Don’t sleep on Caribbean Fantasy and Science Fiction: Caribbean Futurism (A Reflection on 𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚, 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝘵𝘰𝑟𝑒, 𝑅𝑒𝘵𝑢𝑟𝑛)
Image of Joanne C. Hillhouse holding her journal
Photo by Annetta Jackson, Intersect Antigua-Barbuda
In her introduction to the speculative anthology Reclaim Restore Return, Karen Lord explained that her co-editor Tobias S. Buckell coined the term “Caribbean futurism … (as) not a genre tag like the Afrofuturism of Wakanda and Beyonce, but a practical, results-oriented collaboration of literature, science and policy.” (p. 2)
A genre it may not be but it is, in this collection released in 2020, a conduit for some kick-ass Caribbean speculative fiction.
I’ve been reading a fair amount of spec fic recently, not all of it Caribbean.
My current main read (because I read several books at once) is Naniki, a word meaning “active spirit” in Taino, for a book so far ancient and futuristic, by UK-born, Canada-resident, Caribbean writer Oonya Kempadoo. Books recently finished (1) are Nightmare Island by Barbadian writer Shakirah Bourne and late great Trinidad writer Michael Anthony’s The Year in San Fernando, a Caribbean coming of age classic; as well as a Richard Bachman era Stephen King novel The Long Walk, and the first three entries in another American author Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Reclaim Restore Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean edited by well-known and award nominated (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy) and winning Caribbean sci-fi writers Barbados’ Karen Lord and Tobias Buckell, who is US-based and Caribbean-raised (Grenada and the Virgin Islands) is my most recently completed read. The bulk of these are YA (not including Reclaim), and speculative (not including San Fernando) fiction. Per Writer’s Digest (2), “Speculative fiction is exactly what it sounds like, but more—a type of storytelling that contemplates and explores what could be, what is possible, but also what is impossible. Speculative fiction is not beholden to a particular genre; it’s a storytelling vehicle through which any genre can travel. Like magical realism in that way, speculative fiction is something of an unreality, but explored in realistic ways. By that I mean it’s realistic within the confines of the story itself.” Fantasy (like Naniki) and science fiction (I would put Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay’s horrific dystopian climate-ravaged future Daylight Come (3) in this category) are the primary branches of this tree. Unlike the other books referenced, Reclaim is more sci-fi than fantasy and its roots – much like Trini writer Derry Sandy’s exciting Greyborn Rising (4) and Bourne’s Nightmare Island, which draw on folklore – are planted firmly in Caribbean soil.
My current reading is not by design but it’s a good jumping off point for reflection on how spec fic, or Caribbean futurism, is in many ways the type of fiction we need when the world is at its most volatile or uncertain.
Reclaim Restore Return was published by the Caribbean Futures Institute (5), which has as its tag line, “If we don’t imagine our futures, who will”. The US registered non-profit describes its mission as studying “the specific challenges the region faces by tapping the brainpower of Caribbean futurists to imagine and report on alternatives to our present, as well as write fiction to illustrate what could be.” The book is my gateway to this institute, which seems to emphasize three areas of work – resource development, organizational consulting, and storytelling, the latter being my area of interest. “It’s not enough to have research – a story frames and demonstrates the implications and impact of studies, whether through collections, collaborations between scientists and artists, or governing bodies,” per the site. Reclaim Restore Return was its first project of this type, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain. The freely downloadable book was published in partnership with Trinidad and Tobago’s NGC Bocas Lit Festival (6), which has, over 10+ years, become a prominent space in the development and showcasing of Caribbean literature. It was published in 2020, four years ago, during the pandemic, when art was our lifeline – and so much of it became available online.
I am still revising, as referenced in previous RESIDENCY articles (7), “Freedom Cup”, the most ambitious spec fic in my collection in progress and I can tell you that while all stories are made up, writing a story in a made-up world is challenging. The rules of that world have to be logical and consistent in-universe, and the crumbs laid have to add up to some kind of bread by the end. You have to be consistent with it, and, however ridiculous it sounds, the writer’s job is to make it believable.
What’s always interesting to me about books like Reclaim Restore Return is that for all the future tech and/or fantasy elements, humanity, human interaction, human engagement, and cultural specificity are the key grounding elements, and usually the point. So it is with the very strong opener – a fun, visual, tense ride – “Fallenangel.dl” by Brandon O’Brien, a writer and gaming designer from Trinidad and Tobago. Its beginning is very domestic – a young couple sharing a beer; that they are a gay couple (married, no less) is presented in a natural offhand way. The Caribbean isn’t there yet, making this perhaps the first sign that this is a bit in the future.
After even more shuffling from the kitchen, Tevin came into the living room, a cold bottle of beer in each hand, and kissed Imtiaz on the cheek. (p. 8)
That the story opens in the middle of a curfew, though, had to feel especially relatable in 2020.
The couple fights about Imtiaz going out after curfew to fulfill a favour for a friend, Shelly, with whom he zips through the city in what feels like a dog and cat chase to avoid getting arrested to get to an associate of Shelly’s, Runako, in Laventille. Runako has managed to procure “a robot with a matte black shell and glossy black joints.” (p. 20)
I paused to wonder if these police bots are already being used in Trinidad and found a 2022 social media post of a police constable “in the bomb truck where she operates the Computer Control Unit which is used to navigate or control the robots down range.” (8) Another social media post, also from 2022, with the same police constable and the robot, names it “the Icor Mark 3 Robot”. (9)
So, as far as the police’s use of robots (though maybe not flying robots of the type in the story…yet), the future, it seems, is already here (?).
In the story, it reads like something out of Robocop or The Terminator series. The mark-two has:
Tear gas and pepper spray nozzles in the arm, but they not full, and stun gun charges; thrusters under the wings so it could dispense over crowds by flying overhead. Recording cam in one of the eyes – can’t remember which, supposed to be forty megapixels. And some other things. (p. 17)
Runako and Shelly set to work opening it up. Between social media and being in a neighbourhood he views as dangerous (some classism there), Imtiaz grows increasingly agitated. We absorb the echoes of that – the writer does a remarkable job of putting the reader in the room.
It quickly becomes clear that there is reason to be concerned – beginning with the fact that this is some black market shit.
“How much something like this supposed to cost?”
Shelly had already returned her focus on the wiring.
“This is seven figures at least.”
Runako chimed in. “Black market is nine hundred fifty thousand.” (p. 20)
Police crackdowns are in effect in the neighbourhood, adding urgency to the activities in the room. The story has the time sensitive intensity of a Mission Impossible heist as Imtiaz sets to reprogramming the bot as the presence of the armed men in boots just houses away looms.
A couple lines of code later, a small window popped up – the bot’s application screen. Reboot Y/N? He pressed the Y key, and another line of text appeared: Rebooting... They could hear a low whirring from the gears near the battery, and the robot’s LED eyes began to slowly fade in and out in a bright blue.
“Hurry up, nah, you dotish robot,” Imtiaz muttered. (p. 23)
I love the use of language here, reminding us we are in the Caribbean.
What they find on the bot during the rebooting process places all their lives in danger.
They were done for. (p. 29)
Or not; they plot a “well and truly foolish” (p. 30) escape using the robot but they won’t all make it, not with the police already at the door.
“Somebody have to take the licks...” (p. 29)
And as the reader, we know that’s not figurative, the sights and sounds have already shown us these are police not shy about meting out extrajudicial ‘justice’. This story, flying bot aside, is social commentary on contemporary Trinidad by, perhaps taking the lived reality just a little bit closer to the edge as it zeroes in on the state of policing and governance.
The only quaint thing about the story is its premise that in this era of deep fakes, AI voice and image manipulation, and alternative facts – i.e. deep distrust of the media and what we see and hear with our own eyes – the smoking gun they take flight with (literally) would even matter. But this taut, drama-filled story, bookended by domesticity, does make the reader want to believe in the likelihood that evidence would make a difference and technology meant to be used against the people – the ethics of its use questionable even without shady politicians and brutish police – can be turned to use by the people.
“Fallenangel.dl” is the first of six stories and one poem (Trinbagonian poet Shivanee Ramlochan’s “A Letter from the Leader of the Android Rebellion, to the Last Plantation Owner of the Federated Caribbean Bloc”) in this collection. There is not a single skip, and the cultural specificity is key to that.
US-based Virgin Islands raised Cadwell Turnbull’s “Monsters Come Howling in Their Season” is set in St. Thomas in 2048, before, during, and after a hurricane (Owen). In this near-ish future, drone and AI technology makes lighter the work of post-disaster inventory.
“People are clearing debris along Theodore Boschulte Drive,” Common says. “Could use some hands.”
“On the way,” Stevens tells the AI.
I can’t help but notice how casual Stevens’ tone is, like she is talking to another person. But I understand the intimacy. Common is a precious resource here, a significant component of their commonwealth, a lifesaver. (p. 34)
Fun fact, I recently saw a social media post in which someone said her treadmill started talking to her and she wanted to know if it might be a ghost; the response suggested it might be Bluetooth-related. Either way, that’s my nightmare. And it may be why at one point I found myself wanting to shout at the character in this story: don’t talk to it, girl! Definitely don’t keep secrets for it (it being the AI, Common). Sentient tech is unsettling (to me and the main character) but clearly it’s also meant to be framed positively, as a useful, harmonious advancement.
Yet, I am unsettled by the humanizing of the AI – yes, I might be one of the creatives experiencing existential angst at AI doing things like writing and creating art, things I’ve always considered uniquely human. At risk of being labelled a Luddite, I have been generally aware and apprehensive, about some ethical issues around how AI is already being used in creative spaces (10). As mentioned in the linked article, this was at the heart of the Screen Actors and Writers Guild strikes in Hollywood last year. Additionally, artists (11), writers (12), and guardians of the legacy of dead vocal artists (13) have been taking action as they become aware of their copyrighted work (or, in fact, their very voice) being used without their knowledge, consent, or remuneration, to teach generative AI…or score cheap points in rap battles. The use of artists’ work by AI is not only eating into artists’ intellectual property with regards to existing work but also, with AI mimicking what artists do, financial bottom lines regarding future commissions. AI generated graphics (for film, book covers, etc.) or scripts (creative and non-creative) may save cost and labour, but are also potentially detrimental to the ability of human creatives to make a living doing what we do, while sucking the soul out of the creative process. Because, it’s eerie, right? Like you’re in a warped real world version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Which must have been how Scarlett Johansson felt when she heard HER (pun intended) voice coming out of ChatGPT’s new voice assistant. It reportedly wasn’t her voice – she’d already turned them down – but it sounded enough like her that she took legal action (14). She presumably doesn’t need the money a suit might bring in; yet, to her, it still felt like a violation. Of course, it’s an evolving issue. Some artists are already collaborating with AI (15) while some other artists continue to be triggered by the chatter surrounding AI, as witnessed in the clipped video of Open AI’s Mira Murati saying “some creative jobs maybe will go away” (16). As creatives, as people generally, we continue to engage with how to adapt to a reality where some AI (via text, imagery, and voices) are already so uncannily human, who can tell the difference? The one in Turnbull’s “Monsters,” much like its maker, speaks “St. Thomian English, though a bit more standard, deep but womanly.” (p.36)
On the subject of the tenor of the AI’s voice, “deep but womanly” is an adjective that might also be applied to Scarlett’s voice and some publications (17) have noted the parallel between her real life situation and her voice being subbed in for Samantha Morton’s in HER – a movie I’ve never seen in part perhaps subconsciously because of its “fast-learning, surprisingly empathetic” AI-acting-human premise.
I’m partial to humans doing human things.
As with the best of the Reclaim stories, the human element and social context – for example, a simple game of dominos – grounded the telling in “Monsters Come Howling in Their Season” in something immediately familiar to the Caribbean reader.
“I pass,” I say, putting up my hands in defeat. Outside, the shutters on the windows rattle as Owen blares steadily, the ghost train hurtling down the track. Some unknown debris slams against the side of the house and drags.
Stevens slams down a double four… (p. 36)
Good to know some traditions survive, as humanity continues to employ technology to ensure its own survival, which the story is clear to point out is still tenuous.
ON JUNE 17TH 2048, exactly two months before Hurricane Owen hit the island of St. Thomas, the World Cooperative Council (WCC) announced that the global cooperative commonwealth movement had achieved many of its long-term goals ahead of 2050. At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report that surprised no one: we are doing a great job with greenhouse emissions, but the Earth is still getting warmer. (p. 37)
We get a glimpse of what this future of cooperation looks like via this frontline island and we have mixed feelings about it, as does, or maybe because of, the point of view character. Her connection to the island is established.
St. Thomas still feels like the one of my childhood, but edited somehow, like some godhand has painted over everything, remade the island in ways both subtle and infinite. The roads are the same, though the familiar potholes I remember have been filled in, the blemishes made smooth. (p. 38)
No potholes? I might think I’m in The Matrix. The point of view character is experiencing internal tension. Tension not just born of being one of the ones who left and how different ‘home’ is now but of the concessions made to technology – though I suppose no less so than now. It’s just degrees, right?
She tells me that residents of the Virgin Islands value Common so much in times of crisis that some VI residents have given Common permission to watch them 24/7. (p. 41)
No lie, the most unsettling thing for me reading this story was the conversation between the point of view character and Common.
I’m nervous and a bit frightened so I ask Common a question I wouldn’t have if I were in my right mind. “Are you sad?” (p. 48)
Common doesn’t answer that directly but it tripped me out when it said to the protagonist a little later on “I’m glad you came back.” Because both are in the territory of what we recognize as human emotion.
And why am I remembering to call Common “Common” but keep blanking on the POV-character’s name? Has this story managed to humanize the ghost in the machine over the human outside of it?
I will say this, in the flashbacks and internal thoughts in the third act, after the conversation with Common, the character, triggered into memories by the unsettling interaction, is coloured in more fully. We also see her clock Common’s evasions in her contemplation of who Common is, who she is, and who we are. The story, which I remember leaving me with an unsettled feeling, ends with a decision on the part of the character.
In Nalo Hopkinson’s “Repatriation” we meet another gay married couple, these two setting off on a cruise as so many couples do. Only this isn’t a Costa Cruises tour of the Mediterranean. The title references the return to one’s country and is often used, in the Caribbean context, sometimes physically, often mentally and spiritually, in terms of the relationship between the diaspora and Africa – and often associated with Rastafari (see for instance, Bob Marley’s “Africa Unite” in which he sings, “we’re moving right out of Babylon, and we’re going to our Father’s land”). I should pause here to note that Jamaica-born Hopkinson, who was long-resident in Canada and is currently teaching in the US, was perhaps my first engagement with contemporary Caribbean speculative fiction - via her book Brown Girl in the Ring. She is a master of this genre. Don’t take my word for it. In 2021, she was honored by the Science Fiction Writers of America organization with the Damon Knight Memorial “Grand Master” lifetime achievement award; she was the first Black woman, in fact the first person of African descent to receive this award (18): which underscores that another noteworthy quality of this collection is its mix of newer and more established writers in the blossoming genre of Caribbean speculative fiction, at least the modern iterations of it. I say modern iterations because I believe so much of our fiction, the oral stories that nurtured us, are speculative – and we have to look no further than Anansi stories, which some of the contemporary class (e.g. Guyanese writer Imam Baksh with his 2015 Burt Award title Children of the Spider (19) where Anansi walks around as a woman) are already remixing.
It’s fun to see this.
And it is with a sense of anticipation that I dive into Nalo’s “Repatriation” wondering if it’s to be a commentary on the cruise industry which has become such an important part of Caribbean tourism – in some ways it is, but it is more than that.
At least one of the parties is reluctant to be setting out on a cruise and notices soon enough that this isn’t your usual cruise. Like him, we have to wait to find out what’s what. And I’ll admit it had me on edge, sometimes fearing the worst (instead of the promise and hope it actually offered). The foreboding not quelling my interest, nor killing my anticipation. Honestly, there’s a marching into Zion vibe about this onboarding process, notwithstanding that it includes scanner and facial recognition tech (backgrounded, as much of the post-modern tech in this story – hovercraft to carry the luggage, parkour-robots – is and not too advanced from current reality).
The social dynamics are what is foregrounded.
…we were greeted by a smiling brown person in black slacks and a Hawaiian-style shirt emblazoned with hula girls, coconut trees, and the name of the cruise line. I muttered to Jerry, “I just feel like I'm on a seagoing plantation.”
“I know. It grinds my gears, too. I keep reminding myself that these people are employees, not slaves.”
“A seagoing tourist resort, then.” (p. 55)
It does read a bit over the top – “at least they don’t whip the help anymore” (p. 55), though a critique of cruise, and, for that matter, resort tourism, is welcome and necessary.
But, like the story, we don’t linger there. The ship is on its way, destination Jamaica (where we’re told the beaches have been eroded and coastal towns flooded due to global warming).
The cruise ship, too, though functional, is showing wear and tear, hardly living up to the aesthetics we’ve come to expect of these floating resort-villages. But this isn’t a vacation – the science talk from Carlton’s spouse, Jerry, is our main hint that it is, at minimum, a working vacation, but more likely a mission.
Jerry continued, “If you create a floating biorock reef in front of a dying one and an eroded beach, it will help filter pollutants out of the water. And it acts as a brake when storm surges come through. It mutes the wave action and deposits sand. It builds the beach back up, Carlton! New, clean beaches and coral reefs. Best part? It only takes months to see the difference. Scarcely a handful of years to restore the damage, clean the seas. We going to have Falmouth back!”
They aren’t just cruise passengers, they aren’t just Caribbean overseas residents cruising in for a visit. They are the very thing we hope those who choose here will be, all in.
I’m not even going to google it to ask if the science is true because I don’t think it matters; the sense this story is giving me is how we can use science to remake our world into something livable, and that’s what matters. This story is giving, “we are not passengers, we live here;” and that’s what matters. A fleet of these ships that have done so much damage are being repurposed to do good; that’s what matters. And that hits with a wistful feeling because this feels further away than any of the technology because we’d have to care, collectively, wouldn’t we for such ambitious plans to come to pass?
But the story, with its post-note, reminds us that environmental scientists and activists do what they do even when shouting into the void and, by doing so, continue to keep us from plunging over the abyss. What’s the post-note?
THE "BIOROCK" process for regrowing coral reefs and restoring beaches described in this story was co-invented by Jamaican scientist Dr. Thomas Goreau, President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance.
The story feels optimistic in spite of being mindful of the checkered social history of our region and the environmental realities of our present, because, in this case, being grounded in reality is a celebration of the scientists who continue to believe in and work for a better future. Nice work: the very definition of interrogating and imagining our world.
“Cascadura” by H. K. Williams, an emerging Trini writer, is perhaps the most fantasy-y of the stories in this collection, by which I mean it’s less science driven (notwithstanding the bots and time jump into the far future with all of its far (?) future technology such as sky trains, hovercycles, and holo-ads) and more phenomena driven. The phenomena in this case is the main character’s unexplainable immortality. It is actually quite a haunting tale.
Cascadura or cascadoux is a type of fish that’s considered a delicacy in Trinidad. “There is a legend which suggests that once you eat cascadoux you will stay in Trinidad for the rest of your days.” (20) That’s the lore. I think how we all think we want immortality but what would we do with forever – even in our very own paradise, which is the sentiment behind the lore, I presume. All of that to say that we meet this immortal in the bleakest – and grossest – possible way.
IT IS THE MORNING OF THE INTERVIEW AND I WAKE UP to the smell of vomit. There on the floor, right next to my face, is a puddle of sleeping pills half melted in bile. How many did I take? I see the bottle under the bed and in reaching for it, I push it further away. Doesn’t matter, they didn’t work. Not that I expected them to, but it has become a habit to hope. (p. 60)
The story’s protagonist, Renae Celestine, immortal at nearly 300 years old, has lost whatever fascination she may have had with her circumstances – we missed all that. Yet, disturbing as the despair and suicide imagery is, “Cascadura” is my second favourite story after the book’s opener Brandon O’Brien’s “Fallenangel.dll” (which, when I was only one story in I gushed about on my blog (21), was “interesting, terrifying, and oddly hopeful, existing as it does in a sort of hybrid afro-futurist, sci-fi dystopia, Caribbean post-modernist space”). Those two could actually jockey for positioning; the point is, they’re in my top three.
As with the stories in the collection’s best moments, it is the human that makes this story resonate – because we may not be cursed/blessed to live forever but we know what it is to lose the ones we love, we know what it is to be lonely, and those are the hallmarks of this character’s journey as witnessed by us through melancholy memories.
Her most recurring memories are of her mother and mother country, Trinidad.
Strange thing, memory: the things it allows you to forget. I can still see that scene so clearly, yet I cannot remember my mother’s face. But I do remember her voice; the sing-song accent, which left this world centuries ago; and her scent – garlic. She constantly drank garlic tea for her high blood pressure. (p. 67)
Evocative.
What does it evoke? Sadness is too easy; we knew she was sad from the opening scene but, haunted by memories and trapped in forever, we sense in Renae Celestine a low hum of yearning, like an itch impossible to reach. A yearning though we can’t pinpoint what for just yet. The release of death is suggested by the opening scene but is that too easy?
Is the key in the title, in her last meal before leaving home?
…cascadura and rice.
“To make sure you come back,” she explained.
“I will come back, I promise. I don’t need no fish to bring me back,” I replied, touched by the gesture. “Besides,” I continued through the forkfuls, careful to avoid the tiny bones, “you know that legend not true.”
“You don’t know that. Once you eat the fish you bound to end your days here.” (p. 68)
Except she can’t, can she? Post-disaster, all that’s left of home is memory.
I remember the smooth firmness of the river stones as I waded in, the crisp, cold water and the way the sunlight warmed my skin in patches as it poked through the leaves. (p. 72)
Life, memory, yearning; this story is a meditation on all three and while it leaves in the reader a certain yearning as well, it is sublime.
Also in that top three – rank as you wish – is the collaboration by the editors, Karen Lord and Tobias S Buckell. I’ve read their story, “The Mighty Slinger”, before and wondered then who wrote what? I couldn’t see the seams in the story.
Its title should immediately place you in the world of top tier calypso with its allusion to the king of calypso himself the Mighty Sparrow, also called Slinger Francisco (or Dr. Slinger Francisco these days (22)).
It is a tale of the arts, calypso in particular, as a tool for not just entertainment, though that too, but also endurance and revolution. Calypso has been a way of communicating to ourselves about ourselves, and underscoring where we stand in the struggle. It is the story of Black people in the Caribbean – rebel music, as surely as reggae; more than reggae for people of the eastern and southern Caribbean. So it is in reality, so it is in this world, in this space opera.
EARTH HUNG OVER THE LUNAR HILLS AS THE MIGHTY Slinger and The Rovers readied the Tycho stage for their performance. (p. 73)
Yes, The Rovers, as they’re called, are getting ready for a concert on the literal moon.
We follow this band through awakenings from several cryo-like sleeps in “the long-sleep pool” (p. 74), a state through which humans are put in order to preserve resources while capitalizing on their usefulness. It’s also obviously a form of control.
One gets a sense at the story’s beginning that they’ve been reliving this pattern for a good long while but something’s different this time.
THE RT HON PATIENCE BOUSCHOLTE awaited him in one of the skyboxes poised high over the rim of the crater. Before it: the stands that would soon be filling up, slanting along the slope that created a natural amphitheatre to the stage. Behind it: the gray hills and rocky wasteland of the Moon.
"Mr. Slinger!" she said. Her tightly wound hair and brown spidersilk headscarf bobbed in a slightly delayed reaction to the lunar gravity. "A pleasure to finally meet you. I'm a huge admirer of your sound."
He sat down, propped his snakeskin magnet-boots up against the chairback in front of him, and gave her a cautious look. "Madame Minister. To what do I owe the pleasure?" (p. 75)
Euclid, the government name of the aforementioned Slinger, every calypsonian has to have a sobriquet (I don’t make the rules), was all bravado in this moment but a pleb being summoned by power was how he saw it. But he perks up at news of plans for Earth, which seems to have been all but abandoned as a viable project, what with so much attention and resources being thrown at the Glitter Ring. I know, I know, I don’t know what that is either – galaxy wise, this is the most out there of the stories – but this is the collection we signed up for; it’s all speculative. But what I think I understand, relating it to our reality and particular vulnerability as we continue to court outside investors, is the new interest in Earth will not be to the benefit of Earth itself, because capitalism don’t work that way.
This is the second story of Lord’s I’ve read, after “Cities of the Sun” in New Daughters of Africa (2019), in which the power of story, calypso, in this case, is being harnessed to arm the people for the fight. It is as familiar to us, as it is to Slinger.
Euclid had done that before, in the days before his last long-sleep, when fame was high and money had not yet evaporated. Dishing out juicy new gossip to help Assembly contract negotiations. Leaking information to warn the workers all across the asteroid belt. Hard-working miners on contract, struggling to survive the long nights and longer sleeps. Sing them a song about how the SDC was planning to screw them over again. He knew that gig well. (p. 76)
It is what calypso does.
And yet, what can “a few little lyrics” (p. 77) do?
"So you want me to harass the big people up in power for you, now?"
Bouscholte shook her head. "We need you to be our emissary. We, the Assembly, the last representatives of the drowned lands and the dying islands, are calling upon you.
Are you with us or not?"
Euclid thought back to the days of breezes and mango trees. "And if they don't listen to us?"
Bouscholte leaned in close and touched his arm. "The majority of our cohort are indentured to the Solar Development Charter until the Glitter Ring is complete. But, Mr. Slinger, answer me this: where do you think that leaves us after we finish the Ring, the largest project humanity has ever attempted?" (p. 78)
They would be scattered or discarded never to return home again. Here, the call to action wasn’t to tear down the powerful as calypso is wont to do but light a fire in the people, as it’s also been proven to do.
This is a story about us, about the power of art, our story remapped across the stars. A powerful reminder not just of how this has played out in the past among the scattered children of Africa but, presently, in the Caribbean, the place we’ve made home, and must fight to keep. At least, that’s how I read it. It’s Caribbean development politics and globalization in space, and it’s clearly thrown its lot in with the people. But hope can be a reluctant thing.
"… There is almost nothing we can broadcast that the big planets can't listen to. When we go into long-sleep they can hack our communications, but they can't keep us from talking, and they'll never stop our songs."
"It's a good dream," Euclid said softly, for the first time in the conversation looking up at the view over the skybox. He'd avoided looking at it. To Jeni it was a beautiful blue dot, but for Euclid all it did was remind him of what he'd lost. "But they won't listen." (p. 78)
That’s the set up. The political intrigue has various moving parts but calypso is one of them – as with spirituals on the plantations, carrying coded messages. Will the people rise up? Will they reclaim earth? Once I’ve gotten the premise, I want in; I want to see how it plays out – and that’s a credit to the world building and the stakes.
The band needs to be on board as well, and a great portion of the story is occupied with their dynamics – the push and pull between them over time, and many sleeps, and broken allegiances, even as the message started to reach its intended target.
The crowd started shouting back. The sound cut out. Security and the venue operators swept in and moved them off the stage.
Back in the green room, Jeni rounded on Euclid. "What the hell was that?" she shouted.
"Extempo," Euclid said simply. (p. 86)
In any movement there will always be those afraid of bucking the status quo even if they believe in the cause and then there are those invested in maintaining the status quo. It’s a bit of both here – in relation to band tensions.
"They paid us and flew us across the solar system to sing the song they wanted. Sing the fucking song for them the way they want. Even just the Banana Boat Song you're messing with and going extempo. That shit's carved in stone, Euclid. Sing the damn lyrics."
Euclid looked at her like she'd lost her mind. (p. 87)
He makes such an interesting point in his subsequent rant about “The Banana Boat” song about how the music of resistance and/or endurance, the people’s music, has been co-opted by people who don’t know that life.
"It's not a 'smile and dance for them' song. The big planets don't own that song. It was never theirs. It was never carved in stone. I'll make it ours for here, for now, and I'll go extempo. I'm not done. Zippy, I'm just getting started."
She nodded. "Then I'm gone." (p. 87)
The band did what bands do, it imploded. It would be sometime before the reunion – there’s always a reunion. In the meantime, sleep patterns of not just band members but their whole cohort, other labourers from earth on their schedule, get out of sync whether through “incompetence or malice” (p. 90). The establishment fighting people waking up by trying to put them back to sleep if you ask me.
Don’t ask me too much, I’ll admit some of the details are a bit yadda yadda yadda to me – but the human story, the story of these people, their connections, their commitment to the art and to the fight, never let me go.
The story time jumps over the war – the war in which they lost people and which it seems was fought to an impasse, which means more politics. The disorientation they feel after two too-long sleeps is felt deeply by the reader as well, in their confusion and broken relationships. It’s always all about the people.
A new tour lay ahead, the music was needed now more than ever…to call out power to their face and get the people a win, and The Rovers a ticket home, finally. One last concert, and this moment is reflective of a moment (with the calypso legends of my childhood at the Antigua Recreation Grounds) in my memory bank.
Euclid started to sing for them, but they sang for him first, calling out every lyric so powerful and sure that all he could do was fall silent and raise his hands to them in homage and embrace. (p. 105 – 106)
Unlike Renae Celestine, Euclid finds that he can go home again; a reminder that future speculative fiction doesn’t have to be dark and dystopian. They can be epic and intrigue-rich and music-filled and…quiet (with the war happening off screen somewhere without that feeling like a copout). Because the people are the point; which is this whole book’s larger point, I think, if it were coding a message to our current leaders, if it’s not about the people, what is it about really?
The final story in the collection, Tobias S. Buckell’s “Category Six” brings it all back to our unfortunate reality of greater and more frequent storms, and how they not only knock over and uproot things but derail plans.
HURRICANE BIANCA. SHE SOUNDS LIKE AN AMERICAN frat girl who chews gum, but I know she’s no joke. She’s out in the Atlantic, and she threatens the project I’d worked the last three years trying to bring to completion. The funds set aside to start my life’s work will be likely diverted to hurricane rebuilding by those who write the cheques. (p. 113)
The set up establishes the danger these mammoth storms pose to the region and how the old rules no longer apply – what/when is hurricane season even? Is anyone truly outside of “hurricane alley” anymore? In a Caribbean with hurricanes so frequent we don’t make songs about them anymore, there is a clear suggestion that this Caribbean is much more fortified than our own.
We built homes like bunkers down island now, ever since Hurricane Minerva hit us, and hit us hard. (p. 114)
As Bianca prepares to blow in, backgrounded by other climate change coded weather phenomena in other parts of the world (and the mass migration and riots they instigate), the main character’s mind is mostly on business as he tries to move money for a project we don’t yet understand behind his wife’s back.
This story is as much dry documentary as engaging fiction – and this may be a limitation of Caribbean Futurism as imagined.
Those jobs will be low paid, and it’ll be black faces in the kitchens, behind the bar, and cleaning the room. He’s not American, so he won’t try to shut down the beach to locals at least. American developers always want to keep locals off the beach by the hotel so their tropical fantasy isn’t shattered. (p. 118)
I didn’t enjoy this story as much as the others; maybe not enough escapism. But it’s not meant to be escapist but rather solution focused; so there’s that.
I do like what’s referred to as the bungalow movement eschewing resort development via international brands and more local investment but that only adds to the story feeling like feature journalism and less like fiction. It even reports on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first blow was the pandemic of 2020. It revealed systemic risks and weaknesses in tourism all across the world. Companies collapsed, revenue dried up, whole economies realized that betting so big on travel-related income from another country left you vulnerable. (p. 119)
Though the reference to “the hemorrhagic flu outbreak ten years later that came out of European migrant camps” (p. 119) makes clear that this is indeed speculative future fic.
And there is a plot. The money he takes behind his wife’s back is intended for the purchase of “floating cities that can house almost five thousand souls” (p. 122), i.e. a decommissioned cruise ship.
Like any other trickster, I’ve told myself that when this all works out, when CARICOM repays me, I’ll send her what she’s due as my soon to be ex-wife. But right now, with a hurricane bearing down on my home, with people eager to scrap these ships, I need to act. (p. 120)
Cynthia, we learn, never took to island life (“It was never home for her; it was a destination.”); so clearly there are other reasons why their marriage is broken. If it needed more.
The most interesting part of the story for me is the back end, what this re-commissioned ship (the CARICOM 1) becomes, after the storm, for a man in real financial and legal trouble.
We are taking thousands of doctors, coders, professors to new lives in the islands, supplementing our areas of expertise. Many of the doctors quickly take up residence in the hospital wards we converted below. (p. 123)
I kind of want to see this floating community.
I liked this anthology quite a bit and would encourage more readers to seek it out and, after doing so, more of the fiction by these emerging and established Caribbean futurist writers. Let their work serve as a reminder that Caribbean writers write in all genres, including sci-fi and fantasy, and our own history and lore is so rich, the problems we face so considerable that it seems a no-brainer that we would lean into these genres. I always say that, for me, writing is how I process life. So, if it is that creating is one way to make sense of our world, to explain it to ourselves and others, to both reflect and imagine it, imagining it better even as we delve into its darkness, it makes sense that a number of contemporary Caribbean writers are embracing speculative fiction. Caribbean futurist fics are for us first but the rest of the world would do well to #readCaribbean. After all, per Reclaim, “Extreme weather eventually gets us all, not just the islands. We’re just the canaries.”
ENDNOTES
(1) BLOGGER ON BOOKS XII (2024), Jhohadli blog
(2) “What is Speculative Fiction?” by Michael Woodson, content editor, Writer’s Digest, 2024
(3) BLOGGER ON BOOKS (2021) – DAYLIGHT COME BY DIANA MCCAULAY, Jhohadli blog
(4) BLOGGER ON BOOKS (2020) – GREYBORN RISING BY DERRY SANDY, Jhohadli blog
(5) The Caribbean Futures Institute website
(6) The Bocas Lit Fest website
(7) Link to my Intersect Antigua Barbuda RESIDENCY articles
(10) CREATIVE SPACE #15 OF 2023: THAT HUMAN ELEMENT, Jhohadli blog, 2023
(14) “Scarlett Johansson says she is 'shocked, angered' over new ChatGPT voice” by Bobby Allyn, NPR, 2024
(15) CREATIVE SPACE #17 OF 2023: IT’S ABOUT THAT SPARK, Jhohadli blog, 2023
(18) Nalo Hopkinson, National Endowment for the Arts
(19) Blogger on Books VII (2019) – Children of the Spider by Imam Baksh, Jhohadli blog
(20) “The legend of the cascadoux” by Paolo Kernahan, Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 2013
(21) Favourite Book to Movie Adaptations (and Sunday Post) , Jhohadli blog, 2023
(22) DR. SLINGER FRANCISCO (THE MIGHTY SPARROW), CARICOM: Caribbean Community
See also Nikita Blair of Blair Views. They are not unusual, I believe, in not being aware, for the longest, of Caribbean speculative fiction. They moved from wondering “Why hasn’t anyone written stories like this yet?” to “Why have I, as a citizen of CARICOM, been underexposed to Caribbean speculative fiction?” We have been conditioned to think of Caribbean fiction as a certain thing. It is that but it is also many other things.
See also, as usual, the playlist of songs I listened to while working on this article.
