Another Sunday, another Game of Thrones, and one thing is certain–it’s hard out there for a Lannister.
GOT- “Walk of Punishment”
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Author Archives: The Disgruntled Haradrim
GOT- Valar Dohaeris- “All Men Must Serve”
All men must serve. So begins Sunday’s return to Westeros and the lands beyond the Narrow Sea in HBO’s grimdark fantasy epic, A Game of Thrones. This season is based on George RR Martin’s A Storm of Swords, book 3 in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Aptly named, the episode spends a great deal of time telling us the fate of would be kings, rulers and queens to come. As usual, spoilers and then some.
Men in Black: A Lynching in Steampunk
Men in Black, my contribution to the recently published STEAMFUNK Anthology, explores the darker side of the Victorian and Progressive Era, a minor Steampunk tale (no airships, corsets or zombies) about a lynching, the arrival of a mysterious stranger, his fantastic machines and the fate of a small town called Blackwood.
Oh Come All Ye White Saviors
Last week, Salon magazine’s David Sirota penned an article titled, “Oscar Loves a White Savior.” In it, Sirota noted that “If a movie features white people rescuing people of color from their plight, odds are high an Oscar will follow”–singling out current Oscar contender Lincoln and showing ten others in the past three decades that have done much the same. On some sites, and even CNN, the article was met with surprise, shock and (of course) spasms of denial. However, if anyone is unaware of the white savior motif, which has become a Hollywood staple, it’s only because of its troubling normalcy.
Black Empire: George Schuyler, Black Radicalism and Dieselpunk
Sometime in the 1930s, a black journalist is kidnapped in Harlem by the charismatic Dr. Henry Belsidius, leader of the Black Internationale–a shadowy organization determined to build a Black Empire and overthrow the world of white racial hegemony with cunning and super science. Journalist George S. Schulyer’s fantastic tale was written in serials in the black Pittsburgh Courier between 1936 and 1938 under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. It quickly found a loyal following among African-American readers, who saw in Dr. Belsidius and the Black Internationale a heroic, sci-fi tale of black nationalism, triumph and race pride. The newspaper was surprised at the serials’ growing popularity, and pushed for more–sixty-two in all. Yet no one was as surprised at the story’s success than George Schulyer who, disdaining what he saw as the excesses of black nationalism and race pride, had written Black Empire as satire.
Phenderson Djèlí Clark 