Welcome back! To our relief, Will This Be A Problem? The Magazine has proven not to be just a here today, gone tomorrow venture. Please clap!
When we issued the call-out for our fifth anthology, we didn’t expect such a high number of high-quality submissions that required little to no input from us as editors. This made curating the anthology easier than we expected, but left us with a conundrum we had never faced before. Here were literal diamonds in the rough: stories that we felt compelled to hoard yet needed a lot more polish than the rest. The editors were unable to reach a consensus on them; each piece had someone in their corner who completely refused to back down from it. We then decided to workshop them as a group, dissecting each story, line by line, questioning character motivations and assassinating narrative darlings left, right and centre.
From this gruelling refining process, Issue 1 was born: a curated selection of five stories that complemented the ones in Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V. To our utter glee, one of the stories we worked on, “The Future Ancients” by Zambian SFF writer Mwenya Chikwa, was featured in Reactor Magazine’s Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2024.
When the submissions for Issue 2 rolled in, it was easy to see that we would be repeating the same process, and so short stories for the next issue have already been chosen! We will still have a call-out, however this new editorial method allows us to make space for different types of speculative writing and media… but more on that later! This second issue showcases speculative fiction from Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the United States of America. These five brilliant stories were a joy to edit and publish, and I have to thank the contributors for trusting us with their work.
Lucille Sambo returns to WTBAP? (first appearing in Issue V with “Scales and Arabesques”) with a thrilling horror short, “The Herd”, which makes for a magnificent entry in the canon of African horror. Goats have been a long-time staple of the horror genre, but Sambo has found ways to make them feel wholly new and deeply disquieting. “The Herd” is a terrifying cautionary tale for adults, best whispered around the fireplace long after the children have gone to bed.
Horror writer Peter Nena returns as well with his first foray into science fiction, “Babies Don’t Grow In People”. A shift in genre has done nothing to dampen his flair for attention-grabbing titles. This future world under Nena’s pen unravels its science and society with meticulous form in this stunning novelette that readers will find themselves thinking long after the story’s close.
Plangdi Neple hits a home run in his Will This Be A Problem? debut, “Non-remembrance”. We recently published two stories that explicitly dealt with memory in Issue V; however, while those stories warned of the dangers of technological interference with recollection, “Non-remembrance” takes a more traditional approach. The story begins with a confession and a mystery, and Plangdi masterfully leads us to the revelation of both in a tender exploration of memory and chronic pain, and how relationships buckle when faced with the inevitability of change.
In Olufunmilayo Makinde’s “Ritual”, we open to a marriage proposal delivered through a business card, and this is the least unsettling thing that occurs in this piece, which shook an editor’s room well accustomed to horror stories. The cover art was inspired by the story, and so I don’t want to give too much away, however I hope that when you’re done reading the story you’ll appreciate the artistic interpretation even more!
Another new writer to our pages, Azure Arther, brings us a horror story, “Do The Bop Bop”, one that is nothing like we’ve published before. While analog horror is usually associated with found footage on grainy VHS tapes, Arther skillfully manages to evoke the same feeling on the page with a short that may cause parents to take a second look at just what their children are watching, especially when it seems like the world as we know it is ending. Bop Bop!
I have to thank my editorial team for helping to bring this issue into existence: Will This Be A Problem? developmental editor Shiro Mutero, Shilitza editorial assistant Amadin Ogbewe, first reader James Kariuki, with art direction from Kevin Rigathi and illustrator & digital artist Pete Marco, who once again created the brilliant cover art. I also want to thank our newest addition to the team, Lilian Mironga, who has breathed new life into our social media platforms and helped Will This Be A Problem? reach new and existing audiences.
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Happy reading!
Olivia Kidula
Editor In Chief, Will This Be A Problem?
Olivia Kidula
Olivia Kidula is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Will This Be A Problem? Kenya’s first SFF literary magazine. She is also the publisher and editorial director of Shilitza Publishing Group, an independent press based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her short story, “Mummy Dearest ", appeared in Digital Bedbugs: 2019 Anthology of the Nairobi Fiction Workshop. With a decade of experience in print media and speculative fiction publishing, her proficiency in fiction and nonfiction is evidenced by a portfolio that includes novellas, short stories, and magazine features.