Worldbuilding in Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

I’ve covered the opening of Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author in a previous post, and I’m not going to move much further into the book here because I want to focus on her worldbuilding, especially in the chapters from the point of view of Ankara, set on a far future Earth.

I did my usual scene component analysis on chapters three and six, the first two from Ankara’s point of view. Here’s the breakdown: 

I created a quick timelapse video of myself doing the tagging, and you can see me frequently hesitating and changing my mind. The truth is that many of the sentences could be tagged as backstory, character, setting, or summary, depending on how you look at them. These categorial distinctions often blur together in practice. What’s truly revealing, however, is the lack of action, dialogue, and interiority—the components we would expect to dominate a more dramatic scene. Altogether, these components make up only 16 percent of these two chapters.

Let’s take a closer look at the kinds of worldbuilding we see in the beginning of the novel. The opening of chapter three covers great swaths of times:

In the next paragraph we get a tiny bit of grounding in a detailed setting and point of view. Our narrator is standing in a “crumbling parking lot” and is sure “the Earth [has] great things ahead of it, even still.” The familiar detail of the parking lot tells us that there are still traces of human civilization on Earth, even though, as we soon learn, humans have died out. 

But before we find out what’s going to happen in that parking lot or what our narrator’s immediate problem or quest might be, we zoom back out to learn more about how these AIs and robots evolved; in particular, we learn that human emotion is part of their “digital DNA.” We learn that our narrator is an AI known as a “Hume robot,” designed by humans to resemble them. The robots rust, but do not die; if a part fails, “we simply replaced it.”

By this point, if not sooner, we believe that we are reading the novel we saw Zelu begin in the previous chapter, which she titles Rusted Robots. The design of the book supports that interpretation by switching to a san serif font for the chapters narrated by Ankara. In the beginning, these chapters feel almost like a bonus. We assume that Zelu’s narrative is primary, which perhaps makes us more patient readers of this ‘extra’ material—willing to swallow more exposition and worldbuilding than we would be if this chapter came first.

Okorafor also sounds some thematic gongs in these chapters. Take this passage from the end of chapter three, for example:

Along with the title and the skirmish over what a story rightly is in chapter two (discussed in my post on the opening), this passage feels weighty. By the end of chapter two, we believe that Zelu’s Rusted Robots novel—the material we believe we are reading right now—has the power to lift her from pain and poverty to riches and fame. What then does it mean that Ankara, our protagonist inside Rusted Robots, does not wield this power? How will she create change within her own narrative? How will she fulfill her character arc, complete the quest, achieve the ultimate boon without being able to tell her own story?

Alert readers will also note the comparison between consuming a story and falling. Zelu, we soon learn, has panic attacks when she remembers the sensation of falling from a tree—the reason she lost the use of her legs. That fall led to her evolution. Will Ankara experience a similar fall?

We have to wait for the answer to that question, however, as chapter six opens another nesting doll of stories when Ankara travels to Lagos and meets Udide, the spider-like robot who gives her the quest we heard about at the end of chapter three—the terrible information she must bring to the Humes and other AIs who can figure out what to do about it.

Chapters three and six provide a useful contrast in styles of worldbuilding. Chapter three is largely exposition—Ankara tells us what she believes we need to know upfront about this far-future Earth. The worldbuilding in chapter six, on the other hand, occurs in scene—Ankara reveals details about the world as she moves through it. Here’s an example:

In this passage, each setting detail teaches us what is true about this world: Humans might have perished but mangrove and palm trees and manatees remain. Ankara operates on solar energy. There are still traces of humans on the landscape. (Using a simile drawn from the natural world, the dead fish, to describe the decaying oil pipeline is a beautiful touch.)

You can also think of these two kinds of worldbuilding as top-down (exposition, telling) and bottom-up (scene, showing). Most writing advice favors bottom-up worldbuilding, immersing readers in the story world alongside characters. Bottom-up worldbuilding can also be more active, woven into the action and dialogue of a live scene, and the technique fits well with the limited, close narration style that is prevalent now. (If you want to learn more about worldbuilding, Andrew Hodges offers an excellent webinar on the topic.)

That said, just like omniscient narration or passive voice, there is a time and place for using top-down, expository worldbuilding. As I discussed in my post on the opening, I think Okorafor is deliberately immersing us in Zelu’s story, marking it as the primary one, while keeping us a bit more distant from the Ankara story. (To find out why, read the novel or take a look at my post on the structure of the novel as a whole.)

The worldbuilding in chapter two, fittingly, is bottom-up: We are introduced to Zelu while she is at her sister’s wedding, a savvy choice that allows Okorafor to explore the family dynamics and the Nigerian cultural influences so important to her story thread. We learn about her mother’s royal Yoruba heritage when she brings out an enormous coral necklace for the bride and Zelu rolls her eyes. We learn that Nigerians are suspicious of disabilities, among abnormalities of any kind, when Zelu’s uncle makes a comment about her being “crippled,” which she shrugs off, knowing she’s not going to change his mind. We learn more about how Zelu navigates the world in her wheelchair by seeing what is easy and what is difficult as she moves through the variety of settings in this chapter. 

The lesson here for authors is that you should be deliberate when choosing a style of worldbuilding and make sure it aligns with your narrative goals. How do you want readers to experience a scene? Do you want to immerse them, to invest them fully in the desires and needs of the point-of-view character? Then bottom-up (or scenic) worldbuilding is the best choice. Or do you want readers to engage with a certain scene in a more distanced or analytical way, perhaps because you want to spotlight themes or concepts? Then top-down (or expository) worldbuilding will be a better choice. While scenic worldbuilding might be your go-to approach, remember that expository worldbuilding remains a valuable tool in your author’s toolkit, ready to be deployed when your narrative strategy calls for it.