Once Upon a Time
Stories, Research and the In-Between
The Serpent Crouches in the Heart of the Unravelling
Fiction | July 2022 | Baffling Magazine, Neon Hemlock Press
The Serpent curls around the engine core when you enter.
That’s not how it starts—you remember, as much as memory can be reliable so close to the heart of the unravelling, the moment linear time and Newtonian physics go tits up for good: Deck 3, Hydroponics, 78% spatial-temporal degradation. Security officer Tahl looking directly at the tree-shaped thing despite your repeated warnings and his skin spiralling off like a peeled tangerine, a body suspended mid-air in zero gravity with its fleshy parts blooming from its spinal column. A delicate structure. Strange. Beautiful, in a way.
Gaming the Heart of Darkness
Research Publication | 2018 | MDPI
Abstract
The history of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been one of adaptation and change. The enduring story is based upon Conrad’s experiences in the Congo in the 1890s and was published as a novella in 1902. Since then, the story has been criticised for racism by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe and relocated to Vietnam by Francis Ford Coppola as Apocalypse Now, influencing computer games such as Far Cry 2 and Spec Ops: The Line. In examining the adaptations of Heart of Darkness, we can consider how the story evolves from the passive reading of post-colonial narratives through to the active participation in morally ambiguous decisions and virtual war crimes through digital games: examining Conrad’s story as it has been adapted for other mediums provides a unique lens in which to view storytelling and retelling within the context of how we interpret the world. This paper compares the source material to its adaptations, considering the blending of historical fact and original fiction, the distortion of the original story for the purpose of creating new meaning, and reflects on whether interactivity impacts upon the feeling of immersion and sense of responsibility in audiences of different narratives.
Juju, Spaceships and the Colonial
Conference Paper | 2019 | Re@ct NEoN Symposium
Abstract
In the genre most commonly defined as afrofuturism, authors, artists and filmmakers use a unique voice not only to describe African folklore, but to digest, process and dissect colonialism and its effects on the continent and its various people and cultures. They do not only imagine alternative presents and possible futures; these stories also endeavour to deal with the past and attempt to reach closure, write as a form of activism, and disrupt common views of Africa. This paper examines what happens when African and African diaspora authors take charge of their own narrative: it will observe the role and use of oral tradition in African speculative literature, themes of survival in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series and The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin; and will explore elements of folklore and technology intertwining in Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death and the African and diasporic duality in the Marvel film Black Panther. It will reflect upon how authors choose to define and re-define genre and how that affects representation in media, the practice of many artists, filmmakers and writers who strive for creating diverse and accurately researched narratives.