Tag Archives: Science Fiction

The is a translation of an interview conducted by Mohamed Nazreen Shahul Hamid and published in the November 2018 edition of “Dewan Sastera“, a Malaysian literary magazine edited by Zaharahanum Kamarudin. The interviewee, Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD, is currently a member of the Egyptian Society for Science Fiction (ESSF) and a …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     Resistance literature, in the Arabic tradition, has been defined as: The literature of any group or people that are aware of their identity and fighting for their freedom against an aggressive other, and for their collective deliverance. The key words are freedom, collective …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   I had the good fortune of attending a book signing event once, with Ibrahim Nasrallah as the guest of honour, and during the question-answer session, somebody mentioned George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984. This was no coincidence since the book being signed away was Nasrallah’s …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD     I made the mistake of reading, and the even bigger mistake of ‘buying’, M. M. Tawfik’s novel Candygirl: An Egyptian Novel, published in English by the AUC Press in 2013. (Mr. Tawfik did the translation himself, and he does a reasonably competent job …

By Anna Kucirkova   The problems of overpopulation and environmental issues have our world leaders considering what the next step is to ensure the survival of humanity. What are we to do once the population has reached the critical tipping point? What about if the earth become uninhabitable? Our sister …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD*   Iritdad or ‘Backwards’ is a science fiction novel by Egyptian author Muhammad Ahmed Al-Nagui, published originally in 2016. As you can probably guess from the title, the novel fits in the time-travel genre. The story is set in the distant future, 2107 to be …

Robots are a regular staple in science fiction, from Isaac Asimov’s book I, Robot to the latest episode of Westworld. So while I was at an event in Boston, I picked up Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation by Terri Favro. It’s an interesting and funny …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD We tend to think of post-apocalyptic novels as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. We tend to think of science fiction in general as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. Not so, says Egypt’s youthful fantasy, SF author Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi[1] in his …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   I was attending a lecture once by an Egyptian science fiction writer, quite a distinguished engineer in fact, and he gave a hilarious example. He talked about an Egyptian boy that had grown up in America and had come back to Egypt, as it …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   Shadows of Atlantis (2017) is an alien invasion/post-apocalyptic story penned by a youthful Egyptian author, Ammar Mahmoud Al-Masry. The one human city that has been able to withstand the storm is New Atlantis, an Egyptian city built in the Western desert, becoming a refuge …

“Calling Dr Robot, calling Dr Robot, your next surgery’s waiting…” Such a vision needn’t be confined to the pages of sci-fi books of their movie spin-offs. A UAE-based investment group is pumping in millions of dirhams to make this compelling image a reality in local/regional hospitals.   Crescent Enterprises, the …

By Emad El-Din Aysha,PhD     Akwan (2017) or ‘Universes’ is an exceptional novel by Egyptian standards, and for several reasons. One, it’s a science fiction novel and a hard-core sci-fi novel at that, dealing with parallel universes and alternate dimensions. (The Egypt of nowadays, horror and supernatural thrillers count …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD An open letter was just issued at the world’s biggest artificial intelligence conference – the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) – for the outright banning of ‘lethal autonomous weapons’, more commonly known as killer robots. The letter, signed by a 116 of the …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD Art is always one step ahead of reality. If you’ve watched Blade Runner (1982) you’re introduced to custom-tailored, genetically engineered humanoid robots – called ‘replicants’ – made for everything from combat duty to assassination to off-world colonisation to, last but not least, pleasure models for …

The inventor put down the newspaper, frustrated. Food sales were skyrocketing and prices flying out of control in Egypt, as was to be expected, during the holy month of Ramadan. The very month people were supposed to be eating ‘less’ in because they were fasting. This has got to stop. …

The azza [funeral or wake, take your pick] at the Egyptian mosque was proceeding. People shook each other’s hands and wished each other an end to the days of their sorrows. The young men thanked the other youngsters for actually showing up. The men either wore dark suits or were …