Honeymoon on the Moon

Honeymoon on the Moon And Other Stories is a collection of science-fiction short stories written by Mauritanian author Moussa Ould Ebnou. A unique blend of science fiction and mysticism, history and myth, truth and fiction, philosophy and literature, this book is chock- full of unexpected twists, including an ill-fated vacation to the moon (in “Honeymoon on the Moon”), a dystopian future where animals tyrannize humans (in “Human Pet”), the implantation of digitized French language and culture into the minds of nomadic desert children (in “Lub-dub”), parthenogenetic reproduction in an all-female world (in “Moonless Earth”), French-speaking extraterrestrials from the future trying to save their language from extinction (in “The Author and his Characters”), magical djinns (in “A Glimpse into the Future”), futuristic societies where love between men and women is banned (in “The Bonds of Love”), the doomed love affair and fight against oppression in a dystopian Saharan wasteland (in “Gara, Time Traveler”), the mysterious demonic affliction of an archaeologist (in “A Dream from the Future”), and a time-traveling Mauritanian tour guide (in “The Chrononaut Librarian”). The exploration of varied and transdisciplinary themes such as Mauritanian history and culture, philosophy, Islamic tradition and mythology, dominant languages, colonization, sexual identities and non-sexual reproduction, environmental ethics, animal rights, and the narrator’s role in literature, all through the lens of science-fiction, will be of great interest to English speaking audiences looking for new voices and perspectives in science fiction. This will be the first English translation of this collection of short stories (62,228 words), and includes three new stories in addition to the seven stories in the original French book, Fragments de futurs (Diwan Editions, 2016). The author, Moussa Ould Ebnou, was born in Boutilimit, Mauritania. He earned his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, and is a philosophy professor at the University of Nouakchott in Mauritania. He has written several novels and collections of short stories in French and has self-translated many of them into Arabic. He owns DIWAN publishing house, which specializes in publishing Saharan science fiction.