Essays

  • The Black Man’s Burden

    The Black Man’s Burden

    It sounds obvious, but it’s worth saying: the world was a very different place back in 1903, pre a couple of World Wars and all their geopolitical ramifications, before meaningful broadcast media, household telephones, petrol-driven cars, CCTV, pop music, space travel, personal computers. And let’s not get started on the internet, smartphones and the cornucopia…… Read more

  • I Thank Whatever Gods There May be

    I Thank Whatever Gods There May be

    It was the ancient Greeks who first coined the idea, and word, ‘icon’ – or eikenai – meaning ‘to seem’ or ‘to be like’, and in so doing captured the symbolism of the religious practices through which supplicants were drawn onto some higher ideal. Their gods – who were in essence their values abstracted –…… Read more

  • Reasons to write

    Reasons to write

    Although my love for writing came late, I think I’d always had a special regard for the power of the written word: the way life – with all its colours and vicissitudes – can be funnelled into the cool, clinical science of grammar and syntax, sentences and spellings; a domain of rules and laws. I…… Read more

  • Why Black Panther is the Movie of the Future

    Why Black Panther is the Movie of the Future

    It’s true – You don’t exactly expect to find your thoughts being drawn to the writings of a dead academic (even a great one) whilst watching a Marvel movie, but if there’s one thing that becomes clear whilst watching Ryan Coogler’s quite frankly epic rendering of the Black Panther mythos, it’s that this is a…… Read more

  • Tales Mama Would Tell

    Tales Mama Would Tell

    Originally published at Fantasy Faction to accompany the press release for Lost Gods… When I was a kid my mother would tell me and my siblings fables, these sort of half made up Nigerian folktales-come-bedtime stories that often began and ended with a fantastical twist. Like the tale of how the sky came to be so…… Read more

  • Book Review: ‘Technologies of the Self’ by Haris Durrani

    Book Review: ‘Technologies of the Self’ by Haris Durrani

    So I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Haris A. Durrani’s debut novella, Technologies of the Self, for Media Diversified. Durrani’s stories, memoirs, and essays have appeared in a variety of publications including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The University of Toronto Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies, The 2014 Campbellian Anthology and…… Read more

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