Power Disruptions: Delany’s and Okorafor’s Lyric Energies

Abstract

Science Fiction has become an especially significant site for analyses of the discourses of energy extraction, production, and use. The present essay aims to add to these studies of genre, energy, and environment by turning to Afrofuturism and africanfuturism, two distinct yet generically connected forms that centre Black futures. I study two formative authors from both traditions: American writer Samuel R. Delany, often hailed as a foundational figure of Afrofuturism, and Nigerian American writer Nnedi Okorafor, who coined the term africanfuturism. Delany’s “We, in Some Power’s Strange Employ Move on a Rigorous Line” (1968) and Okorafor’s “Spider the Artist” (2011) and related works stage battles between different energy narratives, only to ultimately deploy forms of lyrical intervention that disrupt all such narratives.