#randd

[star-wars-comics]

Battle of Jakku: Last Stand #3 - "Tipping Point" (2025)

written by Alex Segura art by Leonard Kirk & Jim Campbell

[darylelockhart]

African sci-fi imagines new ways of living in climate-changed worlds

by Carl Death, Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Manchester

Aunt Spray/Shutterstock

A new book called African Climate Futures explores how African science fiction is addressing climate change.

International politics scholar Carl Death weighs up climate policies in African countries and discusses stories and films alongside them. His book imagines a future that may be grim, but is alive with potential solutions.

From Ethiopia and The Gambia to Nigeria and South Africa, the book takes in the work of Nnedi Okorafor, Wanuri Kahiu, Lauren Beukes, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Chinelo Onwualu and many others. We asked the author about his book.

To borrow your chapter heading: why read African climate fiction?

The best reason is of course because there are some great stories out there! African science fiction – as well as fantasy and horror – is hardly a new or recent emergence, but it’s enjoying heightened visibility and popularity.

Oxford University Press

There are exciting examples of great African speculative fiction reaching the mainstream. From Disney’s Iwájú to Nigerian-American novelist Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling Legacy of the Orisha series to Zambian author Namwali Serpell’s prize-winning novel The Old Drift.

I was drawn into African climate fiction through wonderful stories, such as Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor’s. But I soon became interested in how these tales challenge a lot of what we think about global climate change politics. I’ve approached them from this perspective. As a researcher on environmental politics rather than as a scholar of African literature.

In the book I’ve tried to use them as a way to evaluate existing climate strategies and to imagine new ways of living in better, climate-changed worlds.

Some scientists and environmental activists have urged novelists and other artists to help them communicate climate science more effectively and persuade people to change their attitudes and behaviours.

There is a case for this, especially given the urgency of the climate crisis. But I’m more interested in the broader and deeper role of stories. Helping us understand who we are and how we get here. Seeing the world from other perspectives, even potentially from nonhuman perspectives. Holding up a mirror to the world we live in and showing us that it is possible to imagine other worlds.

Stories have power. As Nigerian writer Ben Okri warns us:

Beware the stories you read and tell: subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

If this is true, and stories do have power, then it is very important to reflect on which stories we are reading.

This book also emerged from a frustration that most discussions of climate fiction focus on European and North American authors and settings. African climate fiction is fantastic – and yet it is too often ignored or marginalised.

This is worrying, not just in terms of the diversity of perspectives, but because African climate fiction is especially good at showing how past, present and future overlap. And how humanity relates to nonhuman and more-than-human ways of being. It is also very strong in interrogating racism, sexism and other forms of injustice.

What settings do the stories use and when do they play out?

I focus on novels by Lauren Beukes (South Africa), Doris Lessing (Rhodesia/UK), Alistair Mackay (South Africa), Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria/US), and Tochi Onyebuchi (US).

I examine short stories by Terh Agbedeh (Nigeria), Mame Bougouma Diene (Senegal/France/US), Osahon Ize-Iyamu (Nigeria), Vuyokazi Ngemntu (South Africa), Nnedi Okorafor, Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Nigeria), Chinelo Onwualu (Nigeria), Tlotlo Tsamaase (Botswana) and Jessica Wilson (South Africa).

And I discuss the films Black Panther (US) and Pumzi (Kenya). So there’s a wide range of settings and timeframes. But all of them are set wholly or largely somewhere in Africa, in an altered present or future, near or far.

The stories take us from Johannesburg’s sewers to skyscrapers in utopian Lagos, high-speed railways, flooded slums, and solar-powered barges on the Congo. From futuristic east African compounds to homely eco-villages in the Niger Delta, and deserts from the Sahara to the Kalahari.

Some stories narrate the collapse of carbon-fuelled capitalism, like Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix or Mackay’s It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way. Others take place hundreds or thousands of years into the future after environmental shifts have changed the face of the planet, like Onwualu’s Letters to My Mother or Lessing’s Mara and Dann.

What political issues do they raise?

I want to show how these stories have implications for how we think about places, time, ecology and politics.

To take just one example: many of these stories – as in science fiction more generally – feature domed cities, enclaves protected from dangerous environments. A striking example is Tsamaase’s digital dystopia in Virtual Snapshots.

Such stories ask us to consider: who is “in” and who is “out”? Are cities and homesteads places of safety or danger? How are the cultures of past societies in these places – the ancestors – reinvented or memorialised? How are these cities shared with nonhuman species?

These climate stories – which I describe, following Okorafor, as Africanfuturist – also challenge how we might think about the heroes and villains of climate change.

In stark contrast to official government climate strategies, these tales don’t pull punches when identifying the bad guys: colonial regimes, hypocritical and imperialistic western governments and corporations, and corrupt “big men” politicians.

Their heroes are diverse, but many are young, black and female. Some are queer, some are disabled or neuro-diverse, many are flawed or outcast. Not all of them are human: there are winged mutants, characters who are more machine than human, and crocodiles, spiders, and an angry swordfish!

These stories can help us think more creatively about forms of political agency for tackling the climate crisis.

What are you hoping readers will take away?

Ultimately, this book hopes to convince readers that stories are political and have power. As Okorafor has said:

Science fiction is one of the greatest and most effective forms of political writing. It is all about the question: what if?

Writing, reading, and discussing stories is a political intervention. And if we want to survive to tell new stories in liveable futures then we need to urgently and radically transform carboniferous capitalism.

[hyperiondatabase]

R&D (TPS) Part 2

[chefsouspression]

Thinking of one of my favorite places to visit when I was in #hochiminhcity , this cool sunny/fogged our morning has me thinking of #dumplings . I’m looking forward to all of my #randd ahead! #dumplingsfordays who doesn’t want some? That would be crazy! #cheftravels #homesick for #vietnam #southeastasia . #feelinginspired #dariusj #popup #pdxeats (at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) https://www.instagram.com/p/BpIDmkPBZsEDe_mz7SUsgzCvlqqfQtH1ipRjA80/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=plk9hv1h2z7r

[a1sog]

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[nationalcircus]

Living Room Circus – Lab:time and Lab:time² at the Broadway, Barking - The Penguin and I

Living Room Circus is an experimental circus company, creating and performing intimate and immersive shows. They devise and develop their own blend of circus, dance, live music and physical theatre - always with the emphasis on audience interaction and involvement. This is achieved by transforming any given space into ‘the circus’.

The collaborators of Living Room Circus are Laura Overton, Elinor Harvey, Josh Frazer, Tessa Blackman, Charlee Rico DeBolla and Jason Dupree; all of whom are circus performers and graduates from the National Centre For Circus Arts. The performers bring a mix of skills to the company, including trapeze, rope, straps, acrobatics, gymnastics, hand balancing, juggling, ballet, contemporary dance and theatre.

After receiving some initial funding from the Deutsche Bank award for Creative Enterprise, their first shows were unconventional in setting:

The initial performances were set in a yurt which had been transformed into an enchanting living room into which the audience was invited. We then had a four day run of ‘work in progress’ performances for the public which was received with much enthusiasm. We have since used the audience feedback to adapt and improve the show and were then able to take the Living Room Circus to a community in rural Wales, performing in a transformed woodland roundhouse.

Living Room Circus applied for Lab:time – funding and space at the National Centre for Circus Arts – to rig their new ‘circus sofa’. This is a custom-made, specially reinforced and durable sofa which can be used for tumbling, flipping and handbalancing. It also has the ability to be rigged high in the air, which means that aerial equipment such as a trapeze can be attached. This was successfully carried out and Living Room Circus were excited to be able to realise their ambition of an aerial sofa, a feature they hope to incorporate into performances going forward. 

The group completed their Lab:time² – a funded residency at a collaborating venue – at the Broadway, Barking. Lab:time² funds projects which have already undergone early stage research and development, so this enabled them to more fully explore themes for their upcoming show, The Penguin and I.

At the end of the week we had explored 10 scenes, of which we had finalised 3. We also managed to explore lighting for the first time. This bought a different element to our show and also created a final scene from the exploration at the Broadway theatre. … We co-produced a circus day as part of the Barking Folk Festival at the end of our week where we ran workshops and performed a work in progress. We also managed to explore our bespoke sofa, giving us time to play and create, finding out what it has to offer.

Living Room Circus took The Penguin and I on a short tour this summer to a working dairy farm in East Sussex, Redbridge Drama Centre in Essex and Jackson's Lane in London. They will shortly be announcing their next tour.

Follow Living Room Circus on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Lab:time² applications are currently open and will close on 13 November 2017.

[dangalante]

Customer Objections are Sales and Marketing Tools

Many people who are new to Sales think that if a Customer does not ask questions or raise Objections during a Sales call; the Sale is moving forward. They find themselves surprised when the customer does not want to buy when they ask for the order. This assumes the Sales person has the courage to ask for the order.

Why Customer Objections are Sales Tools

When the Customer does not ask questions about a product or service it demonstrates a lack of interest. Sales objections are sales tools because the customer shows interest by asking questions. These questions allow the Sales person to build rapport and trust with potential customers. They get to demonstrate their product knowledge and expertise. Without any customer objections or questions, reps have no way to measure their progress during the sales call; making it impossible to pivot. This makes it hard to make sales and build a relationship with the customer.

Why Customer Objections are Marketing Tools

There are certain things that come up when customer raise objections. Over time, Sales people will be able to see patterns of these objection. Objections are raised about pricing, bad past experiences, budgeting, being happy with a competitor and product inferiority. While Reps need to be able to handle objections; if they keep losing the sales for the same reason, they need to share this information with the marketing and product development teams.

How Marketing can Help Sales

Based on the feedback from Sales, Marketing Teams can Create and improve Sales/Marketing Collateral to address potential objections.

On issues of one product being better than another, the product team can: see how the product can be improved, or help provide Sales with Market research/ position materials to illustrate how the product is better.

image from smartdraw.com

image via justworks.com

Customer objections are Sales and Marketing tools because they provide customer intelligence that can be used to sell more/improve products.

Do you think Customer objections are Sales and Marketing tools? Comment and share how you have handled and used customer objections.

[yonialter]

#theseguys #3dprinting #experiments #randd (at London, United Kingdom)