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Tomi Adeyemi's first published work, the inventive West African-inspired fantasy novel Children of Blood and Bone, has intriguing things to say about the relationship between identity and power. Adeyemi works in a decades-long tradition going back to writers such as Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, who wove cultural elements of the Black diaspora into their science fiction and fantasy in a movement known as Afrofuturism. At its core, the movement is characterized by speculation, not just about distant futures or other planets but also about alternate versions of our shared past. Afrofuturism's meditations on authority reinvigorate the creative potential of fiction.