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Editorial

Editorial – Winter 2026

Kehkashan Khalid

Word Count: 425 | Reading Time: 2 min

Humor in SFF is hard to pull off. There’s satire that could be subtle and well done, but then you veer into slapstick and you never know how that’s going to land! What’s worse, it often isn’t even taken seriously within the SFF world (unless you’re Terry Pratchet or Douglas Adams).
  • Funny how we have subsets within subsets that do not take one another seriously. For the ‘literary’ world SFF is the outsider, and for the SFF world, humor is often the outsider. Enough! I say. 
Can you imagine my delight when I discovered such wonderfully whimsical and, often, outright hilarious stories in our slush pile? Of course, the prose, quality, and cleverness of the writing also eclipsed all the others. But the most refreshing thing about them was the way I caught myself smiling or laughing while reading. To be fair, as of late, things have happened in the world that make our hearts heavy, and don’t all of us need a little dose of funny? In this issue let us take you on a light-hearted journey that is sure to make you smile as much as it makes you think.  We’ll start with the end of the world and a little bird who saves it. Then we’ll leap into a story that could be told around a fire, about a little princeling of the wind who falls from the sky. And then we’ll take a pause and a breath and maybe become somber once more as we climb the painful wheel of life with a profound and beautiful story about Death falling in love. 
  • Because happiness is best served tempered with sadness. 
And then we’ll end with laughter once more as a boss and his recruit try to figure out the fishy nature of a fairy-backed business.  I maintain (without any proof to offer) that it is easier to make people cry with your writing than it is to make people laugh. And what’s more, light-hearted stories can make you feel heavy things too! 
  • Are those tears in your eyes as you read these stories? I hope they are of joy as much as they are of empathy and understanding. 
So, a hearty kudos to these writers who bring us a little bit of both. I’ll end on a wise note by the OG SFF writer J.R.R. Tolkien, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” 

Word Count: 425 | Reading Time: 2 min

Kehkashan is a visual artist and writer from Karachi. She can’t function without a sense of community or a cup of coffee. She can currently be found in Jeddah, working on her first novel, spending time with her three young children, and searching for calm in the midst of chaos. You can see her in action at www.instagram.com/artworkbykehkashan.

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