Hoda Omran-Cairo
Science fiction literature has its roots in the mythology of peoples. It is based on predictive myths and employs imagination to fly in space and create inventions that help man to fly in other and parallel worlds.
In the modern era appeared writer Nihad Sharif (1932-2011), and the most famous of his writers "Qaher time", which turned into a film starring the artist Nour and the artist Azhar al-Hakim, and the novel "olive diamonds", which revolves around the attempts of a doctor to produce diamonds through the Faculty of Human, His own attempts to produce a huge diamond that causes his death succeed, as he wrote "The Population of the Underworld" and "Number Four Orders You".
After Nihad Sharif, writer Nabil Farouk founded the "Future File" series, which was aimed at young generations and tells about a group of scientific friends exploring life on another planet.
The writer Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq used fantasia to unravel the mystery of the unusual crimes in his series "Supernatural", and young generations Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi, who devotes his time to the translation of science fiction literature and writing novels of this genre, and best known novel "Winter Black", which predicts a nuclear war between America and North Korea.
Association for Science Fiction Literature
Some writers interested in science fiction literature have been holding cultural salons to analyze science fiction stories and Western films, and a salon named "Nihad Sharif" was established.Egyptian Fiction Literature Society was founded in 2012 and worked to discuss all the new developments in the literary scene of this color.
The Association has made a personal effort on the initiative of writer Hossam Zambili, owner of the novel "Epics of the Future", who told the island that they are holding periodic cultural salons in "Nasr City" in Cairo by launching an open invitation to all writers and translators of science fiction literature, where the story is discussed, and provide two critical studies Qudriya Al-Saeed is a literary critic who specializes in this type of literature, and writer and critic Khaled Gouda.
Prior to the discussion, an entertainment section entitled “Space news” will be presented to attract young people to the salon.
In addition to the cultural salons, the association relies on a specialized magazine to publish science fiction literature called "Shams Al Ghad". The publication is based on a panel of judges, including Al-Zambili, Qadriya Al-Saeed and Khalid Joudeh. One of the founders of Egyptian science fiction literature in modern times.
The association's salon coincides with a competition organized by its officials to select the best science fiction stories and publish them in their magazine.
Tomorrow's Sun and the Knights of the Future
The series "Shams Al Ghad" is a non-periodical magazine, each of which has a different title according to its subject, and six issues have been published so far, the constituent number and then "returnees", "revolutionaries", "victors", "steadfast" and "futurists", The latter was devoted to children's literature for science fiction.
Participated in the issue young writer Ammar al-Masri, the novels of the series "New World", which tells about the war waged by machines and robots on the planet, and the tail of the issue a detailed critical study of each story of critic Khaled Jouda.
Challenges facing science fiction literature
Zambili says that science fiction literature in the Arab world has gone through four phases, the first exploratory by Tawfiq al-Hakim, the second founding by Mustafa Mahmoud and Nihad Sharif, the third stage spread by Nabil Farouk and Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq, and the fourth stage is the rooting stage.
He adds that the book is going through them now, away from the Western tradition, and the use of Arab values, and away from the atheism that characterizes the stories of the West, he said.
Zambili places hopes at this stage on the Society's role and activity in the development of science fiction literature.
Al-Zambili explains that, together with the Palestinian writer Imad al-Din Aisha, they are writing an "Egyptian-Palestinian Encyclopedia of Arabic Science Fiction Literature" which will be published in English in agreement with a foreign publishing house.
He talked about the problems facing them, where it is difficult to access the media channels to market themselves, and the difficulty of dealing with the Arab Publishing House, which either ask for a fee to publish the books of the Association or do not give them profits from the sale.
He adds that this literature requires a book of a special kind with the talent of science in the first place, so most of them are students of medicine or engineering.
He says this may be a reason for the cultural elite to ignore them and not to take this literature seriously, as they consider it not authentic or lack linguistic aesthetics.
Zambili agrees with some of these arguments, and says they are trying to focus on both sides.