We Boldly Go
A few things to note:
1) October is Black Speculative Fiction Month thanks to authors (and so much more) Milton J. Davis and Balogun Ojetade. For the love of Pam Grier, dive in!
2) THE BLACK FANTASTIC is a term I first heard from author & poet Gerald L. Coleman and it’s stayed on a high shelf with me ever since. I’m not sure if he coined it, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Dude’s brilliant.
3) When people ask why the fantastic fascinates me more than the general “literary” pursuits, I answer simply: I learn more about the world through my imagination than anything else. As a child, I learned an astronomer’s patience in imagining dust motes lit by sunbeams were parts of miniature solar systems. I saw firsthand how magnets were things of science and magic. I likely experimented with too many ways to gain superpowers, and as lovely as school was, imagination proved vital to explaining to small me (a teeny human dropped into a concept so huge it was known worldwide as “Life”) an even more puzzling range of interactions: people.
Those connections between make-believe and reality are extremely important. With our lives moving at blinding speeds, change—be it sociological, technological, or systemic—is no longer a gradual or viral thing but an overnight mutation. If art--be it writing, music, cinema, whatever--does nothing else, it slows us enough to see life’s pieces in action.
That slowing is extremely important to me as (1) a writer, (2) a Black writer (because that crown carries distinctions), and as (3) someone born and raised in Detroit, a city which is sci-fi. Like almost any Black writer, I write to give voice. Deeper still: to remind people of the inherent power they’re gifted with by merely existing. The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan, my adventure novel where Black folks save the planet over and over with little to zero credit—basically the Black experience—was all about the efforts to resist swimming in evil even if life’s pool was thick with it. That novel’s sequel, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe, existed solely as a tribute to the restorative glory of creation. Black sci-fi, fantasy, or horror is rarely just shiny ships, pew pew, pointy ears on aliens, elves, eldritch creatures, or slow-walking knife wielders. Sheree Renée Thomas’s story collection Nine Bar Blues has the feel of dropping the phonograph needle precisely on a track needed to smooth out the day; Milton Davis’s Muscadine Wine is the Twilight Zone via your grandma’s front porch. The book bottles fireflies and lightning till the brain crackles. When Kwame Mbalia edited the Black Boy Joy anthology, he knew the title had done half the work, no need for embellishments. These three examples—five if you include mine—entertain but also make sure a reader is fed, is loved, is rested, and is ready to bring their power to bear for everything plus whatever.
Some like to say that after the success of Disney’s Black Panther film, people, especially Black people, were ready for The Black Fantastic (an vast umbrella which has grown to cover Black imaginative power no matter where it’s found on the planet), but the truth is we were always here, both as consumers and artists. George Clinton and P Funk. James Brown as the original unstoppable funk cyborg. Mavis Staples and Minnie Ripperton weaving fantasies. Earth Wind and Fire dropping mythology. Tananarive Due, Octavia Butler, and the queen Toni Morrison showing us where to find the horrors and how to creep past them. So many offerings straight from the cosmos we could practically pick any jewel at random and be amazed. So much music. So many wonderful films. So. Many. Books.
I absolutely love The Brothers Jetstream and Afro Puffs. They’re stories I would have read over and over when I was growing up to see who I became each time. And I could (by the end of this sentence will) mention a long list of creators of the Black Fantastic who bring that same transformative energy to everything they do, who know the power in, “Baba, tell me a story.” Minister Faust. Dedren Snead. Kiini Ibura Salaam. Eugen Bacon. Brandon O’Brien. Brent Lambert. Maurice Broaddus. Nalo Hopkinson. Karen Lord. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. Nicole Kurtz. As a Detroiter I gotta mention Michigan’s own Keith Owens, DK Gaston, and Denise Crittendon. Fantasy? Tatiana Obey. Multiverse? Micaiah Johnson. Horror straight through the marrow? Zin Rocklyn. All contemporary writers. All easily found. All aware that the Black Fantastic does more than say we are here. For the science fiction crowd, even more than we are in the future. Art must say to those experiencing it, You are the future. You are the galactic motion toward the better. If that future is in an ancient past with dragons, so be it. If it’s thousands of years ahead across thousands of planets, the Black Fantastic nods and says “But of course.” If our art drops us into a dark place and gives one command, “Survive,” there’s no horror that can possibly extinguish our light.
The Black Fantastic is hope and dreams and love and laughs. It is fear revealed not as an unstoppable monster but an inevitability to be conquered. Doesn’t matter if a creator’s proclivities are to imagine themselves as a starship captain, goddess, wizard or demon, the Black imagination draws power from the deepest core of the universe to the tips of our fros, puffs, waves, twists (even, for the follicly-challenged like me, our fonky bald heads), and uses those works to help create who we want to be on an individual and societal level. Transformative power, hopefully, can make us, quite simply, who we are. For this brief, exquisite time on Earth, there’s no more joyous journey than that.