Deji Bryce Olukotun

Deji Bryce Olukotun is a novelist and digital-rights advocate whose fiction joins speculative ideas with questions of migration, technology, and African professional life. Nigerians in Space, published by Unnamed Press in 2014, begins in Houston in 1993 with lunar geologist Wale Olufunmi. A Nigerian official's plan for reversing brain drain asks Wale and other specialists abroad to return, but Wale's ambitions redirect the story across several countries and intersecting lives. Olukotun developed the premise after studying at the University of Cape Town and visiting Nigeria, where contemporary efforts to recruit scientists suggested the idea of brain gain. The novel combines international intrigue, satire, and science-fiction elements without remaining in a single genre. Nigerians in Space was his debut and later gained a sequel, After the Flare, which develops the space-program strand further. Olukotun's legal training and advocacy work add useful context to a book concerned with borders, institutions, mobility, and who controls scientific possibility.