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…
Image credit: Akintoba Kalejaiye – Lost Mahwé capital city (from the Sauútiverse)
2023. What a year that was, eh?
It truly feels like everything happened to me last year. I got married. Traveled to eight countries. Published a novel. Moved to a new country. Edited an anthology. Got nominated for a Locus, A Nebula and a Hugo award. Won the Sidewise award. Started hard sparring. Was a guest scholar at the Virtual Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Made my 120th dive. Served on the technical committee of the largest technology conference in Asia. Did a bunch of podcasts and interviews and book festivals/conventions. And all of this while working a full time job and dealing with three projects that presented some of the most complex technical problems of my career.
And that’s not all there was. But everything that happened was good, or taught me something good, or led to something good or gave me the opportunity to connect with good people. So I’m grateful for it all. 2023 brought some of the most special moments of my life. It was a storm, yes, but it was a storm of good things so I danced in it with joy and gratitude. I just wish I had more time to savor each moment.
Even though 2024 by definition cannot be as hectic as 2023 was (universe please don’t take this as a challenge), there is so much coming this year too with it. I have another book out in just a few months.
And much of my 2023 work is being mentioned in awards discussions (which is awesome! Thank you so much! If you also read and enjoyed my work, then please consider them for relevant awards you’re nominating for). Plus, several things are being planned and some have been signed, which I can’t get into just yet. And I have one big project I want to complete this year.
But this isn’t about 2024 or me.
Its about other people, and what they did in 2023.
2023 was a great year for African SFF in general. Both for new releases and continued success of 2022 releases. From major novels/novellas like Chikodili Emelumadu’s Dazzling, Lauren Beukes’s Bridge, Temi Oh’s More Perfect, Nnedi Okorafor’s Like Thunder, Eugen Bacon’s Broken Paradise, TL Huchu’s The Mystery At Dunvegan Castle, Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Dont Answer When They Call Your Name, Kemi Ashing Giwa’s The Splinter In The Sky, Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Warrior Of The Wind, Moses Ose Utomi’s The Lies Of The Ajungo, Hadeer Elsbai’s Daughters Of Izdihar, Ehigbor Okosun’s Forged By Blood, and my own Shigidi And the Brass Head Of Obalufon to anthologies like Africa Risen, Languages Of Water, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction Vol 2, Mothersound and on to collections like Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s Drinking From Graveyard Wells, Kelechi Okafor’s Edge Of Here, Tobi Ogundiran’s Jackal Jackal, Oghenechovwe Ekpeki And Joshua Omenga’s Between Dystopias, Dare Segun Falowo’s Caged Ocean Dub and Dilman Dila’s Where Rivers Go To Die. Just to mention a few.
In terms of short fiction – short stories and novelettes (works under 17500) – there was a veritable flood. It really does feel that there is a whole generation of young writers across the African continent (re)embracing speculative fiction and producing good, early work that could be signs of great careers to come. I met some of them at the festivals and conventions I went to. I’m hopeful. On the less positive side, its a pity that the Nommo awards were suspended last year (there were many deserving stories and books from 2022) and Omenana is still the only dedicated African SFF short fiction publisher on the continent – their growth seems slow (in terms of pay rates, market and profile), although they bagged a major award last year so there is that to smile about. Nick Wood’s passing was major loss (fly well with the white-necked ravens, Nick) and the African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS), as an organization seemed a bit lifeless for most of the year – I hope that changes in 2024. But many African literary magazines like Lolwe, The Kalahari Review, Isele, The Shallow Tales Review, The JRB, etc., are now proudly and regularly publishing work with overt speculative elements. Book publishers seem to be embracing speculative fiction too. 2023 saw the birth of two new African publishing house imprints dedicated to SFF – Phoenix and Mother. Publishers like Masobe books continue to do great work publishing original SFF and making work published internationally available at home. Smaller, single-person imprints continue to do their best and produce valuable, noticeable work. It remains to be seen what all this builds to – if we will indeed finally get that homegrown, continental SFF ecosystem I’ve been dreaming of – writers, fans, publishers, agents, all of it.
But back to why we are here.
Long time readers and subscribers probably already know the drill. Every year I try to highlight the African speculative fiction short stories I read and enjoyed most. It started as a thing I did because I love short stories and even though I published a novel last year, I haven’t forgotten my first love. Short fiction. And even though I am no longer updating the ASFS Database of published African SFF, I do try my best to read widely, especially work by my fellow African writers. I am grateful to have been able to read your wonderful words. This list has become a tradition and will remain so because of you guys and your special, lovely stories. You moved me and I want to share that and let others know too.
I’m particularly glad to note that for the last two years, at least one story on my list went on to win a major award. Last year it was “A Soul Of Small Places” by Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo (Caine Prize!) and before that there was “Masquerade Season” by Pemi Aguda (Nommo!). I make no claim of correlation or causation though. But I’m happy stories I loved got some awards love too.
So lets see what short fiction I loved this year shall we?
As always, these are my personal favorites, whatever that means to me. I love stories that excel in both style and substance. Good stories, with big ideas and resonant themes, told well. Bold stories, with flair. I also like looking for new wonderful work by writers I didn’t know before – stories that burst onto my radar with force and make me take notice. Some caveats of course: I’ve read a lot but I haven’t read everything. To remove bias, I am also really restricting myself to just a list of 10, and excluding my own stories or anything I was involved in creating (sorry, my Sauútiverse collective fam, and all my friends who sent me their stories to beta read). So naturally some great stories I also enjoyed a lot aren’t listed here. But such is the nature of all such lists. They are by definition, incomplete. But hopefully still useful.
So, here we go.
My 10 favorite African speculative fiction short stories of 2023, in no particular order.
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1. “This Is How We Save Them” by Deji Bryce Olukotun (Nigeria), Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology Of SF Stories And Science Essays
Life Beyond Us is a fascinating anthology of original science fiction stories paired with science essays about extraterrestrial life that asks important questions about the meaning and definitions of life itself and it is edited by the solid team of Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law & Susan Forest. Being an engineer and a writer, its exactly the kind of thing that I am primed to enjoy. There were two stories by Africans in anthology, Human Beans by Eugen Bacon, and This Is How We Save Them by Deji Bryce Olukotun. While I liked them both for very different reasons, it is Olukotun’s story I feel compelled to recommend here for its thematic resonance, fit and execution.
The story takes place on a terraformed moon where ultrarich “royal” families pay money for the pleasure of hunting genetically modified versions of animals from Earth. This is all justified as being necessary to fund conservation of the animals. The entire experience is engineered for their enjoyment, at minimal risk. Its vanity trophy hunting raised to power ten. Our protagonist, a tracker of mixed heritage which includes some Maasai, leads his boss, a power-hungry businessman and their client, a cowardly prince, on a hunt, but things don’t go as planned when their expedition finds something that scientifically shouldn’t be there. Its a brilliant story that dissects the real life practice of big game hunting and the industry it exists within while asking important questions about conservation using its speculative element to emphasize its points. Delivered with crisp, clear writing, effective character details and meaningful insights about the nature of our interactions with ecosystems, everything about this story just worked for me and the accompanying essay highlights all that, complementing the story perfectly. I think this story is a shining example of what anthologies like this can, and should do. Its great.
There were many African SFF short stories I read this year that were horror or horror-adjacent. From Nnedi Okorafor’s Dark Home, to Oghenechovwe Ekpeki’s The Magazine Of Horror and from Tochi Onyebuchi’s Origin Story to Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s His Thing (which both very nearly made it into my top 10) but the one that has stuck with me the most is this gem, There’s No Hurry In Botswana by Masiyaleti Mbewe.
In it, we follow a young woman suffering from dysmenorrhea as she goes through her day, trying to manage her situation as her monthly menstruation period commences. But something is also beginning on that day – a kind of zombie apocalypse. What follows is a creepy, wonderfully executed horror story about womanhood, menstruation, power, pain and disease. Its a story that’s hard to describe because its such a powerful and layered piece of work and I’m sure, as someone without a womb, I’m probably missing some layers. But what I do see is stunning.
Sometimes I think of my womb as a sentient spirit. A river snake that uncoils itself along the length of my body, growing thicker and thicker until it takes me over completely and I burst—that’s where the blood comes from. The spirit doesn’t want to see me happy. It lies in wait for the days when I want no interruptions: birthday parties, final exams, first dates. And although it can be so diligent in its arrivals, it knows how to delay itself and emerge at the very second I’m hoping it won’t. I hear its shrill laughter in my ears as it knocks against the walls and stirs at my insides like a detached arm in a witch’s broth.
Written with an assured confidence and liberal use of beautiful language including some untranslated Setswana and local expressions, it all produces a wonderful, intoxicating story. And that ending – whew! Mbewe has written something excellent here that will stay with me for a long time and I hope international SFF and horror reviewers and readers are taking note. I knew it was one of my favorites the moment I read it. Highly recommended.
Making an appearance in FIYAH!’s themed ‘‘Carnival,’’ issue about celebration, costume, and community, is this novelette tells the story of a scientist, Salmik, who, years ago, helped stop the spread of a deadly disease ravaging the galaxy with the help of a sentient-planet-library. Now, the sentient-planet-library has decided that it wants to end its own life, and take all its archives with it.
“when an elder dies, a library is lost”
– unattributed African Proverb
The sentient-planet-library is now throwing a party, to celebrate its long and fruitful existence and has invited its friends and past collaborators to attend, a proper funeral celebration for an elder. Salmik is upset at this, at the library, at themself, at their own guilt around their family and their past choices. At this pre-funeral party, Salmik confronts all these emotions and must come to terms with it all. Delivered in lovely, engaging prose with fascinating world building, this story worked on multiple levels. Recommended.
When their mother passes, Moji and her sister Iyanu attend a ceremony to determine who will inherit the title, power and responsibility of ‘Invoker’ – someone with the ability to call upon the spirit of their ancestor Adatali to aid in battle (like a summon in Final Fantasy, except instead of Bahamut, you get Great-great-great grandpa, haha). They all expect Iyanu to be chosen, but Moji is selected by Adatali’s spirit instead and this creates a rift between the sisters spiraling out into a great tale of sibling rivalry, ancestral magic, hate-love relationships, cool battles, great worldbuilding and a kinetic plot. If this is a sample of Ayinde’s forthcoming novel series then I am here for it.
I love a good metafictional story (I wrote one myself this year and there’s even another one on this list) and my favorite of all the ones I read this year has to be this. Forna’s Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi, an A+ piece of fantastical metafiction with poetry in every line of its prose and the dreamy quality of a moonlight tale. When a Kade Makasi, a supernatural being in the form of a storyteller steals a child, the boy’s mother pursues the creature into the story, using her own power of creating stories as she attempts to save her son from a story with the power of storytelling and it is beautiful. I absolutely loved this one.
6. “The Sweet in the Empty” by Tade Thompson (Nigeria), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Tade Thompson is an old hand at this SFF writing game and it shows in this story, a rich and economically delivered epic adventure story rooted in history, folktale, legend. In the story, we meet Jember, a retired warrior, who takes up his old weapons and travels with son Luke to a distant mysterious djinn-created oasis for a chance to save his other son who has been enslaved by an evil warlord. Tade’s writing is brilliant here, with great worldbuilding based on historically accurate research and not a single wasted word, all of it building up to an exciting climax. Is it sword and soul? Kinda, sorta, maybe. I don’t know. But its awesome and it reminded me a bit of Cyprian Ekwensi’s classic An African Nights Entertainment, but larger in scope and shorter, sharper, more grounded. I read it early in the year and it has stayed with me. Highly recommended.
7. “The Pit Of Babel” by Kofi Nyameye (Ghana), Asimov’s Science Fiction
Mixing science fiction with supernatural and religious elements for the “spooky” issue, told in a biblical style (its presented as an excerpt from a the post-apocalyptic “holy book of Amrainaiyeh”) and starring Lucifer (yes the devil himself), Nyameye tells the story of mankind’s effort to drill to the center of the earth for geothermal energy after the decimation of the planet, and of Lucifer’s attempts to foil their grand geoengineering plan.
So they gathered their strength and their Engines and in common purpose began to dig; and the name of the project was Babel.
— Book of Amrainaiyeh 25:5
The Pit of Babel is amusing and entertaining and the story format and structure plays surprisingly well into its constant escalation of stakes and an excellent twist that says a lot about the nature of man. Recommended.
8. “Nairuko” by Dennis Mugaa (Kenya), Fantasy Magazine
Nairuko is about to become a liabon, someone with the ability to teleport through visualization – an ability that saved her tribe from colonizing genocide years before. But there is just one problem, when they teleport, they cannot bring another person with them. When the coastal region Nairuko calls home secedes from Kenya, a war begins and bombs start dropping. Nairuko is called upon to leave her connections and the close friendship she has made with another girl. At her initiation, she must make a hard choice. The story is heartbreaking and powerful. Thoughtfully examining survival, responsibility, loss and tragedy. Mugaa is a new writer to me and I’m excited to see Masobe Books will be publishing his collection in 2024. I’ll be watching what he does next.
When a man named “Midnight”, fleeing his troubled past in Nigeria comes to a cold and dank apartment building in Moscow, he encounters a creepy landlady and a helpful neighbor who turn out to be embodiments of supernatural beings from Russian folklore and a wild, terrifying adventure ensues. As I mentioned in my review for his collection Jackal Jackal in Locus, Midnight in Moscow, is one of my favorite stories in the collection (the other being The Muse Of Palm House). Midnight in Moscow is a brilliant metafictional story that can also be interpreted as an immigrant fever dream of Russia. I happily recommend it.
Okay I lied. I had to throw in at least one tie because there were so many stories I liked that I had to leave off this list. Plus, for ties, I like it when the stories share some DNA and in this case, Stolen Memories and A Name Is A Plea And A Prophecy certainly meet the criteria, in my eyes. they both feature outcast protagonists, cruel patrons, unwanted gifts, desperate deals with powerful people and a late-story twist. They also share structural similarity, starting near the end and taking place largely through flashbacks.
In Stolen Memories, a woman loses her sight but acquires the power to see through the eyes of others, and to see their memories at the point of their deaths. She becomes an outcast and a killer, stealing memories until they become a library of experiences she can use to preternaturally solve problems. She is taken under the wing of a mung’anga – a traditional healer and shaman who uses her for his own ends and she becomes embroiled in a political play for power leading to a satisfying twist. Its a strange but undoubtedly fascinating story with unlikeable but impressive protagonist. Very memorable.
In A Name Is A Plea And A Prophecy, we meet Kuyom, an orphaned girl who is chosen by Adeh, god of the the outcasts and the abandoned to be his servant. But Adeh is a cruel god who demands a much for his help. Adeh mandates that all Kuyom loves must die. And so we follow Kuyom as she tries to live but keeps losing things that matter to her. In a desperate gamble to escape the curse of her patron god, Kuyom seeks out the personified Death itself in order to make a bargain. This is a gripping, visceral story about hope and desperation, about love and death, about the mortality and godhood, written beautifully. I also note that I very much liked Harry’s other 2023 story Vessels And Warnings and definitely look forward to whatever she writes next.
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So… those were my favorites.
What were yours? Any great African SFF stories you’d recommend?
Wole Talabi 