Fans of Nnedi Okorafor were excited to hear in July that one of the science fiction author and professor’s most popular books, “Who Fears Death”, would be made into an HBO series.
But just as exciting was the news that “Game of Thrones” author George R.R Martin would join the project as an executive producer. The Afrofuturist novel follows a young woman’s post-apocalyptic quest to find her mother’s killer in a futuristic African landscape.
However, based on the media coverage since the announcement, you would think that it was Martin who had written the book. A number of publications have pushed forward Martin’s name as a way to sell coverage of the new show — and Okorafor is getting more and more frustrated as it seems her name is being slowly erased from the show.
An A.V. Club article and subsequent tweet from earlier this month failed to mention that Okorafor wrote the books and she made sure to let them know her thoughts.
A.V. Club immediately corrected the error after her tweet went viral.
For his part, Martin has made it clear that he is just one of many executive producers to be attached to project.
“I will be an executive producer on WHO FEARS DEATH but I will not be the executive producer, i.e. the showrunner. That’s an important distinction. Should we move forward, there will be a number of executive producers, and probably some co-executive producers and supervising producers and producers as well. This is television,” he wrote in a Livejournal post in July.
We hope that by the show’s premiere date, no one will be able to disconnect the great work HBO will produce from Okorafor’s fabulous writing.