Tag Archives: African-Americans

“A Space Knight Like Rom:” Hip Hop and Science Fiction Fantasy

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bishop-doomUnlikely Mix: Rappers, Dragons and Fantasy. So read an article this past March in the Wall Street Journal. The story was on a new campaign strategy by HBO to reach out to a more “urban” demographic, by putting out a Hip Hop and reggaeton album craftily named “Catch the Throne” (see what they did there?). I like Hip Hop. I like dragons and fantasy. But something about this entire affair and the way it was promoted had me feeling “some kinda way.” Cue the Rains of Castamere.

*parts of this write-up were recycled from an earlier posted 2012 blog. opening art: emcees MF Doom and Bishop Nehru

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Searching for Lando

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Lando-FlamewindCoverChatter in the geek-o-sphere for the past few months says that nearly every major character in the Star Wars universe is going to return to the new JJ Abrams flicks, starting with Episode VII. Mark Hamill is to reprise his role as an older Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford is coming back as a grizzled Han Solo and Carrie Fisher will be a more mature Princess Leia. Even the Wookie and the droids gonna be in it. Yet the one character that doesn’t seem to be making it back is the one with the baddest name–Lando Calrissian. So far, despite fan requests, it doesn’t seem that actor Billy Dee Williams has been invited to reprise his role as the daring rogue. But how can this be, when Lando Calrissian saved my young geek life?

Art from book cover of Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, by L. Neil Smith

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Radical Dirigibles- Black Socialists, Anarchists, Reformers and Airships

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black CPUSA“Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices.”–H.G. Wells

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Men in Black: A Lynching in Steampunk

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Steampunk_Pocketwatch_by_purpleglovezMen 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.

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Black Empire: George Schuyler, Black Radicalism and Dieselpunk

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blackempire3232011Sometime 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.

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