If you’ve been following this blog you probably know exactly what this is.
At the start of every year, I make a list to highlight the African speculative fiction short stories I read and enjoyed the most from the previous year.
Another year has come and gone and with it, lots of good stories, despite the increasingly strange madness of the world at large. I spent most of my literary year writing my forthcoming novel The Fist of Memory, and attending book conventions/festivals but I still managed to find time to read because it’s my way of filling up the well, of recharging my own mind. And honestly, I love stories. Especially short fiction—these little literary tapas of concept, character and style that nourish me when I’m not quite up for the full meal of a novel. And naturally, a significant chunk of my reading is by my fellow African authors. Which is why every year since 2015, I have published a list of the African speculative short fiction that I read and enjoyed most. I do this to spotlight the stories I found propulsive, fascinating, compelling, interesting and wanted to let others know about too since African speculative fiction gems can sometimes fly under the radar or appear in unexpected venues. Plus, it’s always fun making these lists (you can find all the lists for previous years here.)
So, without further ado, here are ten or so of the best African speculative short fiction stories from 2025, in no particular order…
And 2022 was full of changes. New things. Big changes in my personal, professional and writing lives. And a lot of those will carry over to 2023 and I am looking forward to the year. To mention just a few related to my writing that were and are to come:
My original work published in 2022 has been well received so far (with “A Dream Of Electric Mothers” in particular already being mentioned in Major awards discussions, which is awesome given what I think awards mean) and I hope you continue to read and enjoy them. If you do, kindly consider them for relevant awards and whatnots for which you can nominate/vote.
Which brings me to the real reason we are here: Work published in 2022. But not mine.
I want to highlight the African speculative fiction short stories I read and enjoyed most from the year gone by. This has become a tradition and even though I am no longer updating the ASFS Database of published African SFF, I do try to read widely and I am grateful to have been able to read so much of what was published by my fellow writers. I love stories after all, especially short stories and I was a reader long before I was a writer so when I find a special story, I like to share it.
As always, these are my personal favorites, those that left a lasting impression on me. This year, I was blown away by a lot of stories, especially those that not only used speculative ideas creatively, but used the tools of the craft effectively, with lovely writing that really drew me in. Not just telling a good story, but telling it well. Writing with your full chest. And while I’ve read relatively widely (over 100) SFF stories by African authors for the year, I’m sure I haven’t read everything. I am also really restricting myself to just a list of 10, and excluding anything I was involved in creating or curating (sorry, special edition of Omenana), so naturally some great stories I also enjoyed missed out. That’s the nature of such lists.
So, here we go.
My 10 favorite African speculative fiction short stories of 2022, in no particular order.
Lolwe has consistently been putting out spectacular new African fiction (both literary and speculative) and this guest-edited, special issue stood out to me, in large part thanks to this story. In it, as a woman’s grandmother dies, she listens to her own mother tell a story which is a spin on a fairy tale about wily wives and brothers and betrayal and the inheritance of a kingdom but the tale is also a family secret and though it, we learn about these three generations of women, of their magic, power, rebirth and so much more. Its a story that’s hard to describe because its such a powerful and layered piece of work. An exceptional story, told with an exceptional voice that fully utilizes the beauty and playfulness of English that has been inflected with local syntax and expressions, producing an intoxicating delivery that works perfectly with the wildness of the narrative. When reading this story, the famous quote by Chinua Achebe came to mind often. “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” Jande (who also writes as HJ Golokai) has done something excellent here that made this special edition of Lolwe really sing. I knew it was one of my favorites the moment I read it. Highly recommended.
2. “E.I” by Kola Heyward-Rotimi (Nigeria/USA), Reckoning 6
Set in a future where the entire planet has been equipped with sensors linked to a kind of AI that functions as a planetary mind which can vote in decisions affecting the Earth, we follow a soil delegate, Prisca who proposes to dig up an ancient building and has to campaign for the value of this to the community and the AI. More a slice-of-life type of narrative, with several vignettes showing how the Earth itself is given agency around the globe, this story is contemplative and fascinating to read. I love stories that can speculate thoughtfully about technology, and move beyond metaphors for what already exists but take it one step further and actually envision new ways of being based on technology, in the context of our messy and complicated humanity. “E.I.” excels at this. Taken together with Heyward-Rotimi’s other excellent story, “The Barn”, which I think can be read as a kind of prequel to “E.I.” it forms an interesting diptych of clever and realistic cli-fi in a year where African authors did good work in the subgenre (see There was no shortage of good African cli-fi in 2022 (see Oyedotun Damilola Muees’s “All We Have Left Is Ourselves” and Nick Wood’s “The umHlosinga Tree” and “The White Necked Ravens of Camissa” and another which appears on this list). But “E.I.” left the most lasting impression on me. Highly recommended.
3. “From This Side Of The Rock” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (Zimbabwe), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Speculative fiction truly enables the literalization of metaphors, to paraphrase Samuel Delaney. This is something I discussed with Ray Nayler earlier in 2022 and, coincidentally (or not), in 2022, I read many interesting SFF stories by African authors that directly used this metaphor mode to great effect. From Xan Van Rooyen’s “The Heart Is A Strange Star” to Oghenechovwe Ekpeki Donald’s “Destiny Delayed” and M.H. Ayinde’s “Girlfriend Material”. But the ones I enjoyed the most were this Ndlovu story and another which appears later on this list. In “From This Side of the Rock” Ndlovu tells the story of immigrants to a new land who must give up something important as the price of citizenship in a dehumanizing and cruel ceremony. The narrator Rasika watches her artist friend, Jabu’s eyes taken away and we follow her as she awaits her own ceremony. During the wait, we learn about her and her community and her reasons for migrating. Highlighting the fraught choice between survival and identity, and the difficult sacrifices often made by those fleeing homes that have grown teeth, its a harrowing story with a powerful ending. I think its an great companion piece to Ai Jiang’s “Give Me English” which also appeared in F&SF this year and works with similar themes. Recommended.
2022 was a good year for Somto Ihezue. I read three of his stories and they were all good. Very good. While I found “Whole” to be expertly crafted and vividly written when it ended I was left feeling like I’d just read the start of larger narrative rather than a complete story itself. And I also found “The Carving Of War” to be an effective horror-adjacent tale. But it was this story “Like Stars Daring To Shine” that left the strongest impression on me. Written in Ihezue’s consistently brilliant prose, it tells the story of two children Zaram and Kiki, living in one of the last inhabitable areas on Earth following a massive volcanic eruption that triggered a massive planetary chill. They explore together, as children do, and find out that their frozen world is changing, just as they are. The relationship between Zaram and Kiki is warm and very well-characterized, making the reader care for them. The scientific basis of the story is plausible and delivered with just the right amount of detail. The story also alludes to larger themes of community, inequality, sustainability in subtle but clear ways that all makes for an overall great read. Recommended.
The second of my favorite direct-metaphor stories, “Siyawa” appears in this excellent anthology of African Speculative Fiction, Art and Poetry. It imagines the supernatural return of Nelson Mandela to a South Africa being ravaged by a plague of giant dark holes that suddenly appear, swallowing people, neighborhoods and whole towns. The holes are a metaphor for depression which can be both personal and also, in the case of traumatized groups, communal. Mandela himself in the story represents something more than the man and his memory. Mandela represents the desire for hero, a mythical figure, to step in and resolve everything. But life is not that simple and the story illustrates that. Using a wonderful mix of humor (the opening is a hilarious rewriting of The Lords Prayer) and pathos, delivered in energetic and distinctly South African prose, this story hits hard and lingers. Highly Recommended.
Nwaka returns to a watery setting which got his “Undersea Lightning” on my favorites list last year. This time though, the action takes place not under the water but on its surface, in a flooded near-future Lagos, where a marine biologist is sent by his destructive pirate-clan who nomadically prowl the floodwaters, to infiltrate a settlement called The Island which has been protected and is now thriving after a visit by extra-terrestrial creatures called Milians who gifted them something special. When he gets to The Island he finds a better way of living and is forced to choose between his pirate-people and the possibility of this better future. The writing here is fast-paced and confident, the descriptions vivid, effectively evoking the visual of this drowned Lagos, and the tension builds right up until the explosive end. The aspect regarding the Milians is the weakest part of the story but its such a small part of the overall piece and has such little impact on the plot that it can be ignored and the rest of the story is excellent. Nwaka’s other 2022 story I read and liked “Mindscaping the Esheran Liberator, One Hundred Years Later” in Omenana is also very good but this one, I think is more accomplished and is recommended.
I am a sucker for reimagined folklore set in a different places and times and I love stories that read beautifully so this story, rich with folklore of Sierra Leone, which reads like poetry, stuck with me. It tells the story of a poor mother seeking a home for herself and her children. She encounters fantastical landlords, trials, traumas, and ghosts from her past. Like “The Bone Stomach” it also does wonderful things with language while telling a very moving story that is also a universal one, leveraging its fabulist elements perfectly to elevate its emotional resonance. Recommended.
8. “Letters to my Mother” by Chinelo Onwualu (Nigeria/Canada), METEOTOPIA: Futures of Climate (In)Justice
Onwualu is a reliable hand, consistently producing interesting stories that are full of thought and care and this is no exception. Appearing in the cli-fi anthology Meteotopia (which also contains interesting stories by Botswana’s Tlotlo Tsamaase and Senegal’s Mame Bougouma Diene), this story takes place in a future ecological utopia where the humanity lives sustainably with the planet. In it, the protagonist finds an old journal and reads its entries full of pain and a difficult mother-child relationship during the “climate wars”. The protagonists own empathy makes them sensitive to the sins of the past and it begins to affect their own life so that they must find a way to bring peace to this memory and to themselves. Its a beautiful, economical story about the legacy of unresolved painful history and how to work through it. Subtle, profound and memorable, I’m happy to recommend it.
Set on a world where the sand is so fine it moves like water, its massive accumulations like an open sea and the dust from it plugs anything that is not protected, included lungs. We follow Panganai, a dishonorably discharged veteran who encounters one of his old comrades as well as a mechanical, armored assassin that is killing members of their old unit. When the assassins turns its intentions towards Panganai, we learn about the history that has come to haunt him on the Sandsea. Tense, with a spectacular setting and told with Huchu’s undeniable skill, this is a great sci-fi story. Recommended.
10. “A Soul Of Small Places” by Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo (Senegal/USA), Africa Risen
Africa Risen is a major anthology and contains, as one would expect from the title, a lot of stories by African authors (I have one in there too). Almost of these stories have something interesting and worth recommending about them but the ones that stood out to me as being the most well-crafted and fully-realized stories were “The Deification of Igodo” by Joshua Uchenna Omenga, “The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library” by Tobi Ogundiran and this novelette, “A Soul of Small Places” which is my pick. Leaning into the dark themes stemming from social issues that runs through a lot of the fantasy stories in the collection, Diene and Diallo satisfyingly tell the story of a young girl coming of age in a town with a history of gender-based-violence and the monstrous transformation she undergoes when she and her sister are attacked their way back from school. A transformation that brings something like justice, but at a high cost. This real-world-meets-supernatural-horror style seems to be Diene’s most comfortable mode (see his excellent collection “Dark Moons Rising on a Starless Night“) and working with Woppa Diallo who has real-world experience as an activist fighting for the protection of women in her community (and for whom the main character ‘Woppa’ is named), makes this collaboration extremely effective. Told with a literary sensibility that doesn’t shy away from reality or lose its emotional heart while using the fantastical elements to great effect, this story works on every level and I recommend you check it out.
Wole Talabi 