I am blown away by this collection. The stories have a common theme, a thread weaving through each of them, but yet they are varied in style, genre, voice and format. Ingenious storytelling. These stories bring alive different possibilities and futures, both dark and beautiful, with advanced technology and traditional African culture and traditions intertwined.

Each of these stories gave me something. Some of the stories were longer and thus more fleshed out and intricate. The shorter stories gave you glimpses into different realities, but still managed to leave their mark on you, often in a profound way. The collection awoke feelings of unease, horror, anger, love, helplessness and compassion. But it was also full of insightful ideas and lines that really stuck with me. Some that reflect the more general way of the world and some very personal.

I especially enjoyed the unique story formats of “Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core” and “Abeokuta52”. It’s inspiring how Talabi manages to convey a whole world, intricate characters and a moving story in formats such as a blog post + comments and a patent application form.

I genuinely cannot pick a favourite out of these 16 stories. They all speak to me and move me in some way. I am so happy I was drawn to this book by its gorgeous cover and interesting blurb. I will be rereading these stories over and over.

This is a collection of short stories that span different genres, formats and writing eras in Talabi’s life. “Tends to Zero” makes me think of Sandman and N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. “Silence” feels like a minutes-long ad for a perfume. Others have profound moral depth and ethical reach. My favorites are the science fiction stories. I love “Debut” for the images of AI art disrupting the world, “Lights in the Sky” for pulling the reader into the narrative. “Performance Review” was thrilling, and I can totally see this as an episode in “Black Mirror” or “The Twilight Zone”. I enjoy the complexity of “Ganger” the most. The narrative moves so well, so fluidly between the folktale legend of Awori and the future tale of Laide. Talabi’s friend Bankole is credited with the story seed in the Author’s notes, which I find super cool– like other great writers, Talabi works well with creative collaboration, pulling from and riffing on legends, folklore, and his friend’s ideas. My second close favorite is the final story, “A Dream of Electric Mothers” where important decisions are taken to the collective memory, which has roots in the use of oracles as well as in a future where a collective memory can be stored and accessed. The author notes are a must read for this story. I think that’s what this collection ultimately brings us: connection between the critical tales that make up a culture and the same tales embedded in the future. Very cool.

For me, an anglo female living in the California Bay Area, this book was delightful as a window into another region of the world. I loved reading the science fiction stories because I got the same feeling reading Talabi as I did when reading Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles: a sense of awe and amazement and fear as well. Good speculative fiction should make you wary. I especially appreciate Talabi’s Author Notes at the end, where he explains the origins and some of the concepts he explores in each of the stories. In his notes on “Performance Review” he delves into his experiences with the ethics of AI in writing. I found this and the rest of the notes insightful and enlightening.

Reader Advisory: I looked up many terms to orient myself to the Nigerian geography and culture. I recommend reading Nigerian folktales, mythology and history for a better connection to the stories. Additionally, I am finally reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart thanks to Talabi’s story “Embers.” To summarize, do some research while you read. You’ll be able to enjoy the stories more if you do. AND DON’T SKIP THE AUTHOR NOTES!

My many thanks to DAW Books and Netgalley for access to the ARC. As I hope you can tell, any opinions presented herein are my own. I’m not receiving any kind of douceur for my review.

I'm not one for SF short stories because much of it tends to go over my head but truly enjoyed this. Some of my favorites were Saturday's Song, Lights In The Sky, Ganger and Performance Review. I will definitely read more of this author's work.

Initially, I was making a list of my favorite stories so that I could name the standout entries. All anthologies have some stories I like more and some I like less, but here's the thing... a list of the stories that were 5-star entries for me would pretty closely resemble the table of contents. This whole collection is really strong, and it's an easy five stars from me.

Not only was each piece quite solid, they worked well together. They vary pretty widely in length, too. "Lights in the Sky" is an excellent flash fiction, "Tend to Zero" is a fantastic mid-length piece with notes of NK Jemisin's stories of cities personified, and the novella at the core of this book, while not my favorite piece, touched on many of the larger themes that cropped up in the other pieces. Some stories have a more fantastical bent, others are classic scifi, and all of them have Afrofuturist components that would make this book a good fit for fans of Nnedi Okorafor and Tlotlo Tsamaase's utopias-turned-dystopian.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book. I'm looking forward to reading Talabi's entry in Africa Risen when I read it sometime later this year. Definitely going to pick up more of his work in the future!

Imgur link goes to the Instagram graphic scheduled for Feb 11th
Blog post goes live Feb 7th
To be discussed in February Reads pt 1

TL;DR: A strong and varied collection of African centered SF stories exploring technology and it’s connections in our lives.

Convergence Problems is solid. I have to open with that. While it wasn’t mind blowing for me, I enjoyed most of these stories for how our author captured and explored these ‘convergence problems’ in short format. Each takes a different way of looking at how technology does or might intersect with our lives.

My favorite pieces in this were the shorter ones, the longer pieces struggled to hold my interest but the shorter, more dynamic pieces were great. This features at least one novella, which I found fascinating but a little dull to my tastes, as well. My favorite by far was Saturday’s Song. The dynamic way it was told, via song and different voice, made it fun and unique.

If you enjoy Science Fiction shorts this is a collection that’s worth the pick up. The ideas are interesting, and the execution solid.

3 out of 5 mercenary gods

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi is a collection of Africanfuturism short stories that range in length and style. Two of the stories, Abeokuta 52 and Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core, play with format and use an internet article and comments in the first and email in the second to tell a story.

My favorite of the collection was A Dream of Electric Mothers, a short story about a group of people consulting their ancestors over a border dispute. I loved it when I read it on Tor last year and I loved it even more when I read it again in this collection.

Another favorite of mine was Saturday’s Song where siblings sit around and tell a story as a group. The siblings as a device with very distinct personalities was well-written and I liked how they each impacted the story.

I would recommend this to fans of Africanfuturism or readers looking to dip their toes into this rich subgenre.

the collection of novellas, novelettes, and dystopian short stories is remarkable, as the previous works of the author set a very high plank for this collection, I am happy to say, that for me, this was an amazing read.
The reader just has to stop after each short story, to digest, take in the story, and let it sit for a while. I made an error of reading several back-to-back, however realized it is way more enjoyable to digest each of these unique stories slowly.
I am not a short story reader, but I thoroughly enjoyed this work of fiction. At this point, Wole Talabi is an auto-buy author.

Convergence Problems is a set of short stories that are all set in, or at least relating to Africa. The author is an engineer, and the stories ask the question, if there is some fantastical development like a new technology or power, what sort of problems would naturally arise? Some of the stories are definitely better than others, but all are interesting and makes the reader ponder the questions raised.

This is an excellent short story collection about grief, family, sense of self and artificial intelligence. The stories were all great (16 in total, some longer and some shorter), though there were some definite standouts.

My favorites were:

- Saturday's Song, about seven mysterious siblings named after the days of the week who chronicle humanity's stories and also about the story Saturday asks them to tell, which is about grief and revenge and duty and the terrible things we do for them.

- Ganger, one of the longer stories in this collection, this is alternates a Yoruba folktale about an old hunter who gains the power to transform into a jaguar and the story of Laide, a young woman in a dystopian society where everything is provided for her but where basic freedoms are denied, who finds meaning in her life when she gains the ability to transfer her consciousness in the body of a robot.

- A Dream of Electric Mothers. The last story in this collection, this was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula, and for good reason. A young minister pushes for the consultation of the "Electric Mothers", an intelligence comprised of all the consciousnesses of the dead citizens of her country, while she deals with the loss of her own mother.

These three were my favorites, but all the others were fantastic as well. Absolutely recommended!

This is such a powerful collection of science fiction stories. Each one had my brain churning with questions and 'what it's. Certainly stories to think about and in some cases to keep you awake at nights. I will be looking out for more of this authors work.

All the stories in "Convergence Problem" are set in a futuristic Nigeria - from a near future where oil has recently been replaced by a new self-replenishing biofuel battery to a far future where apocalyptic climate changes have forced humanity to live in dystopian mega-towers under a protective dome.

I thought the shining point of this short story collection is the range of emotion in these stories. Some are happy and triumphant, others held bitterness, shame, or regret. It kept the collection from being one note and held some pleasant surprised, like a post-apocalyptic story with a hopeful ending, possibly a little different from most climate crisis stories.

Convergence Problems publishes 2/13 - I recommend picking it up for the scifi lovers in your life.

I’ve been following Wole Talabi’s recommendations for African short sci-fi and fantasy for several years now, and after loving “The Regression Test” and “A Dream of Electric Mothers,” I’ve found myself regularly seeking out the work of Talabi himself. So I was excited for the opportunity to read and review his newest short fiction collection: Convergence Problems.

Convergence Problems features sixteen works of short fiction—four I’d read previously and twelve new-to-me—with the Hugo and Nebula finalist “A Dream of Electric Mothers” headlining the thirteen reprints and three new stories offering readers something they can’t get anywhere else. The vast majority of the collection is sci-fi, though the nightmare god title character in his novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Olabufon makes a notable appearance in the fantasy novelette “Saturday’s Song.”

The capstone “A Dream of Electric Mothers,” a compelling story both of personal grief and of a nation relying too heavily on the words of their ancestors, is undoubtedly the jewel of the collection. I’m always a little disappointed when none of the new-to-me stories hit the level of one I’ve already read, but when that one is a story I’d nominated for a Hugo, it’s not much surprise to see it remain my favorite. But though nothing else quite hit that level, I was impressed by just how consistently enjoyable Convergence Problems was.

Typically, in a collection of sixteen stories, I’d expect to find at least two or three that I didn’t much care for. Given that a good quarter of the collection consisted of flash fiction, which I tend not to enjoy, I certainly would’ve expected a few misses in this one. And yet only “Tends to Zero”—not a bad story, but a bleak tragedy with a lead that didn’t move me—didn’t really click for me. The rest ranged from good to excellent.

Admittedly, the flash pieces probably won’t stick in my mind for long, but they were all good reads in the moment, with small-scale adventure, romances and betrayals serving up quality, bite-sized tales. Perhaps most notable here is the newest of the bunch, “Nigerian Dreams,” which leavens its brief—but gripping!—plot with musings on a fragmented and unnatural land never able to overcome the odds to forge a unified identity.

Continuing the theme, the other two new-in-2024 entries were my favorites among the longer new-to-me stories. “Ganger,” the issue’s sole novella, beautifully blends folklore and dystopia, with two different stories—one of magic and one of technology—interwoven to bring out a deep thematic resonance that makes them both the richer. The dystopian main storyline follows a girl chafing against her life as nothing but entertainment for the wealthy, with neither privacy nor freedom from the all-encompassing AI that ensures her physical needs are met while caring nothing for her sense of fulfillment. Life outside the city is a quick death sentence, but there may be one who can offer respite from the constant surveillance inside, for a price. It’s a story that’s bound to capture the attention of fans of dystopian fiction, though the main plot isn't one that breaks much new ground. Rather, it’s the snippets of folklore showing how an entirely different context can yield such a similar story that really makes the novella pop.

The novelette “Ember” also features a lead chafing against a world he can’t change, with the once-favored son of a small village struggling to cope with the death of the fossil fuel industry, and with it the value of his education and ambition. Unwilling to admit failure, he pours more and more into trying to revive an old refinery in hopes of bringing something to his people. It’s not a happy story, but it is a compelling one, with a refreshingly genuine portrayal of a tragic figure.

I’d read “Saturday’s Song” when it appeared in Lightspeed, but it’s another novelette that’s well worth the read, with a solid folkloric plot and an excellent frame narrative that’s truly a love letter to storytelling. And as someone who enjoys found document fiction, I also enjoyed “Abeokuta 52,” a story framed as a message board thread. There’s also a story about a space rescue interspersed with fraught family relationships, and another about the technology that increases productivity at the cost of personality. They’re not always happy stories, but they’re almost universally engaging and thought-provoking.

Readers who have been engaged in short sci-fi over the last couple years won’t be surprised to find that “A Dream of Electric Mothers” is the star of the show, but Convergence Problems is a strong collection that’s engaging from start to finish and really shows off the depth of Talabi’s catalog.

Recommended if you like: sci-fi centered on ideas and relationships, blending of sci-fi and folklore, Africanfuturism.

Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.

3.5, really, only demoted from the 4-star rating because I don't care too much for the short story form. But, apart from that, Mr Talabi kept up the standard he set in Shigidi (one of my absolute favourites of 2023) - albeit I thought I might have to jettison at one stage in "Saturday's song", as it looked like Shigidi (who had made an appearance) might be a "baddie". Phew, spoiler alert, turned out not to be. But it will tell you how good a writer he is, that the author gets the reader so emotionally invested in a fictional character.
The stories in Convergence problems are a mixed bag, depending on your tastes, but the writing is always good, and always interesting. Talabi plays with form quite succesfully, but for me the most refreshing thing about the stories that involved space exploration or development of AI technologies was the alternative slant we get as the author weaves in Nigerian familial culture and old legends. In the West one gets so very sick of the urban, American, Hollywood version of our future in space, and it is great to get a different viewpoint. Much as the Russian sci-fi of the 50s and 60s was vastly different to that of the U.S., so too do the likes of Tade Thompson, Talabi, Okorafor etc paint a whole new way of thinking about space, our relationship with technology, and how it will mesh with those who will still live a "traditional" lifestyle. This is not just a book of pretty good stories, it is a blueprint to hope that we will not despoil other planets as we have done this one, if only we can put ego aside and communicate openly, with a desire for the betterment of everyone.
My thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, all opinions are my own.

A solid collection of SFF stories set mostly in Nigeria or among Nigerians that include topics like mining in space, the movement of human consciousnesses to robots, and social justice. I enjoyed "Ganger" in which a world dominated by automatons can only be escaped by becoming one, and "Blowout," in which a woman grapples with family history, the limits of machinery, and her own physical limits as she tries to save her brother on Mars.

I requested this shortly after starting Shigidi because I was vibing so much with Talabi's style that I wanted to see what a collection of short stories from him would look like. Honestly, the result was a pretty fantastic collection of stories that messes about with form and the how of how we tell stories, and have some real interesting gems of ideas that I'd love to see him expand on if he'd want to. We also get to see Shigidi pop up in a novella in here as well, which is also fun. If you liked Shigidi, definitely pick up this collection.

I liked it a lot. It's a collection of sixteen stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice; constantly converging on our future selves. Wole Talabi is a gifted storyteller with clever ideas and the skills to translate them into pages with a flair. Highly recommended.

CONVERGENCE PROBLEMS takes you from near future Nigeria, to Mars, through the deep folds of your own mind where you don't want to go. His stories are tight and pack a lot of questions with a light-handed wry realism that doesn't lose the message for the world, and the story for the message. The Nebula-nominated "Dream of Electric Mothers" is a clear favourite, and I also loved "Ganger", a story about the difference between surviving, adapting, and thriving; and "Nigerian Dreams". Excellent collection, and a powerful follow-up to Talabi's SHIGIDI.

I go into every book wanting to like it. I desperately search for positive things about every book or short story collection, but nothing here clicked for me.

There was a range of stories, some even written in different formats than your standard story, which was very interesting.

There was only one story which piqued my interest, Gamma, for a similar title to Love in the time of Cholera. It was an interesting concept, but I feel poorly executed.

What we have here are some interesting concepts, I liked how Talabi dived into robots in Ganger. Talabi explores robots performing functions that are "helpful" i.e smashing down a wall to save a life. It reminds me of real life, the police may break down a door to save a life; but they do not pay for a new door. Robots, machines, computers, are logic machines, they perform there tasks without deviation.

However, it was the writing I did not take to. One of my favourite quotes about writing is, from Coleridge, "Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium." The words and sentences constantly drew attention to themselves and therefore threw me out of the immersion. Combine that with exposition and first person, I just did not find anything to my taste.