The Black Fantastic: Highlights of Pre-World War II African and African-American Speculative Fiction
Africans, and those of African descent, have not been treated well by speculative fiction, both inside its texts and in real life. Anti-African racism is a fact of life in Western culture, and was even more pronounced before 1945. Not surprisingly, the number of works of speculative fiction written by black writers is low. But…
In Dean Koontz’s latest Odd Thomas book, the apocalypse is all our fault
In the fifth book of Dean Koontz’s bestselling Odd Thomas series, Odd Apocalypse, the end of the world is coming — and it’s overtly political. The novel’s hero, 21 year old fry cook Odd Thomas, mourns the state of society. And the signs of an impending punishment on mankind don’t take him by surprise. “An…
Top 7 Most Metal Science Fiction Premises
Science fiction and heavy metal rub up against each other in many ways. They’re both implicitly concerned with technology — metal has machine rhythms and electric instruments. They both grapple with difficult questions about human nature. And both canons include huge swathes of art that focuses on the grossest, saddest, most desolate subjects available. This…