Book Review: Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology: Issue V

A unique collection of hauntingly engaging and imaginative stories

 

In addition to being entertaining, speculative fiction short stories can be an excellent way to process real life personal and societal issues through the prism of the fantastic. Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology: Issue V is an anthology of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short stories, all by African writers. The collection, edited by Somto Ihezue and Olivia Kidula, varies from historical to contemporary, and includes a range of subtle nods or harshly direct commentary on society, religion, and politics. There are also thoughtful philosophical explorations, as well as straight, terrifying, wild adventures. All of stories are imaginative but also beautifully written and hauntingly engaging, incorporating elements of African culture, history, and spirituality.

At times, some of the selections raise an intriguing concept but then end abruptly, leaving the resolution to the reader’s imagination. Other stories dig deeply into complex situations offering interesting answers to philosophical questions. A standout in the collection is Kevin Rigathi’s twisty “If Memory Serves,” a story of science gone wrong in the commoditization of memory and culture. In this tale, a well-meaning scientist creates a way to extract traumatic memories from people but the result is not what he or society expects. In the vibe of the tv show Severance, the story explores the way good and bad memories shape our authentic selves and our defensive instincts. And it explores the way personal experiences can be exploited and cultures appropriated for dangerous purposes. “If Memory Serves” is an ideal companion piece to another story in the collection, the similarly haunting “The Market of Memories” by Azara Tswanya. “The Market of Memories” is the personal tale of a financially struggling woman who sells her memory of a beloved friend in exchange for money to feed her family. While wealthy people gorge on fetishized memories, the poor in her community lose more and more of themselves and their culture. 

That story is one of several that explore larger themes of colonization and cultural exploitation. “The Clans” by Tonny Ogwa is a tale of ancient clans blessed with superpowers from a powerful deity, however the arrival and ongoing influence of a European priest interferes with their powers and leads to unrest. For a more modern take on a similar theme, there is the uncomfortably relatable story “The Language We Have Learned to Carry in Our Skin” by Shingai Kagund. In this haunting story a young girl learns a disturbing secret about those in power and ponders this truth as she grows up to be a journalist and becomes exhausted by reporting on the never-ending violence and exploitation in our society. 

Some stories are more nihilistic such as Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s “Dinosaurs Once Lived Here” which offers a sharp, cynical overview of the end of Earth. Among the more hopeful stories is one of my favorites in the collection, “Ash Baby” by Andrew Dkalira which offers a clever reimagining of the Biblical story of Job but, in this version, things are not as they seem. Another tragic but hopeful tale is Rutendo Chidzodzo’s “I’m Home,” a brief, second person narrative of a girl stolen by water spirits and the mother who grieves silently and prays for her return. 

The opening story in the anthology is “The Sirangori Fey Market” by Ephraim N. Orji. The story follows a woman who enters a forbidden marketplace filled with dangerous magical creatures as she seeks both answers and revenge for the death of a child. In another of my favorite tales, "Something Cruel" by Gabrielle Emem Harry, a trio of cynical but professional spiritual enforcers compete with each other to exact punishments on humans and each other as part of their obligations. The prose in this tale is smooth and inviting although the ending of this magical story is, more or less, left to the readers imagination. 

On the philosophical side, “Mr. Original Swag” by Victor Forna is told in the form of an interview that we can only hear one side of. Through the conversations we have a parable on the seductive nature of evil and in particular, the way it preys on the poor and vulnerable. At the other end of the spectrum is the very metaphysical “Commensalism, or the Labyrinth’s Vessels” by Albert Nkereuwem. As people look around at the many bad things in our world, some question why an all-powerful deity wouldn’t just stop humans from hurting each other and stop death, exploitation, environmental toxins and diseases. Wouldn’t it be better to just control humanity’s toxic behavior so that the earth and everyone in it is safe? This story offers a thoughtful vision of what it might look like if human beings no longer had free will to make bad choices and were instead controlled in a Borg-style hive mind. The effect is clever, poignant, and full of irony. The collection also includes Alex Tamei’s post-apocalyptic “A Song of Ruin,” Lucille Sambo’s alien adventure “Scales and Arabesques,” Matseliso Motsoane’s quirky “Baby Potion,” and Khaya Maseko’s time-distortion tale, “Acceptance.”

The final story in the collection, “Why Donkeys Have 44 Teeth” by Peter Nena, is an example of intriguing narrative pacing. The tale starts out creepily and slowly as a little boy ponders an odd dream about a talking donkey. But the story picks up speed as a horrific murder mystery and more dreams accelerate the tale. Then, like wheels on a rollercoaster, the story soon descend into horrific mayhem. This is another tale that leaves the ultimate ending to the reader’s imagination but the accelerating pace will leave you breathless and terrified with its old fashioned horror intensity. 

Despite some tales with abrupt endings, the solid prose and strong African cultural influence makes the book a highly enjoyable read. “Will This Be a Problem” is a uniquely satisfying anthology of fantastical stories. The collection has a strong range of tales, each with gorgeous writing and twisted adventures that will leave you intrigued or terrified, or both. In the end, the collection is less of an escape, and more of a truly unique exploration.

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Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Solid writing across a range of stories
• Some abrupt endings
• Mind bending exploration of philosophical and social issues

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Book Review: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor’s ambitious new novel tackles major global issues from AI to the power of storytelling

The title alone, Death of the Author, sets up this novel to engage with how we think about authorship, readers, and the life of a story. The novel follows Zelu, a failed adjunct professor, who at her lowest moment, writes a science fiction novel. Her previous literary novel, which she had worked on for a decade, had failed to sell, but after she sends in this new novel about robots in Nigeria thriving after humanity has destroyed itself, her agent declares it will be a hit. And it is. Zelu’s life entirely changes as she is swept up in the fantastical life of a celebrity author.

Zelu’s rise to literary stardom is marked by her struggles with her family. As a girl, she fell from a tree and became paralyzed from the waist down, which impacted how her family treated her and continue to treat her as an adult. Zelu comes from a large diasporic family, with many of her siblings living successful lives in Chicago, while Zelu is, at first, the failed writer with only an MFA. As her uncle says later in the book, “You’ve been shrugging off the house they built around you since you wrote that book. […] You rewrote your narrative” (312). The more compelling part of this novel is following Zelu as she rewrites this narrative that her family and Nigerian culture has constructed around her. Even before her success as an author, she displayed a level of independence from her family by smoking weed, using autonomous driving vehicles instead of relying on the family for rides, and having an active dating life.

Braided within the story of Zelu’s family life and literary career is the novel that rockets her to stardom, Rusted Robots. This novel follows Ankara, a Hume robot who collects stories. While walking the human-less earth, Ankara learns a terrible piece of information that will lead to the destruction of the planet and must find more Humes who can help avert this destruction. During the search, Ankara becomes entangled with a NoBody, a type of AI which lives in a hive with other NoBodies. They believe they are superior to Humes and other robots who continue in a physical existence. Even so, Ankara and the NoBody named Ijele learn to work together for survival. 

Meta books like Okorafor’s novel are particularly tricky to pull off. Usually, when describing a novel within a novel where the story is a global sensation, there are two common routes: either the sensational novel is included, emphasizing the story-within-story, or it is only referenced and summarized by various characters, never giving the reader any, or very little, insight into the text. The problem with including the sensationalized story in the novel is that it has to live up to being a global sensation, which is a task for any novelist. Okorafor braids the story within a story of Rusted Robots throughout the novel, but it never caught me up as an inspiring hit. Moments of Rusted Robots were moving, funny, beautifully described, but it didn’t quite deliver the promise of the frame: that it would capture readers globally to the level of reading it over and over, obsessed with these characters, obsessed with the author. Rather, Zelu's story is more compelling and personal. Even so, Rusted Robots has a lovely meditation on the importance of story as the character Ankara collects tales and ultimately, uses fiction to help save the planet. As Ankara says: “Stories are what holds all things together” (412). 

The reference of the novel’s title promises the reader an investigation of storytelling, and the novel does deliver on some of those ideas. The title, Death of the Author, comes into play as Zelu must release her novel Rusted Robots into the hands of her readers, thus completing Roland Barthes’ maxim at the end of his essay by the same name: “We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” This release becomes particularly troublesome for Zelu when the movie adaptation is far afield of the Nigerian-based book that she produced, becoming a much more “American” version, which Zelu hates. Yet, the movie becomes incredibly popular and praised, leading to more interest in her novel via this interpretation of her work that she deems incorrect and insulting. This meditation on the struggle of being a successful SFF author captured the meta-ness the novel promises as Zelu struggles with being “canceled” and the demand for a sequel alongside the threats that come from becoming so rich so quickly. In something of an American fairytale, Zelu manages to pull herself up by her bootstraps and is richly rewarded for her hard work as a writer, with even her snotty students apologizing to her after her stardom. Of course, there are also struggles as she has negative interactions with interviewers who want to focus on her race, her disability, or her class, but these interactions and right criticisms of the media industry do not detract from Zelu’s ultimate success and wealth. 

It was refreshing to see this type of meta narrative in science fiction as opposed to the postmodern literary novel. Throughout the novel, the commentary on science fiction as a powerful tool is clear, as one character says: “[Science fiction is] about being different, seeing more, examining human nature, and imagining tomorrow” (383). To that end, parts of Zelu’s stardom story are troubling if we are to believe in the power of science fiction to imagine tomorrow. Plot points hinge on the interest and action of two rich, white men—one working in medical science and another investing in citizen space travel. The timing of this book does not lend to the positive associations these character garner from Zelu—published a few days before a “rich” white man was inaugurated for a second term as President of the U.S. and a few weeks before the richest man in the world would speak in the oval office while disassembling parts of the U.S. government. There are gestures of criticism in the novel to the fact that Zelu is accepting opportunities from these rich, white men, but I struggle to find a thoughtful examination of these moments. 

In the spirit of Barthes, the title asks the reader to separate the author’s biography from the text and reader’s interpretation (or not, if we are to interpret this novel as refuting Barthes, which there is evidence for in how closely Zelu’s life mirrors the Hume Ankara). It is important to note that Okorafor does not agree with Barthes’ theorizing and told The Bookseller: “You can’t separate the author from the work. You can’t separate it and that’s okay.” To not separate this book from the author creates a strange dissonance around the economic politics of the book, upon which much of the plot hinges. Zelu’s economic success changes her life, and she has fantastical experience after fantastical experience because she is rich. While the book gestures at the occasional critical comment of the wealthy characters, ultimately the rich white guys are good. Only in science fiction is such a world possible.

The cover of Death of the Author promises “the future of storytelling is here.” While the novel does not quite live up to the idea, this book demonstrates Okorafor’s range as an artist. The economic plotline of the novel leaves something to be desired in our current moment, but this layered text will leave interested readers with much to discuss.

Reference: Okorafor, Nnedi. Death of the Author [William Morrow, 2025].

Posted by: Phoebe Wagner is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and climate change.