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Gautam Bhatia @gautambhatia88
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Just finished Ahmed Saadawi's incredible Frankenstein in Baghdad. Reading it on the heels of Shadreck Chikoti's Azotus the Kingdom and Tade Thompson's Rosewater makes me feel that the most powerful, imaginative and cutting-edge SF today is no longer centred in the UK/US.
As instances of dystopic or semi-dystopic world-building Saadawi's disintegrating wartime Iraq, Thompson's near-future Lagos, or Chikoti's privatised African country feel far more vividly and urgently imagined than anything comparable that I've read recently out of "the West."
I suppose this isn't very surprising.
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2018 in books:

anenduringromantic.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/201…
feat. @rabihalameddine, @Moonchild509, @NthikengMohlele, @FadiZaghmout, @OAtogun, @tadethompson, @AhmedSaadawi, @Annaleen etc.

A lot of SF, a lot of great SF.
Happy new year to all!
Read 3 tweets
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A thread on why this view is not correct.

1. There is no evidence to demonstrate that people with a formal education can do a better job as elected representatives than those without. In fact, anecdotal evidence at the time the law was passed suggested the contrary. (1/n)
See, for instance, Example No. 8: Radha Devi -- thebetterindia.com/85603/women-sa…

There were many such examples - especially - of women panchayat leaders who drew upon their own experiences of deprivation and lack of opportunity, to ensure that that did not continue. (2/n)
That, alone, is a good enough reason for why this law was wrong. Formal education has no necessary connection with the qualities required for good and competent political and administrative leadership.

But actually, this framing is itself suspect. (3/n)
Read 20 tweets
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If we had a legal culture where the judgments of the Supreme Court were subjected to unsparing and rigorous *legal* criticism, this whole controversy over "remote-controlled judges" may not have happened. (1/n)

livelaw.in/we-felt-that-f…
The surest way to check "judgment by remote control" is to have a culture where judges are held accountable for the quality of their reasoning. It then becomes far more more difficult to reverse-engineer perverse judgments. (2/n)
Instead, since the rise of PIL, our obsession with outcomes over reasoning has brought us to a situation where there is virtually no analysis of how a judge got to a conclusion, and vague notions of "substantive justice" rule the roost. (3/n)
Read 8 tweets

Related threads

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Here's a thread about the books I read this year!

#reading #books #libraries #readingrainbow
1. "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff. Yes, I hate-read this book in a matter of days. Problematically, Bannon comes across as an articulate, insightful source and not an arch nationalist parasite. Will Wolff's depiction be hagiography in the future?
2. "The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control" and "The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America" by Theodore Allen. Who knew how important Bacon's Rebellion (1676) was to the history of racism?
Read 27 tweets
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When Mongols sacked #Baghdad in 1258 & killed almost all its residents, only lives of the city’s Nestorian Christians was spared (they were asked to stay in their church)

Reason?

Because mother & favorite wife of Hulagu (Khan of invading Mongols) were both Nestorian Christians
The threatening letter sent by the Mongol’s Hulagu Khan to #Egypt ‘s Mamlouk ruler Qutuz warning him of what to come if he did not agree to surrender.
Having just made this 👇legendary threat, Hulagu Khan had to return to Mongolia. He picked Nestorian Christian General as successor.

Mongols would soon suffer their first ever close combat at Ain Jalut which would also end their entire existence in the Middle East region
Read 5 tweets
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Where Umayyad rule shunned non Arab converts and looked west, Abbasids Caliphate embraced non Arabs and especially Persian Moslems. The end result was spectacular both culturally & militarily. #Baghdad was built under the supervision of a Jew and a Zoroastrian.
Abbasid Caliphate Al-Ma'mun (Persian mother & son of Haroun al-Rashid) was so keen on education & learning that he paid the court’s top translator (Christian Assyrian) in gold for every book he translated from Greek to Arabic. Gold’s value was said to equal weight of the book
Abbasid Caliphate Al-Ma'mun exposure to Greek rationalism & time spent in Persia appeared to cause him to stray from Islamic Orthodoxy & eternal nature of the Quran. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal rejected to go along & was sent to die in prison. His orthodox followers are today’s Wahhabis
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Decolonising Science Fiction And Fantasy Panel #livetweet thread, with Nick Wood, Naomi Foyle, Stewart Hotson and Allanah Hunt
Nick Wood is moderating and asks everyone to introduce themselves.

Allanah Hunt likes exploring contemporary issues accessibly, allegorically, through fantastical themes

Stewart Hotson writes about people and how we live

Naomi Foyle write ecofantasy
Nick Wood from Zambia, lived in South Africa, wrote books with themes of racism.
Read 23 tweets
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Reading about the shooting at the Capital Gazette is gutting. I start crying every time not just because the loss of life is tragic but also because it makes me feel like no one understands what journalists do and who we are. So I'm going to try to explain: (1/?)
I work @hartfordcourant right now and in the past six weeks I've: covered 6 graduations, a zone and planning board meeting, a high schooler designing a 3D-printed guitar, a new restaurant, interviewed survivors of Hurricane Maria and more.
My coworkers have written about homicides in Hartford, substandard downtown housing, a woman who had a personal relationship with Fred Rogers, excessive meal bills by public officials and the Travelers Championship.
Read 10 tweets
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1/ This week marked the 15th anniversary of the fall of #Baghdad. The ground invasion, toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein and the outbreak of lawlessness all happened in the space of three days. From our archives, this is what those 3 days sounded like.
2/ Journalist and Iraqi Kurd @ayubnuri recalls the initial days of jubilation after the removal of Saddam Hussein. bit.ly/2quEY0G
3/ As we know, the celebration in #Iraq didn’t last. Journalists @maassp and @EllenKnickmeyer both went into the war zone without being embedded or protected by US forces. They witnessed the ongoing violence that followed the toppling of the capitol. bit.ly/2EK8gwt
Read 6 tweets

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