Remote Control (novella)

Remote Control is a 2021 science fiction novella by Nigerian American writer Nnedi Okorafor. It is her first novella following the Binti Trilogy and takes place in the same fictional universe as her novels *Who Fears Death* and *The Book of Phoenix*. The book was a finalist for both the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction and the Locus Awards.

The story follows Sankofa, a twelve-year-old girl traveling on foot across Ghana with her fox, Moxie. At a Christmas party hosted by strangers, the adults fear her, but ten-year-old Edgar is fascinated by local legends about her. Sankofa demonstrates her power, called "remote control," which makes her glow with a green light. When a gateman tries to kill her, the light overwhelms and kills him instead.

In flashback, four-year-old Fatima watches a meteor shower from a shea tree. A glowing green object hits the ground at the tree’s base. The next year, a box containing the same seed rises from that spot. A politician pays Fatima’s family a large sum for the box and seed, but the artifacts are stolen from him. When Fatima is seven, she begins having feverish episodes where pain makes her emit green light. While crossing a street, she is hit by a car, and the green light explodes, killing her brother, both parents, and several others in her town. After this, she renames herself Sankofa.

Sankofa can sense the seed’s location and begins walking toward it. She cannot ride in vehicles because the green light causes technology to malfunction, especially cars and certain electronic devices. A man attacks her, and her green light kills him. Word of her dangerous powers spreads. Over several years, she chases the seed across northern Ghana, but it always stays ahead. She finally catches the thief, who says he recently lost the seed. Sankofa kills him and vows to stop following the seed, believing it caused her family’s deaths.

She meets Alhaja, an electronics store owner, and scares off thieves with her green light before moving in with her. At a market, Sankofa finds the box. She accidentally damages a robotic policeman, causing a child to be hit and killed by a car. An angry mob stones her; her green light bursts out unintentionally, killing several mob members and Alhaja. Sankofa flees. Alone in the wilderness, she tries and fails to destroy the seed.