Sauúti Terrors: The Dark Side (Anthology)

Editors: Eugen Bacon, Stephen Embleton, Cheryl S. Ntumy

Represented by Bieke van Aggelen, owner of African Literary Agency

Dark Fantasy / Horror Anthology (with elements of Science Fiction)

Read the Press Release on JayLit

Praise for Sauúti Terrors

"Sauúti Terrors bursts at the seams with nightmares and endless possibilities. One who ventures into these tales does so at the risk of continuous delight in a unique assortment of Afrocentric worldbuilding, voices and storytelling craft."
Suyi Davies Okungbowa
award-winning author of Lost Ark Dreaming, Warrior of the Wind and Son of the Storm
"Fascinating. Impressive. My goodness. This is creation. Reading these stories is actively participating in creation. Each story propelled me to read the next. I want to read everything written about these worlds. I can't get enough of this. How does anyone write like this? The terror here is definitely the skin crawling type."
Makena Onjerika
winner of the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing
"This latest anthology returns readers to the groundbreaking Sauútiverse—an African-centered glimpse of possible far flung futures that eerily mirror our own present and past. Once again, the Sauúti Collective—in co-editors Eugen Bacon, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Stephen Embleton—has gathered a commendable and talented set of writers who deliver fantastically imaginative stories that remind us why we fear the dark, and the unknown."
P. Djèli Clark
award-winning author of Ring Shout and A Master of Djinn

Synopsis

There’s much to love in the Sauútiverse with its sounds, music, language, biologies and histories, but everything is not perfect in the federation of planets. From legends and folktales to inheritances, gods, ancestral spirits, sacred prey, sentient creatures, beings of unreality, sonic storms, solar flares and meteor strikes, perils infest the planets. Sauúti Terrors: The Dark Side is the newest anthology, fresh in the wake of Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology.

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology, the inaugural Sauúti anthology, edited by Wole Talabi and published by Android press, continues to enjoy global visibility. It was announced in the Locus Recommended Reading List and a finalist in the Locus and British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards, with stories longlisted in the both awards, and listed on the HWA Bram Stoker Award® Reading List. It also has multiple stories shortlisted in the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans.

With 25 original stories and 11 unique pieces of dark speculative poetry, Sauúti Terrors tells of the doomed, the damned, the shunned, the cunning, the destroyers, the noxious, and more, in the worlds of the living, the in-between and the dead.

Unravel the darkest stories in the deepest parts of the Sauúti five-planet system with its two suns, and orbiting a binary star:

  • Zezépfeni (the self-appointed leader with its twin suns)
  • Ekwukwe (the echo planet with its hollows, caverns and tunnels)
  • Wiimbo-ó (the Earth analogue with its five continents and spirit moons)
  • Órino-Rin (the dense planet with its sonic storms)
  • Pinaa (the low-gravity inhabited moon of Mahwé, the dead planet, hosting AI and other populace in fortified clusters).

Unfurl fate, mishap, calamity, disease, obsession, wickedness, greed, malice and manipulations lurking in this Afrocentric intergalactic world with its space travel, humanoid and non-humanoid creatures, artificial intelligence and intricate magic system based on sound, oral traditions, and music.