Hello again! Today I’m going to talk about a story by Nnedi Okorafor, “Spider The Artist.” I’ve read a few of her books, namely the Binti series and Who Fears Death, but I don’t think I’d ever read a short story by her.

“Spider The Artist” was originally published in the 2008 Seeds of Change anthology, but can be read for free on Lightspeed Magazine’s website.

Let’s begin.

Our story takes place in a not-to-distant future Nigeria, in the narrator, Eme’s, town. Eme is not having a great time of it: the Nigerian government has a bit of a habit of killing dissedents, her husband beats her, and there are pipelines owned by foreign companies everywhere

Also, those pipelines are guarded by  a bunch of giant spider robots built by the government to horribly murder thieves and protestors, generally called Zombies by the locals, or Anansi 419 Droids officially.

It doesn’t work, because people still try to take fuel from the pipelines because they’re poor and desperate, but a lot more of them die now.

Anyway, the only thing that really gives Eme solace is playng her father’s guitar. One day, after a beating, Eme picks up the guitar, heads out to the pipeline, probably a lot closer than she should be. She actually contemplates suicide by robot, but changes her mind about that when a Zombie actually approaches her.

The thing is, though, that it doesn’t attack her. Instead, it sits and pokes at her fingers with its leg. Eme eventually figures out that it wants her to keep playing. She does, as the droid sits quietly and listens.

Eme starts playing for the droid fairly regularly, and at one point decides to ask her husband if she can teach music at the local elementary school. He comes home one night drunk and actually in a good mood, but Eme loses her nerve before she can ask him.

Angry at herself, she leaves and meets the droid again. She plays for it, and then the droid responds by creating itself an instrument out of wire. It plays a song for her, taken from elements of all the songs she’d ever played for it.

She starts playing the melody around the house, and things start to look up a bit. Her husband stops beating her, for one, which she attributes to the tune. She’s also given her robot friend a name: Udide Okwanka, or Spider the Artist, after an Igbo trickster deity.

It should also be noted that during this time, the Zombies have started attacking oil workers and guards at the pipeline. AKA the people they aren’t supposed to attack. This becomes important later on.

Some time later, Eme and Udide are hanging out when her husband runs out to tell her he just got a text message. That message was that the pipeline near the school burst, and there are no robots in sight. Meaning, of course, all the diesel fuel they can take. Then he notices Udide, and immediately comes to the conclustion that Eme is collaborating with the oil companies.

He runs to the pipeline, but not before Udide, either because of its programming or it thought Eme’s husband was threatening her, calls its buddies. Here, Eme comes to two not great realizations: 1) the Zombies are, in fact, sentient beings, and 2) most of them really, really don’t like people.

Realizing what’s about to happen, Eme runs to the pipeline and tries to warn everyone what’s coming but no one listens to her. Then the droids come, and ignite the diesel fuel that’s spilled all over, killing everyone present.

Everyone except Eme, who Udide protects by throwing a force field over her.

So it’s some time later and Eme, who has had trouble conceiving, learns from Udide that she’s pregnant with a daughter. She’s happy about this, but worried about bringing a daughter into a world embroiled in a full-scale war between humans and robots. The story ends thusly:

Pray that Udide and I can convince man and droid to all a truce, otherwise the delta will keep rolling in blood, metal and flames You know what else? You should also pray that these Zombies don’t build themselves some fins and travel across the ocean.

So that’s a bit of a bleak ending.

One of the major themes of the story here seems to be the exploitation of Africa’s natural resources by foreign interests, and their governments’ complicity in that. Okorafor makes a point of calling out Nigeria’s government as well as the foreign companies. This is important because that’s something that’s happening now, even without spider robots going Skynet on everyone.

What struck me most, however, is how art, particularly music, plays into the story. Eme’s life, to put it mildly, kind of sucks, but she has her guitar to get her through it. It also helps her form a connection with another being. That’s really the main purpose of art.

I may also be thinking about it because times aren’t so good in my neck of the woods right now, and I’ve been using reading, writing, and video games in order to try and cope with that. Thankfully what’s been going on here doesn’t involve killer robots.

Though 2020 isn’t over yet, so who knows?