Editorial
I have always believed that the world opens up to the curious and brave. If, as a child, you escaped boredom by devouring books and then eventually discovered the world around you with your hands, legs and eyes, then you will appreciate what I mean. Curiosity is like a hunger that once you feed, you earn an insatiable pleasure that grows more curious. This is why the saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ is simply scaremongering unless you have the rest of the saying… curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
This issue presents you four stories and an essay. In Beneath the Flower’s Gaze, Kevin Rigathi’s beautiful yet haunting tale that threatens to overthrow my earlier assertions about curiosity. You should read this story and discover if, and how satisfaction brought back the cats, ooops! people after their curious tango.
When you read Chisom Umeh’s Immortality, you can be forgiven for thinking of Christmas and hoping for a miracle. But this story’s twists will make you hate and love the Blessed One along his journey. I also liked the idea that some strengths cannot be buried or extinguished but can only be… read the story and find out.
At its very heart, Seeds of the Storm is an uncanny coming of age story where the new age is not an arrival, but a journey to a mantle that must be earned through fire, air, earth and blood. Bongiwe Maphosa has given us a tension-filled piece here.
When Uduak-Abasi Ekong wrote Senator Ibile, I wonder if they knew that this would be the story that many Africans wish on politicians of a certain ilk. It has a perfect blend of humour, horror and the best kind of swap. This is one alternate reality I would like to inject into life.
We also have an essay titled What the Water Remembers… by Oluwanifemi Bakare, in which he gives a breakdown of how the once-suppressed African imagination has been building a ‘formally ambitious body of work that is reshaping what science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature can do and say’. We love to read and see it, especially as we embrace more film adaptations of speculative and science fiction works by African writers.
Enjoy, share, and see you again soon!
Iquo DianaAbasi
Beneath the flower’s gaze | Kevin Rigathi
Seeds of the Storm | Bongiwe Maphosa
