In relation to Okorafor’s previous works, Death of the Author holds a lot of significance in imparting agency to its readers, particularly Black readers who want to explore africanfuturism. This sentiment is exemplified in Okorafor’s 2017 TED Talk, where she explains the significance of Black scholarship in science fiction literature via her most seminal work, the Binti trilogy (2015–2018): ‘Binti leaves the planet to seek education from extraterrestrials. She goes out as she is, looking the way she looks, carrying her cultures, being who she is.’ What inspired Okorafor was not the classic science fiction narratives produced by dominant figures like Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, George Orwell and Robert Heinlein. To Okorafor, such ‘stories [were] preoccupied with xenophobia, colonization and seeing aliens as others. And [Okorafor] saw no reflection of anyone who looked like [her] in those narratives.’ Instead, she was inspired to write africanfuturist novels ‘because of blood that runs deep, family, cultural conflict and the need to see an African girl leave the planet on her own terms. [Okorafor’s] science fiction had different ancestors, African ones.’

As a result, Okorafor’s success goes beyond the Hugo and Nebula awards—awards that mark the epitome of success in the science fiction and fantasy genre—because she disrupts a realm of literature that is ‘Western-rooted … mostly white and male’, while championing herself as a disabled, Black woman who can wield her culture to (re)write science fiction stories. Okorafor’s works throw new light on the African continent and the stories that the continent has to tell about the world’s future. Just as Binti and her journey impart agency to the reader, particularly for imagining and believing in stories unlike the ones Okorafor grew up with, Zelu’s life holds inspiration for everyday Black people, particularly for fighting for a world that both challenges and accepts them.

While Rusted Robots interrogates the future of humanity from a robot and AI’s worldview, Death of the Author reimagines what it means to be human through the mirror of self-reflection. As Okorafor says in her TED Talk, ‘African science fiction’s blood runs deep, and it’s old, and it’s ready to come forth’, so, Okorafor’s writing brings in new dimensions of Black literature that imagines a (Black) future on its own terms, while moving the masses to bring such an imagined future to reality.

At large, Death of the Author is an attempt at resolving the issues between science and race by incorporating the past (colonialism, slavery, migration) as well as the future (technology, post-racism, post-humanism). The novel, though, does elicit some questions about furthering this resolution in practice; for example, Okorafor is not critical enough when it comes to the novel’s direct engagement with whiteness. On multiple occasions, whiteness as an institution benefits Zelu at the expense of her social and cultural standing, and Okorafor does little to explain the harmful consequences Black people face due to ‘white’ agency as well as the dehumanization of Black subjects in scientific experiments. However, the novel ultimately surmounts as ‘a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human.’ To conclude, Death of the Author advances Black scientific and science fiction scholarship, particularly for current discourses on AI and their place in society⎈