Author Tlotlo Tsamaase on the Feminist Sci-Fi Horror of Womb City

io9 is happy to announce that Erewhon Books has acquired Womb City, the novel debut of Lambda finalist and Nommo Award-winner Tlotlo Tsamaase, who makes use of each xe/xem and he or she/her pronouns. Tsamaase is a Motswana author presently residing in Botswana. Xer novella, The Silence of the Wilting Skin, garnered an enormous quantity of crucial acclaim.

Erewhon Books is really the little writer that might. An unbiased, small-person group, it has printed some unbelievable authors and books because it began publishing in 2020. It got here out of the gate swinging with C.L. Polk’s The Midnight Bargain, which instantly garnered nominations throughout the trade, and Scapegracers, a YA that ended up on the indie bestsellers listing.

Womb City is described as “a feminist horror novel set in a futuristic Botswana where citizens’ consciousnesses can be implanted into available, microchipped bodies, in which a woman commits a desperate murder to save herself and her unborn child. She must prevent the victim’s vengeful ghost from killing everyone she loves even as she must outrun a watchful government that would sacrifice her to preserve the secrets she’s unwittingly unearthed.”

Check out our interview with the creator and Womb City’s editor, Sarah Guan, under.

Linda Codega, io9: There’s a posh relationship on this e-book between the ability of expertise and the ability of the human physique. Do you are feeling like these two issues are in competitors or in dialog?

Tlotlo Tsamaase, author: With most of my writing, I’m concerned with exploring how the ability of expertise intersects with the ability of the human physique, significantly in sure contexts: a relationship, an organization, or the federal government. It is fascinating to look at at each macro and micro ranges how individuals’s motivations, greed, and needs manipulate and abuse expertise. The plot of Womb City comes from questioning what the longer term would possibly maintain by extrapolating our present actuality’s points into a complicated world, analyzing it by means of the lenses of gender id, crime, poisonous components of tradition, and many others.

I can’t pinpoint the supply of that curiosity, however relating to ladies’s our bodies it’s at all times a show of energy to personal them in a method or one other—and a corrupt motivation to limit their autonomy, whether or not by means of tradition or politics—which to me at all times feels very violent. The energy of expertise can be utilized for good—it brings comfort to our lives, permits individuals from totally different elements of the world to work together, and many others.—so I feel expertise and the human physique can each be in competitors and in dialog with one another.

Sarah Guan, editor: What’s fascinating about this dichotomy is that Womb City options each the competitors and the dialog, and strikes effortlessly between the 2. It’s not fairly so simple as “technology is bad, the human body is good”—a conservative narrative that we see repeated usually in science fiction. Nor is it an easy story of how “technology is the solution to all problems, save for the evils of human nature”—one other thesis frequent to our style.

In Womb City, expertise is a strong instrument that can be utilized for nice good or nice evil, in service of some people and never others, relying on the hand that wields it. For instance, reproductive expertise augments human capabilities and opens up longed-for potentialities for households like Nelah’s, however patriarchal energy buildings inside her society imply that not solely is entry to this instrument restricted to those that conform to the objectives of the state, however the instrument itself is used as a method of coercion and social engineering. This ethical complexity is without doubt one of the many thought-provoking facets of the e-book!

io9: What do you assume an prolonged human life does for the form of social expectations and familial expectations that folks, and particularly ladies, are subjected to?

Tsamaase: Women presently face lots of strain and stigma inside a household setting and in society, significantly after they don’t conform to their conventional gender function. So, I consider that prolonged human life would improve this strain on ladies, that girls can be anticipated to evolve to new expectations. Such societies would use scientific developments that promote childbearing to police reproductive rights, doubtlessly ensuing within the following: exacerbating a robust demand for girls to extend their fertility charges since they now stay longer; and adversely impacting transgender and nonbinary peoples’ lived experiences, rights, and reproductive decision-making company.

Guan: One of the extra horrifying factors Womb City makes is that prolonged human life doesn’t simply afford individuals the luxurious of extra time, it additionally magnifies the present expectations and inequities inside an unjust society. The stakes are increased for everybody concerned, as a result of individuals stay with the implications of their—and others’—actions for a lot, for much longer. Also, attributable to one of many major mechanisms of prolonged life on this story, these results are intimately visited upon extra individuals, as people transfer by means of a number of our bodies and the communities related to these our bodies. Reproduction isn’t simply regulated inside residents’ circle of relatives buildings; the federal government is invested (and meddles) in its individuals’s fertility because it impacts a number of households over many many years, if not centuries.

io9: How does the setting of Botswana itself influence Womb City?

Tsamaase: I’ve by no means seen illustration of my house nation in English language SFF, so I’ve at all times featured it in my shorter type works. I used to be drawn to Botswana’s historic and scenic settings that resonated with the themes of Womb City, so I set sure vital scenes within the e-book in locations I’ve visited, which offer a wealthy backdrop of mythology and historical past.

For instance, I’ve vivid reminiscences of visiting the Matsieng Footprints, a cultural web site simply positioned exterior Botswana’s capital metropolis, Gaborone. The Matsieng Footprints was a becoming place for an enormous reveal of a generations-long darkish secret that the protagonist encounters within the e-book, since Matsieng offers with folklore and creation of individuals. It’s additionally surrounded by watering holes, which play a pivotal function in Womb City.

Guan: When I first learn Womb City, I used to be struck by its simultaneous universality and specificity. The broad premise looks as if one which might be translated into any tradition or setting with out dropping its emotional and mental core—I’d anticipate it to horrify readers in all places—however Tlotlo’s use of Botswana’s folklore and geography provides solely new layers of that means to the story. Its exploration of key themes of the interconnection of life, group, and the divine really feel distinctive to its setting, which gives a singular perspective and contributes to the dialogue round these subjects inside and past speculative fiction.

io9: What books, motion pictures, and even video video games do you assume can be good comparisons?

Tsamaase: I’m an enormous movie fanatic, significantly international language movies, so I wrote this e-book as an ode to thriller and psychological suspense motion pictures and books. In the question letter that bought me my agent, I pitched Womb City as Black Mirror meets the feminism of Revenge, a French movie, interlaced with the horror of Blood Cruise by Mats Strandberg. A pal additionally identified that it reminded them of Altered Carbon.

Guan: I’d suggest Womb City to anybody who loves or is moved by The Handmaid’s Tale—both the e-book or the tv collection. I’d additionally examine it to Severance by Ling Ma, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and Red Clocks by Leni Zumas.

io9: What is that this e-book saying about femininity and violence? What is it exploring about institutional violence?

Tlotlo: Gender-based violence continues to be a pandemic that impacts each ladies and nonbinary individuals, and falling into the latter gender id provides no immunity from this violence. It’s pervasive and detached to human rights. I wished to discover this dynamic in numerous methods: in a romantic relationship, a piece surroundings, a household setting, and moreover how this method may be enforced by ladies, too. Everything about gender nonconforming individuals’s and ladies’s personae is policed, and in the event that they rightfully reply with anger or refusal to stick to oppression, it ends in violence in opposition to them. I questioned how far that may go along with the ability of expertise.

So, in Womb City, I used to be eager on investigating a situation the place the federal government installs surveillance expertise in feminine our bodies, how it will be used to manage habits and limit autonomy below the quilt of curbing crime charges, and to what lengths each events—the oppressed and the oppressor—would go to realize their motives. I wished to discover the consequences this may have on the characters’ identities.

When I used to be penning this novel, I realized that in Botswana, each three hours a girl was raped; for a small nation with a inhabitants of simply two million, Botswana ranks shockingly excessive in rape statistics within the worldwide. Crimes in opposition to ladies and non-binary individuals appear to be the truth—and occurs even in protected locations. I wished to discover these points within the feminine characters of Womb City, by permitting their multifarious expression of anger and use of violence in opposition to injustice or sexism.

Guan: Femininity and violence are sometimes seen as incompatible; cultures around the globe think about violence a masculine pursuit, which males, and people entities coded masculine, go to upon one another and upon ladies and femmes. Violent ladies who defend their very own pursuits (versus selflessly defending others, resembling youngsters) are coded as unnatural, insane, or intentionally and dangerously transgressive.

Only just lately have we seen in mainstream tradition even-handed depictions of feminine violence, or sympathetic portrayals of feminine violence in response to a misogynistic sociopolitical surroundings. Institutions too usually condone or compel violence at scale in opposition to anybody with a uterus, as has been painfully clear within the United States these previous weeks.

Womb City brings all of this cultural baggage to a pointy level, as Nelah—in lots of respects a “normal” lady surviving in a stiflingly sexist society—commits a self-serving act of violence that isn’t simply justifiable. Men commit comparable acts of violence in opposition to ladies on a regular basis for even slimmer causes, as Tlotlo notes, with such regularity that their victims are mere horrifying statistics, however Nelah’s crime appears significantly grotesque as a result of we’re unused to seeing ladies act with the identical selfishness. Womb City asks us to take a seat with and interrogate the misogynistic context of our discomfort.

io9: Do you could have any particular subgenres you’ll use to explain Womb City?

Tsamaase: When I wrote the novel, it was meant to comply with the template of a home thriller, however the story took on a lifetime of its personal. During that point I discovered myself taking part in with the next genres: slow-burn science fiction, horror, and speculative fiction.

Guan: I undoubtedly agree with all of these style labels, and would add Womb City additionally incorporates components of dystopian fiction and crime fiction. However, one of the vital intellectually satisfying facets of the e-book is the best way it subverts and defies standard categorization!

io9: Tlotlo, will we see some form of trans narrative or commentary on this e-book?

Tlotlo: Yes, and the intention of the gender exploration within the narrative varies throughout every of my works. In penning this explicit e-book, I used to be exploring and deconstructing the toxic and insidious binary system that the protagonist and others maneuver while exploring my very own gender id. I do see the principle character’s arc evolving out of that binary system (and I can’t say rather more as it will be a spoiler).

io9: Sarah, what grabbed you about this e-book?

Guan: There have been quite a few components that I used to be instantly captivated by: one was the fully modern manner Tlotlo makes use of the well-trodden trope of body-swapping and importing human consciousness to make frighteningly related factors about bodily autonomy, surveillance, and group ties. Another was how the e-book performs with ethical ambiguity, asking readers to weigh lesser and larger evils in opposition to one another, particularly in a case the place the value of survival in an unjust system would possibly imply getting blood on one’s palms. I’m thrilled to have the ability to assist Tlotlo hone and deepen these uncomfortable however needed questions by means of the editorial course of. I feel Womb City provides readers lots to assume (and argue) about, which is the objective of all nice speculative fiction!

Womb City shall be printed in spring 2023.

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