Ayinde wins Future Worlds Prize with 'cool and confident' novel

M H Ayinde has won the £4,000 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour for her “cool and confident” novel A Shadow in Chains. 

The announcement was made at an event held at the London Library on 16th February. The prize previously named the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award, was first run in 2020 and founded by author Ben Aaronovitch. It aims to find new talent based in the UK writing in the SFF space, from magical realism and space operas to dystopia and more. 

Ayinde’s novel is set in a place called the Nine Lands, where only those of noble blood can summon their ancestors to fight in battle. But when a commoner from the slums accidentally invokes a powerful spirit, she finds it could hold the key to ending a centuries-long war. 

The judges said her novel was “cool and confident, excellently written, that feels very now” adding: “We wanted to be in the world of the novel as we read it, and felt this was a book doing something very exciting in the SFF space." 

Salma Ibrahim was announced as the runner-up, winning £2,000 for her novel Frankincense, which follows a character called Sidra Ali, who, on her way to work on a London bus, finds herself arriving in a parallel universe in modern day Mogadishu, Somalia. There she discovers what life would be like if her family hadn’t left Somalia during the civil war. 

The judges said Frankincense was “an evocative and layered novel with great potential” adding: “It feels original yet recognisable, and we loved that it centred working-class experiences.” 

Ayinde and Ibrahim were chosen from a shortlist of eight. The other six shortlisted authors will each receive £800. They are Jordan Collins for The Sawling, Franchesca Liauw for In the City of Villages, Bea Pantoja’s Margot, Who Is Beautiful Now, Madeehah Reza’s The Warden, Aqeelah Seedat’s Contracts Made in Gold and Fatima Taqvi’s A Box Full of Stories. 

The judges were Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Lloyd Bradley, Valerie Brandes, Shobna Gulati, Zahra Hankir and Tasha Suri. 
All shortlisted writers, the runner-up and the winner will also receive mentoring from one of the prize’s publishing partners: HarperCollins’ SFF imprint HarperVoyager, Penguin Random House UK’s Del Rey UK, Gollancz, Hachette’s SFF imprints including Orbit, and Pan Macmillan’s Tor.  

The 2020 prize was won by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson for The Principle of Moments, a space-based adventure story. Jikiemi-Pearson has since secured a publishing deal with Gollancz, and her debut novel will be released next year.