LITERARY EXPLORATIONS INTO THE RADICAL, HOPEFUL RACIAL FUTURES IMAGINED BY SCIENCE FICTION

Essays by Marleen S. Barr, Gerry Canavan, Grace L. Dillon, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Matthew Goodwin, Edward James, De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Malisa Kurtz, Robin Anne Reid, Lysa M. Rivera, Patrick B. Sharp, and Lisa Yaszek

Black and Brown Planets embarks on a timely exploration of the American obsession with color in its look at the sometimes contrary intersections of politics and race in science fiction. The contributors, including De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Edward James, Lisa Yaszek, and Marleen S. Barr, among others, explore science fiction worlds of possibility (literature, television, and film), lifting blacks, Latin Americans, and indigenous peoples out from the background of this historically white genre.

This collection considers the role of race and ethnicity in our visions of the future. The first section emphasizes the political elements of black identity portrayed in science fiction from black America to the vast reaches of interstellar space. In the next section, analysis of indigenous science fiction addresses the effects of colonization, helps discard the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovers ancestral traditions in order to adapt in a post-Native-apocalyptic world. Likewise, this section explores the affinity between science fiction and subjectivity in Latin American cultures from the role of science and industrialization to the effects of being in and moving between two cultures. By infusing more color into this otherwise monochrome genre, Black and Brown Planets imagines alternate racial galaxies in which people of color determine human destiny.

Isiah Lavender III, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is an assistant professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Race in American Science Fiction.