In a gripping detective story filled with well-earned reversals and revelations, the biggest surprise is a twist that doesn’t come.
Full disclosure: Mat Johnson, author of Incognegro and Incognegro: Renaissance is a friend of mine. Not to say we are on each other’s Christmas lists, but we were former colleagues and he’s just generally genial. I have also been mistaken for him by three separate individuals, which I think has more to say about the strangeness of the universe than about either of us, because neither of us look remotely similar to each other. But that’s a story for another time. He was on the Creative Writing faculty of the University of Houston when I was there, and though I was not a Creative Writing student, I did have him for a single course: a speculative-fiction-themed section of Writers on Literature. (In seven years of graduate study at two universities, and four years of undergrad at a third [first?], this was actually the only science-fiction-focused course I ever took.) This revelation is, in all probability, completely irrelevant.
Continue reading “A Surprising Non-Reversal in Incognegro: Renaissance”
Jeff (in the bowtie!) 