A Far Out Fantastic Site

The Black Panther movie adaptation, based on the Marvel comic book of the same name, has been getting more recognition than I recently thought and that’s definitely a good thing! It is probably the big budget sci fi movie that stars black characters and made by a black director (Ryan Coogler) that has broken the most records. It definitely shows that people of colour are becoming acknowledged for their work in speculative genres. It’s bringing to light the sci fi/fantasy community among people of colour, breaking the too long-time impression of the genre being a white person’s. Along with that, it’s also bringing to light the speculative movement known as Afrofuturism and so making the movement less marginalised. Afrofuturism is the intellectual movement of scientific and technological speculation by people of African culture. That’s probably too simple of a definition. However, an article at BBC.com entitled “Afrofuturism:Why black science fiction can’t be ignored” explains it rea...

Credit: Pixabay.com This weekend saw the release of the Black Panther movie which I plan to see Monday (since that’s a holiday). That is, if I can find a copy of the 1970 issue, number 74, of Avengers that co-stars the African super hero and read it by tomorrow. I just finished reading the previous issue that I purchased a couple of weeks ago not knowing it was going to be a two-parter. I don’t like to simultaneously watch a movie and read a book (including comic book) involving the same character since doing so causes me to confuse the storylines. But the movie, Black Panther , is perfect timing—February is Black History Month. It’s great to see more science fiction stories featuring black characters, since the genre has traditionally been very white. There are a lot of great African-American sci fi and fantasy writers and not just in recent times. There are ones going as far back as, believe it or not, the beginning of the 20 th century with W...

This week has been one of tragic loss of two people in science fiction and fantasy, and also commemorates a tragic loss that occurred more than 40 years ago. As many of you already know, we lost former rock star David Bowie and  Harry Potter  actor Alan Rickman. It's easy to see how Rickman relates to the world of sci fi/fantasy but, unless you're a Bowie fan, it's perhaps not as known how Bowie relates to it (unless you happen to be a fan of the '80s movie,  Labyrinth , which I'm not although Bowie's acting in it was good). But Bowie produced many sci fi-related songs and albums, his most popular being  Ziggy Stardust  (which was also a movie he starred in) and another that is perhaps not as popular but said by Westword.com to be very good is  Low .  David Bowie on guitar as Ziggy Stardust Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Alan Rickman of the  Harry Potter  films Photo Credit: David Shankbon/Wikimedia Commons A loss that was ...

What's the ideal Christmas present for a hardcore science fiction/fantasy reader to open up? Maybe it's a newly discovered sci fi/fantasy story but not necessarily by today's greatest authors such as Ben Bova and Corey Doctorow. Perhaps it's not even by any of yesterday's greatest yet today's classics such as Heinlein. It may be by someone who was never that well known to write in the genre yet who had a major influence in U.S. history, particularly on the Civil Rights movement. The ideal Christmas present for a hardcore reader of sci fi may be a story by W.E.B. Du Bois who actually wrote more science fiction than probably most of us speculative fiction geeks would ever have thought. I was so amazed when I found out about his most recently uncovered story, that I had to do an article on it at Examiner.com. Why the Christmas present analogy? You might find the answer in the article which I encourage you to read. Photo Credit: Carl Van Vechten/Wikimedia Comm...