A few years ago, I bought a book called Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, mostly because it had an essay in it by Samuel R. Delany, who was, and continues to be, my favorite writer. His essay was notable in that it's one of the few places I've seen him address racial issues in a sustained and direct way (Delany is black), and it's the only time I've ever read anything of his that was so obviously angry. Science fiction has a long history of regarding itself as a ghetto of a genre, and one of the standard fan conversations is bemoaning how poorly regarded sf fans are by the "mundanes". Delany's — and, to a large extent, the book's — argument is that it's pretty goddamned aggravating the way that these same "marginalized" sf fans (who have always been largely white and male) turn around and treat their black (and female, and gay) comrades with the same kind of unthinking bigotry they've just been decrying.

Dark Matter is an uneven but fun collection, and reading it got me interested in a number of the authors in the book, most notably Nalo Hopkinson, who writes a style of modern urban fantasy reminiscent of Emma Bull or Maureen McHugh, but with a distinctly Caribbean influence. Traditional medicine and magic show up frequently in her works, but instead of being exoticizing elements, they're generally familiar things, handed down from mother to daughter over the generations. Sometimes her work is a little like Toni Morrison's, but more explicitly fantastic and less indebted to magical realism. In other words, Hopkinson writes African-Caribbean-Canadian fiction from within a science-fictional world view. It's at least as interesting as it sounds.

So when I saw a quote from her on the cover of Minister Faust's first novel The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, I paid attention (despite its horribly awkward title). Here's another book by an African-Canadian author, dripping with post-postmodern cool, and Hopkinson's saying, "Off the freakin' hook. Minister Faust writes with heart, style, humor and attitude to spare."

You know and I know that pull quotes are a shell game, something much like Friendster testimonials — no publisher is ever going to run anything other than a glowing quote, and authors all have a vested interest in staying friends, so everybody is always very nice. In this case, though, Hopkinson was pretty much on the mark.

Basically, the book is about Hamza and Yehat, two best friends and roommates living in Edmonton's thriving northern African immigrant community. It's kind of weird to think of Edmonton, which I remember as a sleepy, small city smack dab in the middle of Canada, as a center of expatriate culture from all over the the Horn of Africa, but Faust paints it so vividly I never doubted it. Halal delis, muezzin calls, Ethiopian restaurants, street markets, tight-knit families. There's a lengthy and amusing discussion between two characters over how best to refer to Ethiopian and Eritrean culture together without making anyone mad. Hamza's Sudanese, and he is very much rooted in his cultural identity, as is Ye. But their cultural identities are not just as African-Canadians. No, what makes this book great is that Hamza and Ye are stone-cold geeks.

The book is an unruly mishmash of references to Star Wars, Star Trek, Public Enemy, the Fantastic Four, Fela Kuti, ancient Egypt, Gundam, Robert de Niro — you name it, these two breathe it. The narrative, which is first-person but switches among a large number of the book's characters, introduces each new character with a role-playing-game-style "Character Data" sheet. Hamza is a poet and dishwasher, Ye an inventor and video store clerk. Both of them are loquacious walking encyclopedias about science fiction, movies, comics, role-playing games, anime, music, and African culture and history. They are master nerds who are also hipsters and role models within their community, they're total slackers, and they're both at least a little messed up.

The plot, which is a dark fantasy about murdered gods, ancient cults, psychic vampirism, drug conspiracies, and more than a slight touch of splattercore horror, is sort of beside the point. Mostly because it's pretty formulaic. In a way, this is one of the book's strengths, as it's easy to see the material in graphic novel or filmic terms (the acknowledgments seem to indicate that the book was originally written as a screenplay). It's about other media, and at the same time could be adapted into another medium easily, which is a neat trick. But for the most part, what kept me reading were the two main characters.

The greatest novelty of the book is that I know these guys, and I haven't seen characters like them in fiction before. Hamza and Ye remind me of friends of mine — wiseassed black guys who are equally comfortable talking about Star Trek and hip-hop, racial issues and activist politics. Black men who transcend or ignore every pop cultural stereotype of blackness but who are still comfortable with where they've come from and who they are. It's a real pleasure seeing people like this taking the front and center roles in a science fiction novel. Especially when they're as funny, chatty, and self-aware as Hamza is.

Not only that, but the book resolves itself in emotional terms — Hamza is carrying around a lot of old pain, and he has to at least acknowledge it before the final crisis of the book can be resolved. That part of the book had a lot of resonance for me, and is the most deftly and sensitively written. Elsewhere, things get a little flabby. It's obviously a first novel, and some of the secondary characters are flat silhouettes on the page aspiring to caricaturehood. Also, Faust needs to work on his female characters, as there's only one in this book, and she's more a paragon than a human being.

That said, the book's a lot of fun, and I read it straight through. Minister Faust is a man of many interests. His bio lists teaching English, sketch comedy, community activism, poetry, and acting among the other things he does with his time, so we may or may not see another novel from him. On the strength of this novel, we should all hope he finds the time to write another one soon.

sounds interesting.. I've wondered myself about the ethiopian/eritrean question. Are you saying that Edmonton is not actually a center of expatriate culture but is just fictionalized as so?