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I argue that what hampered the evolution and proliferation of Nigerian SF in the twentieth-century was the reliance on the paradigm of ‘writing back’ that dominated postcolonial theory and the approach of many critics and writers towards contemporary Nigerian literature.

B had sometimes, over the centuries, pursued research into subjects that did not naturally light a spark in him—among his seventeen PhDs were those in accountancy, land economy, and food science—but there were other skills at which he had only ever acquired adequate expertise.

Sixty winters gone. Stranger came, fought a bear. Penis torn off. The man’s. This is it (another grew where it had been). I have kept it in honey.

I will argue that a diffractive mode of analysis can be helpful in this regard if we learn to tune our analytical instruments (that is our diffraction apparatuses) in a way that is suffciently attentive to the details of the phenomenon we want to understand.

As Donna Haraway suggests, diffraction can serve as a useful counter-point to reflection: both are optical phenomena, but whereas the metaphor of reflection reflects the themes of mirroring and sameness, diffraction is marked by patterns of difference.

Images or representations are not snapshots or depic-tions of what awaits us but rather condensations or traces of multiple prac-tices of engagement.

To many scientists as well as science studies scholars, the theories of semiotics and deconstruction, which call into ques-tion the assumed congruity of signifier and signified, insisting on the intrin-sic arbitrariness of the sign or representation, seem to be the ultimate in linguistic narcissism.

To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence.

By the twenty-first century, the capitalist revolution had arrived almost everywhere and impacted virtually all spheres of life. Expansive and radical, it remains the most consequential revolution in world history.

What right had mere humans, evolved fifteen hundred light years away, to meddle so much with this remote, exotic chunk of the universe?

‘To the pit. This is a rebellion. An uprising of the slaves. Where else? So, you ready? What are you waiting for, a round of applause? Come on …’

‘Why must we be left stranded on dreary copies of the home world, the original Earth? Oh, we evolved there, it represents a point of plausibility in that regard. But what other worlds might support us, worlds out there in parameter space that might do the job of an Earth, but better?’

As the world’s most influential neoliberal, Friedrich Hayek, put it in 1981: “I personally prefer a liberal dictator to a democratic government lacking liberalism.”

Attacking the giant bureaucratic machine of the university, Berkeley students pronounced that “I will not be folded, spindled, or mutilated,” a play on the Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate punch cards that fed data into computers at the time.

Not only did the golden years end, but so did the whole order of industrial capitalism that had risen since the 1870s. The 1970s were no mere blip—they were an epochal break in capitalism’s history.

The many consequential social, economic, and institutional departures of the golden age also accelerated the basic impetus of the capitalist revolution as capital owners pushed the logic of commodification into new areas of the world and new nooks and crannies of society.

Thanks to better feed and the use of antibiotics, a cow in Germany produced 3,800 liters of milk per year in 1970, compared with just 2,500 liters in 1950, and hens laid 216 instead of 120 eggs annually.

As wages increased during the 1950s, Japanese workers were able to purchase durable consumer goods such as televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines, collectively known as the “three sacred treasures.” By the 1960s, these “treasures” were replaced by the “three Cs” (color TVs, coolers [air conditioners], and cars).

For all the disappointments, shortcomings, and failures that would surface (especially after 1970), decolonization ignited significant economic growth of 2 or 3 percent per year throughout much of Asia and Africa after many decades, or even centuries, of no growth at all.

...colonialism unraveled at astounding speed. In just three decades after 1945, almost all colonies gained their independence. What had one day seemed, to many Europeans, to be the nearly natural order, essential to the upkeep of the world economy, even to civilization as such, became irrelevant the next.

And Mott had concluded, as she always did, with a question. ‘So what wonders are you going to be witnessing today … ?’

Environs. A strange word. We need a better name. Hearth. Hearthspace …

‘So, Captain, if we are to take this portion of Hearthspace, we must follow its economic logic. We must take worlds like this, too, despite its lack of … glamour. We must understand the significance of all our enemy’s worlds. Their supply chains will become the supply chains of our own forces.’

And if so, it was her duty to take in as much as she could learn …
Scholars in battleships …

‘A senior officer, judging by the ornate uniform. Useful.’ Gruff male voice. He glanced around. ‘But what kind of bridge is this? Where are the naked slaves, the couches?’

“OH, LOOK!” I roared. “Another impassable chasm, how lovely!”

“God, you kill one inquisitor and spend the rest of your life apologizing for it.”
“I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us.”

“I swear, sometimes you are enough to give my arsehole a headache,” I muttered.

For Deleuze and Guattari, however, the issue is not whether there is a path to freedom, for there is no freedom; there is no state of being, there are only becomings.

If there is an ethic to be found in Deleuze and Guattari, it might be summed up by the following injunction: “Only retain … what augments the number of connections.”