I went to see Chronicles of Riddick at the dollar theatre the other day. I actually liked it a lot. I mean, it wasn’t spectacular, but it was better than I was expecting. It was goofy and over-the-top, but that seemed appropriate. It reminded me a lot of the old-school science-fiction movies and tv shows that I grew up on. There was a real throw-back quality to it, I think. And I honestly think Vin Diesel is a really good actor. I think he’s just waiting for the right writer and director to really bring him up to the next level. And the ending of that movie was pretty sweet too, with him sitting on that thrown and the whole army bowing down before him and shit. Great stuff.
Anyway, at some point during the night, I got to wondering whether there were any popular science fiction authors who were black. Cause there are plenty of black characters, actors and fans. Offhand, the only sci-fi creation by a black guy I could think of was Kool Keith’s Black Elvis / Lost in Space album - which is certainly a masterpiece, but not exactly mainstream sf.
Looking around online has been of surprisingly little help though. All I could come up with was an Amazon listmania result, Ultimate Black Sci Fi, which only offered up the name of one black sci fi author, Octavia E. Butler. Then I found some college paper online called “The African American Science Fiction Character in Literature, Television, and Film.” Over all, it’s a pretty boring paper, but sifting through it, I did manage to pluck out a few more names of people who I presume are black sci-fi authors: Steven Barnes, Walter Mosley, and Samuel R. Delany. But those are the only ones I can find any mention of really. Does anybody out there know of other ones? That is, popular or semi-popular black authors/creators of science-fiction/fantasy.
In other sci-fi news, I bought two new Philip K. Dick books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was adapted into Bladerunner) and The Philip K Dick Reader, which has a bunch of short stories. Some of these short stories are cool and some are lame. And then a bunch are just mediocre. I think his novels are a lot better, based on the few stories I’ve read so far. So far, Do Androids Dream… is really awesome, and I’m only a few chapters in. I can see why it was the first of his books to be made into a major movie, even already. Anyway, speaking of which, I have to go do some reading…
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