SF/F Serial Diversity Award-Winner Nisi Shawl Opens A Bizarre GoFundMe For An Imaginary Philosophy Project

Nisi Shawl is one of the grifters upheld for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science fiction, and she has a dream now of creating a philosophy book to “help everyone,” which she’s taken to GoFundMe to try to get produced, as it’s clear this book will not succeed in the general market.

In science fiction and fantasy, several black authors are upheld as authority figures in publishing because of their race and gender. Nisi Shawl is one of those who seems to only have prominence within the sphere because she’s a black woman.

In 2016, she published a steampunk novel that answers the question nobody was asking: “What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors?” Outside of this, she is best known for having short stories published in mainstream short fiction magazines on a regular basis, as they use her for diversity points in their publications.

Like most authors who really haven’t made a mark on sales, she is the recipient of a ludicrous amount of awards, including one Locus Magazine made up as a “special award” for teaching a course on diversity in genre.

Now, Shawl is apparently endeavoring to create a philosophy book in the same vein as the rest of her career. The concept borders on absurd and the GoFundMe page illustrates its ridiculousness:

Nisi Shawl, a wise and wonderful writer of science fiction and fantasy, had a dream that there was a philosophical system described in a book called The Five Petals of Thought. In the dream, everyone in the world routinely consulted this book to help them overcome life's difficulties. Nisi has since written several science-fiction stories about this dreamed system and the thoughtful world it creates.

Now Nisi wants to write the actual book. Here, let them explain it:

“The book will be an artifact of this imaginary philosophical movement, and will contain guided exercises and historical examples and all kinds of good self-help content. It will be by turns hilarious and heartening, and everybody I describe it to wants me to make it real. Everybody besides my agent, I mean. They would have to sell it to a publishing house, and they’re not sure they could.”

The pressure to conform one’s book to an easily saleable idea is a familiar problem for writers, and they resolve it in a variety of ways.

Nisi supports themself tenuously by their books and by lecturing and teaching writing. They are willing to spend time and energy on this project, but can't afford to do that without some financial backing. So this fundraiser as been created to enable Nisi's friends and readers to fund the book directly themselves. The reward for any donation will be an e-copy of the book when it is finished––and, of course, Nisi’s deepest thanks.

Can you contribute an amount that you won’t miss?

If you will help raise the money needed to write the book, Nisi will keep you updated with notes about the philosophy and bites (or nibbles) of the text, and will send you a copy of the finished e-book. If no publisher is interested, Nisi will publish it electronically.

Thank you so much for considering this. How about it?

It is of note that Shawl is a female and yet is referred to as “them,” a plural word that makes no sense in the context of an individual. While it admits the concept is not saleable, the GoFundMe is asking for a considerable amount of money anyway.

While there are not a lot of donations for Shawl’s vision, there is one anonymous donor for $5,000 to make it look like a large success despite a lack of interest in the project. Despite that giant donation, it still lists at only 38% funded.

While there is an organizer involved named Eileen Gunn, this is all Shawl’s project and won wonders why a philosophy book would cost $20,000 for.

Regardless, without serious help, it’s unlikely to reach that point. The question is, how many Afrofuturist philosophy enthusiasts are there really out there?

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