Wole Talabi

Oluwole Talabi ⓘ(born 28 February 1986) is a Nigerian science fiction writer, engineer, and editor, who is considered among the Third Generation of Nigerian Writers.

Early life and education

Talabi was raised in Warri, Delta, a city in southern Nigeria, where his father was a chemical engineer, before later moving to Benin. He studied chemical engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University and earned a master's degree at Imperial College London.

Career

Talabi then worked as an engineer, and partway through his career began to write professionally. He stated that he had never been formally trained in writing except for two online classes from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Michigan, but he had written stories since learning to read as a child.

His works include an amount of short stories; the anthologies These Words Expose Us: An Anthology (2014), Lights Out: Resurrection (2016), Africanfuturism: An Anthology (2020).

Incomplete Solutions, published in 2019, was Talabi's first published collection of short stories, covering five years of his writing. The stories are from a range of speculative genres but also include non-speculative romance, and they explore contradicting philosophies and levels of hope, but often have themes of choice and identity. They embed Nigerian culture and perspectives without explaining them to unfamiliar readers. Adri Joy, reviewing for Strange Horizons, praised the intriguing, fun and varied nature of the stories, while wishing for fewer male-centered or chauvinistic perspectives.

Talabi published his debut novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon in 2023. Shigidi is a Yoruba god of nightmares who wants to get out of his minimum wage job at the Orisha Spirit Company. Shigidi's lover Nneoma, a succubus, helps him pull off a heist so he can leave: they have been tasked with stealing back the heavily protected brass head of Obulafon from the British Museum. Chris Kluwe, reviewing for Lightspeed, praised the novel and said the pair's relationship and themes of capitalism and colonialism drive the story. Gary K. Wolfe, reviewing for Locus, praised the book's balance of genre elements, keeping the "kinetic mix of noir heist fiction, erotic romance, political intrigue, and supernatural fireworks without distracting too much from the genuinely affecting relationship between Nneoma and Shigidi." Architra Mittra, for Strange Horizons, also praised the book's balance of genre and its entertaining exploration of heavy themes, but criticized the stereotypical elements of the main relationship.

Convergence Problems, a collection released in 2024, focused on more traditional science fiction themes, with ideas, characterization, and Nigerian culture driving the pieces.

He was described in Scientific American as "an author who blends transhumanism and the Turing test".

Talabi has been a manager of a database of speculative fiction by African authors on the African Speculative Fiction Society website. Talabi is a founding charter member of the society.

Personal life

He married Rocío Vizuete Fernandez in 2023 at Madrid, Spain.

Awards and recognition

After winning his third Nommo Award in 2024, and having won on all three prose categories, he announced that he would decline any future nominations to clear the field for new writers.

Bibliography

Novels

• Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023)

Collections

• Incomplete Solutions (2019)
• Convergence Problems (2024)

Anthologies

• Lights Out: Resurrection (2016)
• Africanfuturism: An Anthology (2020)
• Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology (2023)

Short Fiction

• "Zombies" (2013)
• "Crocodile Ark" (2014)
• "Eye" (2015)
• "A Short History of Migration in Five Fragments of You" (2015)
• "Nested" (2016)
• "Wednesday's Story" (2016)
• "If They Can Learn" (2016)
• "Necessary and Sufficient Conditions" (2016)
• "I, Shigidi" (2016)
• "The Last Lagosian" (2016)
• "Home Is Where My Mother's Heart Is Buried" (2017)
• "Nneoma" (2017)
• "The Regression Test" (2017)
• "The Harmonic Resonance of Ejiro Anaborhi" (2018)
• "Drift-Flux" (2018)
• "When We Dream We Are Our God" (2019)
• "Incompleteness Theories" (2019)
• "Abeokuta52" (2019)
• "Tends to Zero" (2019)
• "Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for An Eternal Spirit Core" (2021)
• "An Arc of Electric Skin" (2021)
• "A Dream of Electric Mothers" (2022)
• "Blowout" (2023)
• "Aboukela52" (2023)
• "Debut" (2024)
• "Embers" (2024)
• "Gamma (or: Love in the Age of Radiation Poisoning)" (2024)
• "Ganger" (2024)
• "Lights in the Sky" (2024)
• "Nigerian Dreams" (2024)
• "Performance Review" (2024)
• "Silence" (2024)
• "The Million Eyes of a Lonely and Fragile God" (2024)