You are listening to a Clarkshould magazine podcast. I'm your host and narrator Kate Baker. Welcome to Issue 24 for May 2025.

This is our fourth story for the month. All thanks to your support.

Our story is titled Descent. And is by Wolle-Talabi.

Wolle Talabi is an engineer, writer, and editor from Nigeria.

He is the author of the World Fantasy Award-nominated novel, Shigidi, and the Brasshead of Obalufon.

Da Books, Galanz.

One of the Washington Post Top Ten Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2023, which was also nominated for the Nebula, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards.

His short fiction has appeared in places like Asimov Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine,

Africa risen, and is collected in the books, Convergence Problems, Daw Books, 2024,

and Incomplete Solutions, Luna Press 2019.

He also has been a finalist for the Hugo, BSFA, and Crawford Awards, as well as the Kane Prize for African Writing.

He won the Namo Award for African Speculative Fiction and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

He has edited five anthologies, including the acclaimed African Futurism, an anthology,

and Mother Sound, the Sao Diverse Anthology.

He likes scuba diving, elegant equations, and oddly shaped things.

He currently lives and works in Australia.

So, my dear listener, I hope you can sit back.

Relax and let me tell you a story.

The Ma DiRegi at the temple of the talking drum

say that there is a word in old,

Sautei, the high language of our ancestors,

that when spoken backwards, allows the speaker to fly.

...