How do you define science fiction?

Mustafa Laghtiri: Science fiction novels belong to the genre of novel writing. Indeed, it can be considered one of the most profound literary genres, for the simple reason that it relies almost entirely on imagination, despite its use of scientific facts and technological developments, and novel writing – as is known – cannot survive without imagination. The writer of science fiction novels is obliged to arm himself with scientific, physical, and technological theories, and sometimes even philosophical theories, as he presents his scientific material in a literary manner in connection with human values, the latter of which govern a person and his orientations in his relationship with himself and with others, by focusing on the constant and the variable in them, so that their predictions of the future are as complete and accurate as possible.

Max Urai: The more scifi I read, the less wise or even possible it seems to give a strict definition of the genre. What one sentence can describe “Frankenstein”, “The Word for World is Forest”, “The Atrocity Exhibition” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in one fell swoop? So, my short answer to the question is: I don’t.
The only thing I can speak on, is what the genre means to me and my own writing. In that respect, there are two things that draw me to scifi. What those things are, I don’t know. You can call them literary traditions, imaginative energies. I like Scott McClouds ‘campfires’: places where people gather to warm their hands. There are a lot of things in the genre that don’t come even close to what I’m about to describe. But these are the ones that mean the most to me.
The first of those campfires is pretty literal: sci-fi as fiction about science. About the process, the people involved in it. The good parts and the bad parts. These are stories about curiosity, basically. The desire to figure out how something works and what would happen in a certain situation. Most of the time, the science involved is physics, or one of its children – engineering, astronomy, rocket propulsion. But one thing I learned from Ursula Le Guin is that it’s also possible to write speculative anthropology, psychology, sociology. Writing about something that’s not there, but that could be there. I like doing that.
The second campfire is quite different from the first. Where the first is very modern, this second is the campfire that wants to keep the flame of pre-modern storytelling alive. Tolkien is the most obvious example here – the man who wanted to bring the very specific feel of mediaeval epics to a new audience. Similarly, a lot of sci-fi that I like purposefully looks to premodern forms for inspiration. Fairy tales, animal stories, myths, saga’s. What I like about this campfire is that it challenges the idea that the core of a story is one human and their emotions (I.e. the core conceit of most novels). It’s wider, grander.

How have you seen the genre of sci-fi develop in the Moroccan context?

Mustafa Laghtiri: Unfortunately, Arab Moroccan writers do not pay much attention to this genre, as is the case with some other types of fictional writing, which the Arab library lacks, such as the detective novel, for example. This makes the Arab fictional corpus and thus characterises the Arab imagination as lacking. What distinguishes fictional fiction globally is the diversity, depth, and multiplicity of the fields of fictional writing. The lack of sci-fi writing may be due to several reasons, such as a lack of appreciation for this type of writing, in addition to the stagnation of Arabs in the field of scientific research, which is the second pillar of writing within science fiction novels. It is no secret to anyone that the writer of science fiction novels is obliged to arm himself with scientific, physical, and technological theories, and sometimes even philosophical theories, as he does not present his scientific material in a literary manner.

How have you seen the genre of sci-fi develop in the Dutch context?

Max Urai: As far as I can tell, sci-fi has never meaningfully developed in the Netherlands. It seems that every generation, a couple of writers get inspired by foreign books (usually in English) and try to bring the genre to the Low Countries. Even if a lot of people write sci fi, you can’t really say there’s a sci-fi scene, where people read and react to each other’s work. There’s no such thing as a ‘generically Dutch’ scifi story, I don’t think. The upside of this: most Dutch sci fi novels are quite different from each other, because the writer has to find their own individual way into the genre.
As to why sci-fi never took off in the Netherlands, I don’t know. We have a good many universities, several Nobel prize winners, and we have enormous structures to keep the sea out. We’ve even created an entire new province that way, which is a very sci-fi-sounding project. It does seem that the threat of climate change is bringing a new kind of interest in sci-fi. Writers seem to become aware that our world won’t always look like it does now.

What has inspired you to write sci-fi? What literary tropes / heritage are you inspired by in writing? What are the challenges of writing sci-fi?

Mustafa Laghtiri: In the novel “Unfinished Motherhood,” the first edition of which was published by the Arab Intellectuals House in Cairo and its second edition in Morocco, I was inspired by some modern scientific and technological developments, especially electronic ones and modern communication technology. Through the novel, I tried to anticipate the world after almost a hundred years, especially at the level of development. Technology and the extent of its impact on values in a transformed society characterised by the enormous ability to communicate and where different races coexist while there is often conflicting. 
The novel takes place on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea which was bought by the Chinese and is inhabited by people of all nationalities because it has become an electronic paradise that tempts those who are passionate about technology to come and live in it. Its citizens are driven by the ambition to build a new life, almost abandoning everything old, and eagerly looking towards the future, the mainstay of which is electronic and technological development. On this island, life is built on the basis of development in an attempt to lead the world towards a broader scientific, technological and electronic horizon. The novel presents a family consisting of a Moroccan wife and a Spanish husband who adopt a Chinese robot, which suffers a malfunction, so they head to Germany to repair it, as the mother considers him a real son. The novel attempts to depict the global struggle in order to gain a head start in technology and scientific development, which it presents with a human touch.

Max Urai: The first thing that inspired me is that scifi is incredibly fun. There are no jetpacks in social novels. Plus: in sci fi, nobody can tell you that a story is ‘unrealistic’. It operates on a whole other level, which I like a lot better.
Another inspiration for writing sci-fi was political. I’ve been writing stories about politics for years now, but I always ran up against the walls of realism. In sci-fi, it’s possible to think about entirely different political structures, which I find much more exciting and much more potent.
The biggest challenge of writing sci-fi is that you do have to make up everything yourself. There’s no cheating by just looking at reality. If I want to create a society where people have wheels instead of feet, I have to think of how that impacts every part of human life.
Another challenge is linguistics. You have to be very careful about using metaphors and fancy turns of phrase, because the reader doesn’t know what this world is like. Let’s say I want to describe a hailstorm, and I write: “Bullets rained down”. In a Realist novel, the reader would understand that that would never literally happen, so they can see that it must be metaphorical. But in a scifi novel, it could be raining anything. Plus: you have to consider very carefully how to introduce your strange new world to the reader. The enormous freedom demands a lot of discipline in return.

Do you think that the genre can easily be translated / is it cross-cultural literature? Are there advantages of using science fiction in a cross-cultural context?

Mustafa Laghtiri: Of course, it is easier to translate science fiction writings compared to other writings, provided that you know the local cultural background from which they come. The ease comes from the fact that science fiction novels often employ clear, objective language. It seeks to present the idea in a manner similar to essay writing that is characterised by accuracy and clarity. However, in general it remains so that translation affects the translated text, so therefore it remains often the case that translation might betray the original text.
Yet, using science fiction has multiple advantages in a multicultural context, because it brings people closer together by introducing their cultural and imaginative depth. It also unites their goal towards a single human horizon that seeks to serve all of humanity by urging it to build a more prosperous future based on imagination, technology, and scientific development that takes into account issues such as environmental safety and preservation of vital resources for future generations.

Max Urai: For the reason above: yes, I’ve found that sci-fi usually translates easier than many other forms of fiction. The great advantage of reading translated scifi is that it circumvents the problem of representation. When you read about another country, it can be very hard to parse what is genuine information about a place and a culture, and what is just something the writer came up with. Imaginative and speculative fiction gets around that by declaring from the start that it’s all made up. You’re only looking into one person’s imagination