Deji Bryce Olukotun highlights the tale behind his novel in Slate:
via i09In my novel, my main character was a Nigerian émigré who had received his Ph.D. in lunar geology and then worked for NASA. In reality, Agboola received his Ph.D. in engineering from an American university and then worked for NASA. He was then invited to lead engineering for the nascent space agency in Nigeria—and what he discovered when he arrived was not how the program had been pitched to him. There was something absolutely terrifying about meeting in real life a person whom I thought I made up....
What I learned from my meeting with Agboola is that it does not feel good to predict human failings and for them to turn out to be true, especially when there are people striving so hard to overcome these failings and to create a better world for their fellow citizens. Here was a man daring to dream, and in my fiction I had snuffed out that dream. This in a country currently wracked by the militant Islamic group Boko Haram and the dreaded Ebola virus. There is little courage in presaging that things will turn out for the worse.
