Posts tagged “Science Fiction

Frequencies, a Fiction Album Is Here

They’re all special to me but something a little different this time. Just between you and me, there will be a damn fine deal on this one next week, but for those who hate waiting, you can hear the opening now.  And if you absolutely loathe it, you can get your own copy from a secure site, complete with a bonus track.

Cover Art by Kelly U. Johnson


Broken Fevers Virtual Book Launch

To register for the upcoming book launch, 3.3.21, please see the Google Form here.


New Review of Blueprints for Better Worlds – Highly Recommended

It’s been a weekend of good news. Not to be lost in the celebration is this new review from the folks over at the TLR. Lots in this one to brighten my day: The writing is complex and lyrical. The world building is dramatic, as dystopian worlds tend to be, but also believable and described so well it is not difficult to imagine. And the best bit by far: It is truly inspirational.

Check out more from the view at the link above and Blueprints for Better Worlds at the usual suspects as well as via various indie bookstores including Tombolo Books (signed copies) and many more you can find here.


Blueprints for Better Worlds

Paperback and Ebook Now Available

Cover of Blueprints for Better Worlds

We’ve all encountered delay during these interesting times. So while full availability waits, there’s been progress. My latest novella is now available in ePub and PDF here. And the paperback and Mobi ebook are available on Amazon.


Evolution Review

Evolution’s first review is in: Apart from a story arc that spans the best part of 200 hundred years, there’s one particular aspect that stands out most clearly about Evolution. Johnson writes hope into her work. She builds it in, gently, quietly, without fanfare. It isn’t obvious at first, just a soft nudge here and there—in the face of gassed populations, dengue fever and total injustice, you think you’re mistaken at first. Around every page turn, you’re expecting disaster, and there are enough of those to justify the lack of belief you have that hope could even be a thing in such a world. But keep reading.For that, Johnson is currently my total writing hero….


What’s in a Name? “Afrofuturism” & the Power/Challenge of Naming

Admittedly, I have a thing about names. I’ll correct you as many times as it takes before you say mine correctly. I’ll listen to you say your own and try to match it. My undergrad thesis focused on correctly contextualizing the work of Octavia Butler within genre, subgenre and ‘canon’. You see I just put canon in quotes so it shouldn’t surprise you that I had some of my own thoughts about naming a storybundle I curated, Afrofuturism. If you don’t know, there’s a bit of a discussion about the validity and context of this term as well as the power dynamics and agency of naming artistic moments/movements. Instead of rehashing said discussion, I’ll share what interested me as of late: what other authors in the bundle thought about the term. I asked them to define it and to let me know about alternatives they prefer. So without further ado, peep this:

Ayize Jama-Everett, author of The Liminal People:

Guh!!  Yeah, always the landmine of BS to get into.  All I can say is that when I first started tooling around on forums and stuff in the mid-nineties, I found the Afrofuturism listserv.  It was the only place online where I got to talk about black stuff without it being predicated on some Black (Not a typo) to Africa type ish. It was through that forum I learned about DDC (Deep Dick Collective, Pomo Afro Homos), the works of Kodwo Eshun, John Akomfrah, Greg Tate, and my friend from those days until now, Nalo Hopkinson.  It was a community for me, not a movement.  I should also say it was a community I sometimes pissed off and didn’t always agree with.  But that’s what real community is, a dynamic and sometimes contradictory place.

I think a better descriptor of my work might be Speculative Fiction, but I acknowledge something gets lost in that, namely the fact that race is a feature, if not the main feature of a lot of my work.  I also can hear the arguments that the Afro in Afrofuturism, ironically erases the African element and can be seen as regressive or even insulting.  I’m not really sure what the proper response to all of it is. Labels, by their nature, can be both liberating and restrictive.  Afrofuturism, as a label, hasn’t squared that circle.  But my personal connection to it will always be liberatory.

Nicole Givens Kurtz, author of Silenced:

Afrofuturism is a speculative asthetic that centers Africans from the mainland and the disaposra in creative areas of music, film, art, and writing. 

Andrea Hairston, author of Will Do Magic for Small Change

I’m not big on genre definitions, so I wouldn’t define it.
I like hanging in the borderlands, in the fuzzy liminal mappings of stories.
I’m more interested in what works to tell a particular story than in the set of protocols that might be used to categorize it. That said, all of my future speculations are African inflected. I shine my little light through the prism of the diaspora.

Nisi Shawl, author of Filter House

My definition of Afrofuturism is “an aesthetic projecting African-derived culture and values into the future, often with a strong ‘own voices’ component.”  That’s the definition I used in the lecture I recently gave on the topic for the King County Public Library System.  I’ll add that the “future” may be chronological, as in years away, or it may be technological—see Wakanda.  The other term I use is AfroRetrofuturism.  Retrofuturism is another name for steampunk; it focuses on how steampunks blend elements of the past and present or future achievements.  AfroRetrofuturism centers African-derived culture and values in that blend.  My novel Everfair is AfroRetrofuturist.  So is K. Tempest Bradford’s story “The Copper Scarab,” which appears in the anthology Clockwork Cairo.

Ivor Hartmann, editor of AfroSF

Afrofuturism seems quite well defined already, so for me to do so would be fairly presumptuous. I have an immense respect for the Afrofuturist movement from even before it was named. It has done so much for so many to create a much-needed space that didn’t compromise or white-wash unique creative output. That said, for the burgeoning African SF scene I do think we need our own identity that works for us in the same way. It has been all too easy for academics, reviewers, etc., to slot us into Afrofuturism and think no more about it. This is why in the last few years we have collectively, for the most part, come to prefer Africanfuturism. However, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism are not, and cannot be, mutually exclusive. This is why I have no problems with AfroSF being in this Afrofuturist storybundle. We still have so much work to do to re/claim space in a field that is still largely dominated by western-centric whiteness. We can’t let labels get in the way of our unity and forward progress, together, uncompromised. We are always stronger together than we ever have been apart. In an ideal world we’d all just be Science Fiction writers, but this is not the world we live in.

 

 


Evolution Now Available in Afrofuturism Storybundle

The second book in the Revolution duology is out. As a special bonus to readers, for the next 3 weeks the ebook is available exclusively in an Afrofuturism storybundle. What’s the bonus? For $15 you receive Evolution, Revolution and EIGHT other Afro/African Futurism titles including  a Tiptree winner, modern classic and Pan-African anthology of speculative fiction featuring African authors. You can find all of them right here.

Stay tuned for the print edition release in early June

 


R/evolution on the Radio

Heads up. Radio, my romantic favorite, is still out there and this week “How the Carters Got Their Name” tripped across its waves. It was featured on the Black Tribbles show’s inaugural Octavia City  episode, a showcase of all stories and topics, Afrofuturistic. Check out it here


New Smoketown Review

Dear Author has just reviewed, Smoketown and here’s a bit of the reviewer had to say:

“The characters each had not exactly a secret, but maybe a small mystery behind them, which are  first hinted at and then revealed in each individual’s “song” which is played in the main symphony. I say “song” not because every character in the book was singing, but because at times the writing felt very musical and very passionate to me .
 . . I truly did feel that the city of Leodaire was a living breathing thing in this book; the city which was still hurting from the traumatic event of its past and which finally started healing at the end of the book.
 I really loved how the hope and darkness are both present in this story and that hope eventually prevails.”

The full review is available here.


Book Excerpt up at Shewired

Shewired has posted an excerpt of Smoketown on their site. You can check it out here.


R/evolution and Smoketown Ebooks Up at Weightless Books

Just in time for Fat Tuesday, both novels are up on the wonderful Weightless Books , home of some amazing writing and all is DRM-free! For more about Weightless check out this PW article


2012 Readings (First Draft)

I’ll be reading at the  International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts on March 23rd with a group of great writers including Rebecca Rowe, Nick DiChario and Will Ludwigsen. Kelly Link and China Mieville are the author guests of honor this year so should be a great one.

And in August I have the great pleasure of reading with Jeffrey Ford at KGB Bar’s Fantastic Fiction series, curated by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. August 15th, 8pm, KGB Bar, Manhattan.

I’ll update more as more dates are added.


Short Movie for R/evolution up at YouTube

A new short film of The Measure of a Man, a chapter of R/evolution premiered at the L Train theater this past weekend and can now be found up at YouTube here

If you’ve got 4.5 minutes, there are worse ways to spend it.


World Fantasy 2011 Reading

Next week I’m off to WFC 2011 in San Diego.  I’ll be launching the new mosaic novel  R/evolution (due out 11.11.11) . My reading is @2:30.

Drop in after the Year in Fantasy panel with Datlow/ Hartwell/ Guran/Strahan, see me,  and then on to Neil Gaiman’s interview. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

No? OK how about the Beautiful Monstrosities panel or Kapur  or Grabien readings, then me, then Maureen McHugh. Still no?

I guess I’ll just leave it to you then. Explore your options.

 


R/evolution Now Available



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People are starving, biogenetic adaptations are prevalent amongst the privileged, and the poor are being ground to a sharp and dangerous point. This is the future US where in the struggle for survival citizens are pushed to the breaking point as relationships start to fracture along the lines of class and race. These are stories of the leaders and the followers, the victims, heroes, and the everyday people caught in history’s wake, chief among them Dr. Ezekiel Carter, a genius in his field who decides to offer genetic reparations to those being left behind. In this world, what will become of the people at the fringes and more than that of humanity itself?

Print book available at IndieBound and Amazon. Ebook available at Weightless Books, iBookstore, Sony, B&N and Amazon.

 


R/evolution is Coming

People are starving, biogenetic adaptations are prevalent amongst the privileged, and the poor are being ground to a sharp and dangerous point.  This is the future US where in the struggle for survival citizens are pushed to the breaking point as relationships start to fracture along the lines of class and race. These are stories of the leaders and the followers, the victims, heroes, and the everyday people caught in history’s wake, chief among them Dr. Ezekiel Carter, a genius in his field, who decides to offer genetic reparations to those being left behind. In this world, what will become of the people at the fringes and of humanity itself?

 

R/evolution (Book One), a novel-in-stories, will be released in ebook and print this Fall.


Smoketown

Smoke Town Novel

The city of Leiodare is unlike any other in the post-climate change United States. Within its boundaries, birds are outlawed and what was once a crater in Appalachia is now a tropical, glittering metropolis where Anna Armour is waiting.

An artist by passion and a factory worker by trade, Anna is a woman of special gifts. She has chosen this beautiful, traumatized city to wait for the woman she’s lost, the one she believes can save her from her troubled past and uncertain future.

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