 2021 as well, and in 2022 with Amazofuturismo 2: Primavera Ancestral [Ancestral Spring], with a preface by Cristino Wapichana, an award-winning author of Native-Brazilian books for children, in Brazil and abroad. Pietro is also the author of the more conventional SF Parasitas Eletrônicos [Electronic Parasites], in 2023.
O Karaíba: Uma História do Pré-Brasil, [The Karaiba: A Pre-Brazil History] by Daniel Munduruku was out in 2018 by Cia Melhoramentos and can be read as prehistoric SF, a subgenre other Brazilians have written, such as Stella Carr, Ivanir Calado, and Urda Alice Klueger. Daniel Munduruku is the most well-known Native Brazilian author, and an activist for Indigenous rights. More properly SF, André Muniz Puri’s story collection Ximan Poteh: Contos dos Futuros Puris [Tales from Future Puris], is a 2019 self-published book by another Native Brazilian author – a space opera fix-up that tells the adventures of Chief Xipu, commander of spacecanoe Ximah Poteh, flagship of a Puri (a Native nation) fleet of the far future.
Clinton Davisson, author of Hegemonia: O Herdeiro de Basten [Hegemony: The Heir of Basten; 2007], a novel that’s one the inaugural works of the Third Wave of Brazilian SF, came back to fiction writing after a substantial hiatus. His juvenile novella Baluartes: Terra Sombria [Redoubtable Ones: Dark Land] published in 2022 through Editora Avec, was a runner-up for several awards. It inserts itself within the current trend of the employment of folklore and historical approaches, Davisson helped to promote in 2013 when he edited, with Grazielle de Marca & Maria Georgina de Souza, the original anthology Brasil Fantástico: Lendas de um País Sobrenatural [Fantastic Brazil: Legends of a Supernatural Country].
Latino Fantasy Is Next?
It looks like that, in 2022 and ’23, after the tsunami of Afrofantastika books in 2021, the trend gave up a bit, maybe because the dragnet had already grabbed the most of what had been recently available. But if a wave recedes, another mounts: 2022 witnessed the appearance of a small number of Latin American fantasy novels – anticipated by local releases of books by Isabel Allende and Daina Chaviano years ago. The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (2021) is a novel by Ecuadorian-American Zoraida Córdova, published here through Galera. Uruguayan Fernanda Trías was published here by the small print Editora Moinhos with Mugre rosa (2020), an ecocatastrophe SF novel. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Bram Stoker Award runner-up Mexican Gothic (2020) appeared here in 2021, and her The Daughter of Dr. Moreau (2022) in 2023. Isn’t that enough? Brazilian author and researcher Ana Rüsche has campaigned for more Latin American female authors published in Brazil, and even new fantasy magazine Escambanáutica (seven editions since 2021) pledges to bring more of a Latin American flavor to the pulp magazine tradition.
2023 Awards Season
The first relevant local award to announce its results in 2023 was the Odyssey of Fantastic Literature Award, attached to an event of the same name. It was announced in October and its categories (and results) were Cover and Graphic Design (winner: A Vida e as Mortes de Severino Olho de Dendê [The Live and Deaths of Severino Olho de Dendê], by Ian Fraser, through Intrínseca), Fantastic Comics (Os Sussurros do Caos Rastejante [The Whispers from the Crawling Chaos] by Fábio Yabu & Fred Rubin, through Jambô), Long Juvenile Narrative (A Morte e a Vida dos Meninos Lobos [The Death and Life of the Wolf Boys], by Lucas de Melo Bonez, through Boaventura Editora), Short Horror Narrative (‘‘A Devoradora’’ [The Devourer], by Juliana Cunha, through O Grifo), Short Fantasy Narrative (‘‘Serra Minguante’’ [Shrinking Range], by João Mendes, through Mafagafo magazine), Short Science Fiction Narrative (‘‘O Cuco de Sumaúna’’ [The Sumauma Tree Cuckoo], by Simone Saueressig, through Editora Avec), Long Narrative Horror (Irebu, by Larissa Brasil, self-published), Long Narrative Fantasy (Ebálidas de Pseudo-Outis, [The Ebalides of Pseudoutis], by Bruno Anselmi Matangrano, through Arte e Letra), Long Science Fiction Narrative (Mil Placebos [A Thousand Placebos], by Matheus Borges, from Uboro Lopes) and Fantastic Articles Fantásticos (‘‘Pode a Inteligência Ser Artificial? O que nos Ensinam os Robôs de Isaac Asimov’’ [Might Intelligence Be Artificial? What Isaac Asimov’s Robots Teach Us], by Rafael Eisinger Guimarães, from Pontes Editores).
Fraser’s A Vida e as Mortes de Severino Olho de Dendê is a novel published by a big, established house, which proved that it could win the 2023 Jabuti Award for Best Enterteinment Novel and call attention for the potential of Brazilian SF with the biggies, and for the potential of space opera in particular. But the winner was a metalinguistic YA novel by Karine Asth, Dentro do nosso Silêncio [Within our Silence], released by Editora Bestiário. The Jabuti was announced in the first week of December, and Fraser’s book, a pastiche romp on space opera, falls within that valuing of Northeastern culture.
The very last award of the year was the Argos, sponsored by Science Fiction Reader’s Club de Literatura Fantástica. Its awards ceremony happened in Rio de Janeiro, on December 15. For this year, its committee opted for a voting system in two phases. The first phase was within the norm up to this point: Only members were allowed to vote. The second phase was open to anyone. Promptly, the committee issued a statement informing that block voting was detected and they were erasing that, as it went. This led fan and critic Cesar Silva, who has a history with the Argos and who was a judge at the Odyssey in 2023, to denounce authors lobbying for the Argos. Categories were Novel (Estação das Moscas [Station of Flies], by Cirilo S. Lemos, through Editora Draco), the confusing Anthology or Collection (Os Pilares de Melkat [The Pillars of Melkat], a collection by Ana Lúcia Merege, through Draco) and Short Story (‘‘Jogo do Destino’’ [Destiny Game] by de Merege from Draco). At the same event, SFRC also handed down trophies and certificates not sent from previous Editions of the Argos, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Quatro Cinco Um (451, after Fahrenheit 451) literary journal printed in its December issue its list of the best books of 2023. Among them, associational novel O Crime do Bom Nazista [The Good Nazi’s Crime], by Samir Machado de Machado, who began as a SF author/editor, responsible for the Ficção de Polpa [Fiction of Pulp] anthology series. Other chosen ones of interest includes Onde Pastam os Minotauros [Where the Minotaurs Graze] by renowned mainstream author Joca Reiners Terron, who mingles fantastic elements (the presence of Minotaurs and the viewpoint of cattle in an abattoir) with the realist narrative in a fabulation key; and Bernardo Carvalho’s Os Substitutos [The Replacements], a short novel that, according to reviewer Victor da Rosa, has science fictional elements that dialogue with a historical plot about the travels of a timber trafficker’s son during the military dictatorship (1964-1985), which, by the way, has opened the Amazon forest for plunder. Clearly, it is time to ponder the backwardness of the Bolsonaro administration and its nostalgia for tyranny.
–Roberto de Sousa Causo
This report and more like it in the March 2024 issue of Locus..
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