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Dear fellow travellers from the past and future alike, welcome to our own thread about speculative fiction of the African diaspora.

The folder seems appropriate, since my intent is mainly exchanging recommendations; but I realise that it might be appropriate to also discuss what constitutes Afrofuturism, Afrojujuism, and other related genres (not ultimately because these are all multidisciplinary aesthetics, comprising music as much as the graphic arts, &c. But let's focus on the written page).

In the simplest terms, they are speculative fiction by (though, I would argue, not exclusively) and about people of the African diaspora. Genre boundaries are sometimes blurred, and Afrofuturism / Afrojujuism do not always map as science fiction and fantasy.
One of the things they boil down to is inclusive (intersectional) genre fiction.

Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler are parent figures, though W.E.B. Du Bois was (among many other things) writing Black sci-fi at the turn of the century and there are other precedents, such as George S. Schuyler.

Then, now and always, Black to the future!

The topic was born out of a 2h Virtual Book Club about N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, which was spoken of as her magnum opus.

Anthologies I've come across over the years:
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora;
Dark Matter: Reading the Bones;
Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond;
New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color;
New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color;
Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany;
Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars;
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.

Resources:
The topic for Diverse and Inclusive Books might be useful.

There are tags for Afrofuturism both at
io9:
and Reactor (formerly tor):

There's Omenana magazine:
The Black Science Fiction Society:

Nnedi Okorafor also writes Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism (she uses African as the prefix rather than Afro to describe her work, so that's why I'm using it here). Her work is a bit hit or miss for me, but I really like her Nsibidi Scripts series (Africanjujuism), which starts with Akata Witch. It's YA, but also approachable for readers who don't normally read YA. I also liked her recent Africanfuturism book Noor, and her short story "Mother of Invention," which has a great smart-house character.

Nisi Shawl also has some great Afrofuturism short stories. Two of my favorites are "Black Betty" and "The Water Museum," which is in her book of short stories Filter House.

I am an Olde Science Fiction reader. I started reading the stuff before Star Trek. I was reading Octavia Butler in the 80's.
But:
My mother called my bpoks "something crazy". Because of those books I decided to go to college for engineering in 7th grade. I was fixing computers for IBM in the 80s.

I like Hard SF. I regard Broken Earth, and Wild Seed as Fantasy.

The history of the last 550 years has been a record of who had technology versus who didn't.

I am not aware of and Hard SF Afrofuturism.

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez have two interesting Black characters.

Ever heard of "Black Man's Burden" by Mack Reynolds?
It is free in Project Gutenberg.

Black Man’s Burden (1960-61) is the beginning of Reynolds’s North Africa series (Wikipedia’s designation). It is followed by Border, Breed, Nor Birth (1962), and concluded with The Best Ye Breed (1978). (All three titles are from Kipling, of course, with a touch of irony.) There is also a short story, Black Sheep Astray (1973), which doesn’t fit the pattern. All four have Wikipedia articles.

Steamfunk probably counts - short story collection of various (Afro) authors. I'm about 1/3 through it. Some are quite good, others are complete crap. Runs the gamut.

article on the subject:



Rosewater by Tade Thompson
and
Lauren Beukes, while a white South African, writes SF set in South Africa and Zoo City is especially good
Tad Williams's (also white) Otherland: The City of Golden Shadow and the rest of the series features a Bushman and a South African VR Programming teacher in primary roles
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (mother was from Uganda) is set in Harlem but is more in the Horror genre
and this one sounds like hard core SF:

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

I see there's a wealth of contributions already.
Let's start with the more general concern of genre.

I once read an article about the lack of hard sci-fi, and specifically advanced technology, from Afrofuturism. There are of course historical reasons; the piece closed by stating that nothing should stop a writer's imagination.

Genre subdivision is part of the reason why I dislike the term africanfuturism.
As I understand it, Afrofuturism is about inclusion, and particularly about bridging the diaspora; the concept of The Black Atlantic is one of its ingredients. I'm not sure that marking differences helps.
Besides, the term africanfuturism, which might be claimed by African writers (already a generalisation of a generalisation) for good reasons, was created by a writer, Okorafor, who was born, lives and works in the USA.

I am personally interested in quality over genre distinction; e.g. I also classify The Broken Earth Trilogy as fantasy if necessary, but mostly I see it as great Afrofuturism. To make another example, Afrojujuism sometimes borders on horror, such as Brown Girl in the Ring.
Speaking of which, The Ballad of Black Tom is brilliant. LaValle took one of Lovecraft's most racist stories, The Horror at Red Hook, and turned it inside out by retelling it from the perspective of a Black character (one of my daydreams is convincing an Italian press to hire me to translate both, and publish them side to side). I've read here and elsewhere that not all of LaValle's work is as well regarded as this.

I'm also curious about these writers, some of whom have already been mentioned:

Andrea Hairston;
Kai Ashante Wilson;
Karen Lord;
Marlon James's ongoing Dark Star Trilogy;
Minister Faust;
N.K. Jemisin;
Nalo Hopkinson;
Nisi Shawl;
Sofia Samatar.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "
Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
"

Now, there are great titles, if I ever saw one, and fitting tribute to one of my favorite authors (regardless of genre, gender or background.)

New Suns is also a cheeky reference to Butler's famous quote.

Incidentally, Nisi Shawl is the curator of many of these anthologies.

Anyone interested in real-world backgrounds for African and Diaspora fantasy might to take a look at Africa's Ogun: Old World and New, edited by Sandra T. Barnes. It is about a major West African deity and his many guises.

The Second, Enlarged edition is to be preferred. This is available in paperback and Kindle. I would be very careful about ordering a used copy, as you might get the first edition, instead.

I just discovered that the group had an Afrocentric Fantasy theme.

As usual, Anna was thorough in providing resources, among which a Listopia for Afrofuturism.

... on second thought, I'll repost here Nisi Shawl's insightful "Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction":

This might also be a good place to mention Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha Womack, which, as far as I can remember, is fairly comprehensive as an introduction but goes little further beyond namecheking.

Two authors will recent releases include:

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi

and

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

I failed to mention that “Africa’s Ogun�� is still $2.99 in Kindle. A fascinating look at both African and African Diaspora cultures.

OK, question for those of you more widely reading this than I - How are the fictions different between various sub-Saharan African nations? I see a lot of Nigerian fiction in these categories but less Kenyan, Tanzanian etc. Africa is so large that I hesitate to toss everything in the "Afro-X" bucket, esp if we lump in African American lit.

Rick wrote: "OK, question for those of you more widely reading this than I - How are the fictions different between various sub-Saharan African nations? I see a lot of Nigerian fiction in these categories but l..."

I think the Nigerian and South African books tend to be more common as those countries both have English as an official language

That's maybe down to bigger clout of those countries, for reasons of population and economy.

Possibly the mere fact of resorting to speculative fiction as a narrative tool is influenced by the wider tradition of the English-speaking world.

One of the subsets of the narrative discussed here is Afro-jujuism on slavery;

which is to say, historical fiction on US slavery with speculative (most often magical) elements. As usual, the boundary between genres is feeble, and the time travelling of Kindred is perhaps more properly afro-futurist.

Even a provisional list of the ones I'm aware of is quite illustrious, and seems to increase by the year (proving that this subgenre, or however we want to call it, is very much alive):

(1979) Kindred by Octavia E. Butler;
(1987-1998) the Beloved trilogy by Toni Morrison;
(2009) The Book of Night Women by Marlon James;
(2014) The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson;
(2016) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead;
(2017) An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon;
(2019) The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates;
(2023) Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward;
(2024) Ours by Phillip B. Williams.

This is unsurprising: the history of American slavery itself is at the core of afro-futurism; one of its tenets is to recast the Middle Passage as, to put it blunty, a kind of alien abduction.