Do Black People Really Read This Stuff? II: Science Fiction, Steamfunk & More!

Do Black People Really Read This Stuff? II: Science Fiction, Steamfunk & More!

 “Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.” – Rod Serling

In our first installment of the Do Black People Really Read This StuffSeries, we explored Fantasy Fiction. This time, we examine Science Fiction and the Black contributors to it.

And yes, there are many Black readers – and writers – of great Science Fiction.

And just why do we read this oeuvre of weird and wonderous?

We read Science Fiction to enjoy a world that is not our own; to live someone’s life tangentially and vicariously. We read Science Fiction to be informed, to be entertained and to escape, for indeed, reading is an escapist hobby, but Science Fiction reading even more so – we escape out of our own worlds into places and times that do not exist, existed in a different way,  or never will exist at all.

Reading Science Fiction is the ultimate interactive experience because when you read it, your brain begins to build a world from the ground up.

Science Fiction stories are set in worlds that are unknown and disparate to us, and we automatically reorder them. Readers of science fiction have the luxury of extrapolating a positive future or predicting – and hopefully avoiding – negative ones.

Science Fiction is called “the literature of ideas”, and it really is, but those ideas aren’t about fusion or nanotubules; they are the same ideas of racism, love, anger and the human heart in conflict with itself that drive all other stories, but foregrounded and made new.

TO READ THIS ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY, PLEASE CHECK OUT: http://chroniclesofharriet.com/2012/09/20/do-black-people-really-re....