“It was a beautiful sunny day, and yet Anwuli knew the weather was coming for her.”
This is the opening line from science fiction author Nnendi Okorafor latest short story Mother of Invention. She teamed up with artist Shyama Golden to help animate scenes from the story, creating a series of gifs that highlight the essence of the story.
The story is about a pregnant woman named Anwuli who gives birth during a pollen storm in Nigeria. She is assisted in the birth by her smart home. Her doctor appears as a hologram version of a missed call and she skips to the part in the message about pollen allergies, and later on her baby is delivered by a drone. The story is powerful in the way it draws parallels between effects of the pollen storm and the moment of childbirth experienced by the main character.
The illustrations were created entirely on an iPad, and are visually able to draw readers into the story with a colour palette and subtle movements that mimic the calm rocking of a child. Shyama, with the assistance of designer Antonia, inserts Igbo patterns into the home scene, and a specific pattern around the belly of Anwuli, which is a talisman for pregnant women. The story has a poetic characteristic to it, making its futuristic elements easier to process, and humanising the posthuman imaginary.
The imagery in the gifs defy the dualisms of natural and man-made, nature and machine, present and future. This can be seen by the way the pollen storm uproots flowers and causes silver orbs to bob around in a grid-like terrain.
