Hugo Awards 2026: The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford

The Space Cat

Published: 2025
Acquired: April 2026
Read: May 2026

Written by Nnedi Okorafor
Art by Tana Ford

This is the first finalist I've read thus far for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. Though it is intended to recognize the best sf&f comic of the previous year, I often find this category pretty idiosyncratic: while I think categories like Best Novel do a fairly good job of scooping up the wider sf&f community's preferred novels, even when I personally don't enjoy them, the Hugo electorate consumes a very odd and specific subset of comic books. It very clearly prioritizes comics work by people who have previously won Hugo Awards for prose fiction. Case in point: Nnedi Okorafor, who won Best Novella for Binti in 2016 and the Lodestar Award for Akata Warrior in 2018, and has subsequently been a finalist for some very mediocre work like Black Panther: Long Live the King in 2019.

The Space Cat is definitely better than Long Live the King, but I'm doubtful this children's graphic novel would ever have appeared on someone's list of the best sf&f comics of 2025 otherwise. It's science fiction, but based on Okorafor's real life: the main character is Okorafor's actual cat, Periwinkle, and both Okorafor and her daughter appear in the comic. But in the comic, Periwinkle is from space and regularly returns to space on various adventures; when the family goes to Nigeria on a work trip, Periwinkle must help the local animals band together against an alien invasion that no one else has noticed.

Space Cat no talk good!

It's not great but I did enjoy Space Cat. This is the fourth comic illustrated by Tana Ford that I've read (two of the others were also written by Okorafor; she also illustrated an issue of the Star Trek ongoing Boldly Go that I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet), but this is the best of them; she does a great job capturing the animals. Her Periwinkle is lively and expressive and has a strong sense of character. The story is simple but cute (if a bit padded, even at its short 150ish pages), though I didn't care for the pidgin dialogue style Okorafor gives the animals. The insight into Nigerian culture is interesting—I had no idea cats were seen as cursed! I thought the way the things cats do (e.g., attack your new houseplant) are reinterpreted as purposeful actions humans don't understand.

Maybe this is why our cat eats
our plants while we're sleeping!

So far Space Cat is the only Best Graphic Story finalist I've read, but I'd be surprised if it ends up at the top of my ballot. However, I'd also be quite surprised if it ended up at the bottom; usually there's something genuinely dreadful to be found on it. But I did loan it to my seven-year-old, who immediately asked when the sequel was coming out, so clearly a hit with the target audience.