South Africans in Space! Alex Latimer's The Space Race

My name is Jeru, and I love books. I also love lemons (not the point, but it matters anyway). I like to write but I love to read more. So, I've combined my love and like to bring you this blog about books that I've read and what I've thought and why you should read more books!

I've read a lot, I have a Masters degree in Classical Civilization, and I've worked for a major international publishing house, so I kind of know what I'm talking about. To start with, here is a review of a South African book I reviewed for my local newspaper. It's The Space Race by Alex Latimer.



Speculative fiction, which includes fantasy, horror, science fiction, as well as alternate history, and post-apocalyptic fiction, among others, is currently experiencing a coming-of-age in South Africa. It is pioneered by writers like Lauren Beukes (Zoo City, The Shining Girls), and publishing houses such as the newly-founded Fox and Raven, which prides itself on specialising in the genre. The latest player on the scene is illustrator and children’s author, Alex Latimer, whose original and enjoyable first novel, The Space Race, adds a touch of the fantastical into the ordinary world, to address socio-political issues. The Space Race is crisp, fast-paced, funny and sincere. Latimer uses a ridiculous situation to comment on the people and the nature of the apartheid regime.

In The Space Race, set in 2013, the world’s eyes are on South Africa after an unauthorised nuclear blast take places outside Upington, at a secret apartheid government nuclear testing site called Vastrap. Much to the distress of the Americans and Russians, the blast launches a spacecraft carrying four Afrikaners destined for a distant and habitable moon. With next to nothing known about Vastrap and the space pioneers, journalist Greg Hall is hired to piece together the mystery of how two sisters from Kimberly and two engineers became the first humans to colonise space. While scanning the detonation site for clues, he finds a man, burned by the blast but still alive, who has the information Greg needs, but also an agenda of his own. Greg tends to the man’s wounds in exchange for the exhilarating back-story, about people left so damaged and hopeless by life on earth that they must make a fresh start on an entirely different planet.

Latimer himself has described his novel as, ‘an easy read about weird stuff,’ and although the truth in his statement is evident in the ironic tone of the book and the many hilarious South Africanisms, The Space Race is also existential and thought-provoking. It is a story of hope and what it means to be human.

Hot on the heels of Latimer’s debut comes humankind’s milestone in space exploration; Voyager 1 has left the solar system. Not only does this prove that Latimer’s concept of humans colonising space is not as unbelievable as it may once have been, it also shows that his work is exceptionally relevant.