What is the title of your latest release?
THE FIST OF MEMORY
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Assassins, Aliens, Astrophysicists and Ancestors collide.
THE FIST OF MEMORY is a first contact action thriller unlike any other; a meditation on the nature of reality, memory and connectedness.
When a non-communicative alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky, global powers are thrown into turmoil. But for Tope, a principled assassin with a talent for lethality in the employ of the mysterious witchdoctor known as "Baba," it’s all just business as usual. At least until a job goes wrong, and Tope is caught in the scramble - a high-stakes game of power and politics for the future that is to come. Joined by Itumeleng, a South African astronomer plagued by mysterious dreams, they must find a way to survive, navigate their complicated pasts, and come to understand how they, and all of humanity, are connected to the alien craft before it lands and the world changes forever. But it won’t be easy. There are sinister forces marshaled against them, including a strange assassin obsessed with a single memory.
You can think of it as Nigerian John Wick meets Arrival by way of The Three Body Problem, or, what you'd get if Carl Sagan's Contact and Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai had a very African baby.
I hope that’s enough to make you curious.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book takes place in Nigeria and South Africa. This is because I wanted to tell a unique, exciting and grounded African first contact SF story. Not only African in the location (we're all tired of Aliens only ever going to New York or London) and characters and plot but also in its core themes and philosophy of what the Aliens represent, why they would visit us, and what that would mean for humanity. I wanted a visceral and gripping science fiction novel that was grounded in real science and scientific ideas around quantum mechanics, panspermia, and string theory but could also simultaneously explore uniquely African metaphysical and philosophical ideas like Sankofa (a Western African concept that emphasizes the importance of remembering and learning from the past to shape the future) and Ubuntu (the Southern African philosophy that interconnectedness and community are what make us what we are) while still capturing the way in which contemporary African politics and religion would shape any response to something like an alien arrival
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Probably. But only for a brief period of time. Tope is dangerous, guarded and abrasive on the surface but also conflicted, yearning to connect with others and to do the right thing. I think we could have an interesting, if stilted, conversation over drinks.
What can I say, I have a thing for morally grey characters, conflicted protagonists and antiheroes.
What are three words that describe your hero?
I’ll use this to talk about Itumeleng here since Tope is the heart of the novel and Itumeleng is the head, but they are co-protagonists, performing a literary pas de deux to make what I hope is a fascinating read.
Three words to describe Itumeleng: Intelligent. Conflicted. Curious.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
During the course of my research, I learned a lot about the reality of astronomy, near- earth object detection and deflection. I am deeply indebted to astrophysicist Dr. Daniel Cunnama, who answered my random email to the South African Astronomical Observatory, and aerospace engineer Eric Choi, now a VP at Mission Control, who is a brilliant science fiction author in his own right.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I’ve working on this novel off and on for almost fifteen years, so I definitely edited a bit as I drafted. Not enough to stall progress – I tried to get through the early draft as quickly as possible and focus on editing later. But in drafting, I was editing to find the right voice and rhythm and structure, especially in the early chapters. I think I rewrote the first five chapters more than two dozen times.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I lived in Malaysia for more than ten years and developed a taste for Bak kut teh - a pork rib dish simmered in a broth of herbs and spices for hours to produce a deep rich flavor. The name literally translates from Hokkien as "meat bone tea", and it is one of my favorite indulgences especially on cold days.
Describe your writing space/office!
I can write almost anywhere: offices, library, planes, trains, automobiles. Even wrote a short story on a dive boat once. But nothing beats the comfort of being at home in front of my desk with my three large screens, some music in the background and my imagination taking flight.
Who is an author you admire?
Their name is Legion, for they are many. I admire a lot of authors for varying reasons, and I’m influenced by almost every author I read. But just to keep things concise I’ll limit this to living authors whose work I deeply and profoundly admire and who have influenced me the most: Carmen Maria Machado. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Nnedi Okorafor. Ted Chiang. Sofia Samatar. P. Djeli Clark. Stephen King. Tade Thompson. Connie Willis. Ken Liu. Ray Nayler. Cory Doctorow. Lauren Beukes. And so many, many more to varying degrees.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Stories are the way I make meaning of the world so every story I read shifts my understanding of the world to some degree. But I suppose you are asking about major shifts. In that case, I think the science fiction novels I read as a child, and in particular, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series played a big part in my decision to become an engineer. Asimov’s story of Hari Seldon’s fictional new science of psychohistory – using mathematical models to predict the future of his galactic empire – inspired me beyond anything I’d read before it. It presented ideas of mathematics as a tool, a language for understanding and predicting things: flowrates, atomic radii, temperatures, planetary orbits, even human behavior – given a good enough model. And it showed also, just how limited such models can be. Plus, it did so in a highly entertaining way. So yes, Asimov’s Foundation played a big part in my decision to study engineering and shaped a lot of the way I think about the world.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I found out via email from my agent. It was a big surprise to me because we’d pitched two novels but none of them were actually finished. My publisher Betsy told me she’d read my initial chapters, and she just “knew” and signed me to a 2-book deal. It was an amazing feeling, even though it was intimidating because I had to deliver on the manuscript. Thankfully I did and Betsy loved them both.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I have always been an eclectic reader but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve focused a lot on science fiction and fantasy. They are the genres I read most now and were the genres I was most attracted to. I probably read more science fiction as my relationship to it is probably a bit stronger than my relationship to fantasy (which explains why most of what I’ve written leans that way) even though I personally don’t see them as sharply separated categories. I tend to view them as complementary modes in a spectrum.
What’s your favorite movie?
An impossible question. I love movies and I wanted to be a film director when I was younger (I always visualize stories when I read them, and I usually imagine scenes cinematically when I write). So, you can imagine there are a lot of movies I love. I’m not even sure I could choose a favorite by genre. So instead, I’ll mention the first five that come to mind: Sinners, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Children of Men, The Legend of Drunken Master.
What is your favorite season?
Summer. Obviously. I’m a tropical boy and I love the heat. I grew up in Nigeria where we only have two seasons – hot with rain and hot without rain.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I usually don’t celebrate my birthday. If I do anything, it usually takes the shape of a small intimate dinner with my wife.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I recently watched The Furious – a movie which has some of the best action scenes I’ve seen in a long time (it reminded me so much of Furie - the Vietnamese action film which I really like - in title, plot and style that I thought it was a remake) As much as I love heady, philosophical stories, I love a good fight scene – my novel THE FIST OF MEMORY is full of them. I think some of them in The Furious went a little bit too long, but they were great and it’s a great movie if you like action.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Probably Japanese or Korean. I really like sushi and Korean barbecue so please don’t make me choose between them.
What do you do when you have free time?
Exercise. I love physical exercise. Especially boxing and kickboxing – mostly just bag work, no live sparring with training partners, although I’ve done that in the past and enjoy it too. But I find bag work incredibly relaxing if you can believe that. I also really like running even though it’s hard. And I love scuba diving. I think it’s the closest we can come to being in outer space without actually going to outer space. The sense of floating, the pressure, the equipment required, the strange and wonderful and beautiful creatures that live under the sea, I really enjoy it all. Which is wild because I only learned to swim as an adult and started diving because I was and still am scared of water. But I like to face my fears. Now I am an advanced diver and also certified rescue diver so if anyone ever runs into trouble on or below the surface of open water during a dive, I can help (I think)
What can readers expect from you next?
I mean, I’m fully into the swing of things for the worldwide release of THE FIST OF MEMORY and I’m excited about that but I also have two novelettes out this year. Coincidentally, they are both in anthologies edited by the excellent Jonathan Strahan. The first is “Perpetual God Machines Of The Ancestral Kind” in THE BOOK OF THE DEAD. In this story I envision that communion with ancestor spirits has become a reality using a blend of string theory and ancestral belief systems. It begins as a mystery, when that ancestral communication is suddenly cut off, and then gets so, so much weirder and wilder, leaning into some cosmic horror.
I also have another story called “Finale” in VASTER THAN EMPIRES, set 234 million years in the future and it goes from there all the way to the end of the universe and beyond. It features sentient galaxies, cosmic strings, competing theories on the nature of time, loss, tragedy, Yoruba praise poetry, and so much more. It’s genuinely some of the most fun I’ve had writing a story in a long time.
Both “Perpetual God Machines of the Ancestral Kind” and “Finale” were written around the same time I was revising THE FIST OF MEMORY in earnest, and I think they share thematic and aesthetic elements.
I’m working on a new novel right now. I can’t say what it is just yet, except that I’m returning to some familiar ground. I hope it’s still stable.
A strange alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky in this electrifying, action‑packed first contact novel set in near‑future Nigeria from award‑winning author Wole Talabi
A hard science‑fiction novel featuring an assassin‑for‑hire, a witchdoctor, and an astronomer, this fast‑paced thriller is perfect for fans of Arrival
When a non‑communicative alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky, global powers are thrown into turmoil.
But for Tope, a principled Nigerian assassin with a talent for lethality in the employ of the mysterious witchdoctor known as "Baba," it’s all just business as usual. At least until a job goes wrong, and Tope is caught in the scramble—a high stakes game of power and politics for the future that is to come. Joined by Itumeleng, a South African astronomer plagued by mysterious dreams, they must find a way to survive, navigate their complicated pasts, and come to understand how they, and all of humanity, are connected to the alien craft before it lands and the world changes forever. But it won’t be easy. There are sinister forces marshalled against them, including a strange assassin obsessed with a single memory.
The Fist Of Memory is a first contact thriller unlike any other; a meditation on the nature of reality, memory and connectedness.
Science Fiction | Fiction Adventure [ DAW, On Sale: October 27, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780756418243 / eISBN: 9780756418250 ]
WOLE TALABI is an engineer, writer, and editor from Nigeria. He is the author of the novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (DAW books/Gollancz, 2023). His short fiction has appeared in places like Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Tor.com and is collected in the books Convergence Problems (DAW books, 2024) and Incomplete Solutions (Luna Press, 2019). He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, as well as the Caine Prize for African Writing and he has won the Nommo award for African speculative fiction and the Sidewise award for Alternate History. He has edited five anthologies including the acclaimed Africanfuturism: An Anthology (Brittlepaper, 2020) and Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology (Android Press, 2023). He likes scuba diving, elegant equations, and oddly shaped things. He currently lives and works in Australia. Find him at wtalabi.wordpress.com and at @wtalabi on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Tiktok.
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