Copyright © 2024 by Wole Talabi

This edition by arrangement with African Literary & Speculative Agency

All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@astrapublishinghouse.com.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Jacket design and illustration by Jim Tierney

Interior design by Fine Design

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“Debut” first published in Overseas, The Royal Over-Seas League, 2019. “An Arc of Electric Skin” first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Penny Publications, LLC, 2021. “Saturday’s Song” first published in Lightspeed Magazine, Adamant Press, 2023. “Lights In The Sky” first published as “Open Your Eyes” in TNC Africa, 2014. “Blowout” first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Penny Publications, LLC, 2023. “Gamma, or, Love in the Age of Radiation Poisoning” first published in The Kalahari Review, 2014. “Abeokuta52” first published in Omenana Magazine, Seven Hills Media, 2019. “Tends To Zero” first published in Nowhereville: Weird Is Other People, Broken Eye Books, 2019. “Performance Review” first published as part of the Wordcraft Writers Workshop with Google Research, 2022. “Silence” first published in BellaNaija, 2013. “The Million Eyes of a Lonely and Fragile God” first published in Stupefying Stories, 2016. “Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core” first published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Wyrm Publishing, 2021. “A Dream of Electric Mothers” first published in Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Tordotcom, 2022.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Talabi, Wole, author.

Title: Convergence problems / Wole Talabi.

Description: First edition. | New York : DAW Books, 2024.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023042578 (print) | LCCN 2023042579 (ebook) | ISBN 9780756418830 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780756418847 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Science fiction. | Short stories.

Classification: LCC PR9387.9.T333 C66 2024 (print) | LCC PR9387.9.T333 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23/eng/20230912

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023042578

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023042579

First edition: February 2024

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