Afro-Future Females

Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction's Newest New-Wave Trajectory is a 2008 work of feminist SF studies, edited by Marleen S. Barr.

Abstract

"Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr, is the first combined science fiction critical anthology and short story collection to focus upon black women via written and visual texts. The volume creates a dialogue with existing theories of Afro-Futurism in order to generate fresh ideas about how to apply race to science fiction studies in terms of gender. The contributors, including Hortense Spillers, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, and Steven Barnes, formulate a woman-centered Afro-Futurism by repositioning previously excluded fiction to redefine science fiction as a broader fantastic endeavor. They articulate a platform for scholars to mount a vigorous argument in favor of redefining science fiction to encompass varieties of fantastic writing and, therefore, to include a range of black women’s writing that would otherwise be excluded. Afro-Future Females builds upon Barr’s previous work in black science fiction and fills a gap in the literature. It is the first critical anthology to address the "blackness" of outer space fiction in terms of feminism, emphasizing that it is necessary to revise the very nature of a genre that has been constructed in such a way as to exclude its new black participants. Black science fiction writers alter genre conventions to change how we read and define science fiction itself. The work’s main point: black science fiction is the most exciting literature of the nascent twenty-first century."

Publications

• 2008: Ohio State University Press, ISBN-13: 9780814210789. ISBN: 0814210783

Contents

• Preface: "All At One Point" Conveys the Point, Period: Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over - ix

Introductions

"Dark Matter" Matters

• Imaginative Encounters / Hortense J. Spillers - p.3
• Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0 / Mark Dery - p.6
• "On the Other Side of the Glass": The Television Roots of Black Science Fiction / Marleen S. Barr - p.14

Essays

The Blackness of Outer Space Fiction as Blast(Off) from the Past

• Becoming Animal in Black Women's Science Fiction / Madhu Dubey - p.31
• "God Is Change": Persuasion and Pragmatic Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed Novels / Ellen Peel - p.52
• Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson Revisit the Reproduction of Mothering: Legacies of the Past and Strategies for the Future / Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan - p.75
• Close Encounters between Traditional and Nontraditional Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Gayl Jones's Corregidora Sing the Time Travel Blues Jennifer E. Henton Henton, Jennifer E. 100
• Beyond the History We Know: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Nisi Shawl, and Jarla Tangh Rethink Science Fiction Tradition De Witt Douglas Kilgore Kilgore, De Witt Douglas 119
• Responses to De Witt Douglas Kilgore:
  • Bubbling Champagne Power Trip / Nisi Shawl - p.130
  • "Of Course People Can Fly" / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu - p.131
  • Carla Johnson/Jarla Tangh: A Close Encounter with My Pseudonym / Jarla Tangh - p.132

Stories

Techno/Magic Sistahs Are Not the Sistahs from Another Planet

• The Book of Martha / Octavia E. Butler - p.135
• Double Consciousness / Andrea Hairston - p.151
• Dynamo Hum / Nisi Shawl - p.158
• The Ferryman / Sheree R. Thomas - p.167
• Herbal / Nalo Hopkinson - p.174

Commentaries

Kindred Spirit

• On Octavia E. Butler / Tananarive Due - p.179
• Can a Brother Get Some Love? Sociobiology in Images of African-American Sensuality in Contemporary Cinema: Or, Why We'd Better the Hell Claim Vin Diesel as Our Own / Steven Barnes - p.182
• A Conversation with Samuel R. Delany about Sex, Gender, Race, Writing - and Science Fiction / Samuel R. Delany and Carl Freedman - p.191
• Black "Science Faction": An Interview with Kevin Wilmott, Director and Writer of CSA, The Confederate States of America / Kevin Willmott and Marleen S. Barr - p.236
• Octavia's Healing Power: A Tribute to the Late Great Octavia E. Butler / Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu - p.241

Afterword

The Big Bang: Or, the Inception of Scholarship about Black Women Science Fiction Writers / [[Marleen S. Barr] - p.245

• • Response to the Afterword
  • Connecting Metamorphoses: Italo Calvino's Mrs. Ph(i)NKo and I, Dr. Ph(d)SalvagGlo / Ruth Salvaggio - p.249