A Review of Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V

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Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V narrates the current generation’s fears, hopes, and dreams, and presents them wrapped up within tales of the fantastical like banana leaves. 

The first Kenyan science fiction and fantasy literary journal Will This Be A Problem? has remained criminally underrated for the past 10 years of its existence. This 5th issue was co-edited by Olivia Kidula and Somto Ihezue and includes a star-studded cast of 16 African speculative fiction authors from across the continent.

They all tackle burning questions most African youth, who have been abandoned by their governments, today are asking. How did we get here? Where do we go from here? What is there for us in the future? Will it all work out in the end? This Anthology of stories provides some answers, though you may not like them. 

In the introduction, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Will This Be A Problem? Olivia Kidula, explains:

“These stories… were written against a backdrop of crises… videos of immense suffering from Congo, Sudan, and Palestine. Who can honestly process all this suffering? How many more shiny things will be shoved down our throats until we can no longer dissociate from this grotesquerie?”

Ironically, this collection of speculative fiction will not help you dissociate as we so often use our fiction to do—be it through Netflix, TikTok, or books. It instead plunges you head first into confronting the anxiety and grief of living in today’s highly capitalistic but low-empathy world.

That grief gave birth to stories like “The Sirangoi Fey Market” by Ephraim N. Orji where a parent seeks revenge for the death of a daughter. Or “I’m Home” by Rutendo Chidzodzo where a changeling is about to be reunited with a mother she does not remember. 

The play with second person perspective in quite a few of the stories, including the two just mentioned, doubles down on the aspect that this is you in the story. It puts you in the driver’s seat and forces your hands and legs to move along with the characters. Though writers don’t often reach for this perspective, it is very effective in driving home the themes in these stories. That we are all in this together. We live or die through our collective efforts.

A theme also emerges where the new gods are the old gods. A shunning of the world according to Christianity. The post-script and behind-the-scenes footage that has been left out of the Bible and government-sanctioned history books. For example, in Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s “Dinosaurs Once Lived Here” the way the world ends is from the unexpected descendants of those abandoned to drown by Noah and his Ark. The story is narrated by Anansi’s cousin, the god of drunkenness, suggesting all that remains is what was before.

Another story that toys with this premise is “The Clans” by Tonny Ogwa which presents an alternative reality where the Luo people of Kenya kicked out the missionaries sent to their ancestral land before the white man’s armies came. As the powers of their gods seeped out of their bodies due to the influence of Christianity, they took matters into their own hands by trusting in their native wisdom. 

This reverence of African traditions, beliefs, and spirituality is also reflected in “Ash Baby” by Andrew Dakalira and “Something Cruel” by Gabrielle Emem Harry. Are our neglected gods tired of us or do they still reach out in benevolence — or violence — to interact with us? Or have we been abandoned? Matseliso Motsoane’s “Baby Potion” and Peter Nena’s “Why Donkeys Have 44 Teeth” dabble in the question of cryptozoology. Frightening beasts that have only existed in stories mothers tell their children to get them to behave might just be walking amongst us.

The spirit of resistance continues in “The Language We Have Learned to Carry in Our Skin” by Shingai Kagunda. She likens the vices of corruption, violence, and war to parasitic creatures living under the skins of Kenyan politicians, transferred over to them by the white colonizers. A sentiment that leads neatly into a future of that world, into the one of “A Song of Ruin” by Alex Tamei. Nairobi is now Ole Nyrobi as it once was ‘before the sun fell.’ This story of post-apocalyptic Nairobi contains a society that has gone back to its traditional ways after anarchy destroyed our current reality.

But reality is a malleable thing, as Kidula pointed out in the introduction:

“Within these pages, reality stretches beyond its perceived boundaries, splinters under pressure, and reforms itself into new, haunting shapes.”

The distance between that far-away future where they talk of the present day as the ancient past and now is contained only within the bounds of our imagination.

This especially shines through in the more experimental and sci-fi-leaning stories. From a Zimbabwean ballerina in Paris who has a surreal encounter with aliens in “Scales and Arabesques” by Lucille Sambo to an artificially created freedom fighter caught between dimensions in “Acceptance” by Khaya Maseko. Or in Victor Forna’s “Mr. Original Swag” where the gods neither care about nor hate us but simply toy with us for their amusement. Through a TV show held somewhere in between space and time, an unfortunate contestant laments the side effects of cutting deals with these immortal beings that defy human understanding.

With the very human track record of using any and all tools at our disposal for evil ends, even a turn to scientific creations to help us live through these dystopic events unfolding around us every day is unsatisfactory. Kevin Rigathi’s “If Memory Serves” and Azara Tswanya’s “The Market of Memories” imagine worlds where memories are bartered. Whether selling your favourite memories as currency to survive poverty or forgetting the unpleasant ones — like the fallout of endless war, brutality, and death — we are reminded that there are consequences to separating the mind-body-spirit connection.

Following the thought that ‘humans tend to veer to the worst possible use of a thing,’ “Commensalism, or the Labyrinth’s Vessels” by Albert Nkreuwem provides a story that seems to encapsulate the anthology by contemplating a reality where an intelligent slime strives to understand the human tendency towards self-destruction. Just like we the readers and as people living through these events like climate change and exploitation, it wonders why we would create a system that destroys the very planet we inhabit.

As gruesome news stories continue to flash across our screens daily, an amalgamation of grief, confusion, and a desire for change is developing within us. Yet they have nowhere to go. But, at least, within the realm of fantasy, these authors have transmuted these helpless and hopeless feelings into works of art that call for resistance. Who said artistes can’t fight?

Soila Kenya

Soila Kenya

Soila Kenya is an Africanfuturist womanist award-winning data journalist from Kenya interested in the intersection between science, tech, media and culture.