Triangulum


Masande Ntshanga - 2019
    In 2040, the South African National Space Agency receives a mysterious package containing a memoir and a set of digital recordings from an unnamed woman who claims the world will end in ten years. Assigned to the case, Dr Naomi Buthelezi, a retired professor and science fiction writer, is hired to investigate the veracity of the materials, and whether or not the woman's claim to have heard from a "force more powerful than humankind" is genuine. Thus begins TRIANGULUM, a found manuscript composed of the mysterious woman's memoir and her recordings. Haunted by visions of a mysterious machine, the narrator is a seemingly adrift 17-year-old girl, whose sick father never recovered from the shock of losing his wife. She struggles to navigate school, sexual experimentation, and friendship across racial barriers in post-apartheid South Africa.When three girls go missing from their town, on her mother's birthday, the narrator is convinced that it has something to do with "the machine" and how her mother also went missing in the '90s. Along with her friends, Litha and Part, she discovers a puzzling book on UFOs at the library, the references and similarities in which lead the friends to believe that the text holds clues to the narrators's mother's abduction. Drawing upon suggestions in the text, she and her friends set out on an epic journey that takes them from their small town to an underground lab, a criminal network, and finally, a mysterious, dense forest, in search of clues as to what happened to the narrator's mother. With extraordinary aplomb and breathtaking prose, Ntshanga has crafted an inventive and marvelous artistic accomplishment.s crafted an inventive and marvelous artistic accomplishment.

AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers


Ivor W. HartmannSally Partridge - 2012
    Partridge'The Gift of Touch' Chinelo Onwualu'The Foreigner' Uko Bendi Udo'Angel Song' Dave de Burgh'The Rare Earth' Biram Mboob'Terms & Conditions Apply' Sally-Ann Murray'Heresy' Mandisi Nkomo'Closing Time' Liam Kruger'Masquerade Stories' Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu'The Trial' Joan De La Haye'Brandy City' Mia Arderne'Ofe!' Rafeeat Aliyu'Claws and Savages' Martin Stokes'To Gaze at the Sun' Clifton Gachagua'Proposition 23' (Novelette) Efe Okogu

Intruders: Short Stories


Mohale Mashigo - 2018
    At a busy taxi rank, a woman kills a man with her shoe. A genomicist is accused of playing God when she creates a fatherless child. Intruders is a collection that explores how it feels not to belong. These are stories of unremarkable people thrust into extraordinary situations by events beyond their control.With a unique and memorable touch, Mohale Mashigo explores the everyday ills we live with and wrestle constantly, all the while allowing hidden energies to emerge and play out their unforeseen consequences. Intruders is speculative fiction at its best.

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color


Nisi ShawlAlex Jennings - 2019
    Lily Yu, Andrea Hairston, Tobias Buckell, Hiromi Goto, Rebecca Roanhorse, Indrapramit Das, Chinelo Onwualu and Darcie Little Badger.

Djinn


Sang Kromah - 2018
    Truth is, there are certain people, special people, born of this world and of the other, who need that extra protection. They go their entire lives, unaware of the other world, and unaware of the existence of their own personal watcher, watching from afar. But what happens when fate takes a turn for the worse, and The One who needs the aid of a watcher most can’t be found to be protected?Bijou Fitzroy is strange. With the unwanted gift of being an empath, she has spent her entire life as a sheltered recluse, homeschooled by her secretive and overprotective grandmother, who never allows them to stay in one place long enough for Bijou to settle and make friends. When Bijou and her grandmother move to Sykesville and she starts to attend the local high school, Bijou’s world begins to crumble. Town locals begin to disappear and the creatures from her nightmares begin to take shape in her reality. She finds herself at the center of a war she never knew was being fought all around her.

Ancient, Ancient


Kiini Ibura Salaam - 2012
    Salaam takes us to distant places but makes them familiar in unsettling ways, ably transforming the fantastic into a mirror through which we can examine—and reckon with—our own struggles.

Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Latin@ Science Fiction and Fantasy


Matthew David Goodwin - 2017
    The book gives an overview to the field of Latino/a speculative, showing the great variety of stories being told by Latino/a writers. Fifty years ago the Latin American "Boom" introduced magical realism to the world; Latin@ Rising is the literature that has risen from the explosion that gave us García Márquez, Jorge Amado, Carlos Fuentes and others. The 21st century writers and artists of Latin@ Rising help us to imagine a Latino/a past, present, and future which have not been whitewashed by mainstream perspectives. Contrary to the popular perception, Latino/a Literature is not just magical realism and social realist protest literature—it also contains much speculative fiction. By showing the actual breadth of genres being used by Latino/a authors, Latin@ Rising will help extend the boundaries of the Latino/a literature canon. Latin@ Rising demonstrates the value of speculative fiction for the Latino/a community: it gives Latinos/as a vital means for imagining a past and a future in which they play a pivotal role, and it constitutes a narrative of the effects of technology on the Latino/a community. The book shows how the richness of the speculative genres provide U.S. Latinos/as with a unique medium to discuss issues of colonialism, migration, and the experience of being bicultural. The 23 authors and artists included in this anthology come from all over the U.S. and from eight different national traditions. They include well-known creators like Kathleen Alcalá, Ana Castillo, Junot Diaz, Giannina Braschi and others; they also include new voices, well worth hearing.All Authors Included: Kathleen AlcaláPablo BresciaPedro ZagittSabrina VourvouliasDaína ChavianoADÁLAna CastilloErnest HoganJunot DíazRichie NarvaezEdmundo Paz-SoldánSteve CastroAlex HernandezCarmen Maria MachadoGiannina BraschiCarlos HernandezAlejandra SanchezDaniel José OlderCarl MarcumMarcos Santiago Gonzalez

A Phoenix First Must Burn


Patrice CaldwellJustina Ireland - 2020
    A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels: the heroines of A Phoenix First Must Burn shine brightly. You will never forget them.Authors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Amerie, Dhonielle Clayton, Jalissa Corrie, Somaiya Daud, Charlotte Davis, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Justina Ireland, Danny Lore, L.L. McKinney, Danielle Paige, Rebecca Roanhorse, Karen Strong, Ashley Woodfolk, and Ibi Zoboi.

Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion


Hassan BlasimDiaa Jubaili - 2016
    Along the way a new aesthetic for the ‘Iraqi fantastical’ begins to emerge: thus we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all the time buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.

Remote Control


Nnedi Okorafor - 2021
    Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own."The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa­­--a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks--alone, except for her fox companion--searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora


Sheree Renée ThomasLinda Addison - 2000
    Sister Lilith - Honoree Fanonne JeffersThe Comet - W.E.B. Du Bois Chicage 1927 - Jewelle GomezBlack No More (novel excerpt) - George S. Schuyler separation anxiety - Evie Shockley Tasting Songs - Leone RossCan You Wear My Eyes - Kalamu ya SalaamLike Daughter - Tananarive Due Greedy Choke Puppy - Nalo Hopkinson Rhythm Travel - Amiri Baraka Buddy Bolden - Kalamu ya SalaamAye, and Gomorrah... - Samuel R. Delany Ganger (Ball Lightning) - Nalo HopkinsonThe Becoming - Akua Lezli HopeThe Goophered Grapevine - Charles W. ChestnuttThe Evening and the Morning and the Night - Octavia E. Butler Twice, at Once, Separated - Linda Addison Gimmile's Songs - Charles R. Saunders At the Huts of Ajala - Nisi Shawl The Woman in the Wall - Steven Barnes Ark of Bones - Henry Dumas Butta's Backyard Barbecue - Tony Medina Future Christmas (novel excerpt) - Ishmael ReedAt Life's Limits - Kiini Ibura Salaam The African Origins of UFOs (novel excerpt) - Anthony JosephThe Astral Visitor Delta Blues - Robert Fleming The Space Traders - Derrick Bell The Pretended - Darryl A. Smith Hussy Strutt - Ama PattersonEssays. Racism and Science Fiction - Samuel R. DelanyWhy Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction - Charles R. Saunders Black to the Future - Walter MosleyYet Do I Wonder - Paul D. MillerThe Monophobic Response - Octavia E. Butler

Nudibranch


Irenosen Okojie - 2019
    . . A love-hungry goddess of the sea arrives on an island inhabited by eunuchs. A girl from Martinique moonlights as a Grace Jones impersonator. Dimension-hopping monks sworn to silence must face a bloody reckoning.And a homeless man goes right back, to the very beginning, through a gap in time. Nudibranch is a dark and seductive foray into the surreal. ____________ PRAISE FOR IRENOSEN OKOJIE 'One of the most original and innovative writers to emerge in many a year'ALEX WHEATLE MBE'An original and highly unpredictable imagination . . . Prepare to be startled'RUPERT THOMSON'Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line'STELLA DUFFY'Unique and imaginative'DIANA EVANS

Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond


Bill CampbellNisi Shawl - 2013
    K. Jemisin, Rabih Alameddine, S. P. Somtow, and more. These authors have earned such literary honors as the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker, among others.

Falling in Love with Hominids


Nalo Hopkinson - 2015
    She has been dubbed “one of our most important writers,” (Junot Diaz), with “an imagination that most of us would kill for” (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called “stunning,” (New York Times) “rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery” (Kirkus), and “simply triumphant” (Dorothy Allison).Falling in Love with Hominids presents over a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Caribbean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.

Not So Stories


David Thomas MooreTauriq Moosa - 2018
    Beautiful, evocative and playful, the stories of "How the Whale Got His Throat" or "The First Letter Written" paint a magical, primal world. It is also deeply rooted in British colonialism. Kipling saw the Empire as a benign, civilizing force, and his writing can be troubling to modern readers. Not So Stories attempts to redress the balance, bringing together new and established writers of color from around the world to take the Just So Stories back; giving voices to cultures that were long deprived them.