Afirst anthology of speculative fiction by black writers: 25 stories, 3 novel excerpts, and 5 essays, the oldest piece an 1887 tale of a bewitched vineyard, the majority from this year. Included are a couple of acknowledged classics: Samuel R. Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah,” about the effects on sexual behavior caused by astronauts who are themselves asexual; and Octavia E. Butler’s wrenching masterpiece, “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” about a genetic disease whose victims helplessly mutilate themselves. In an excerpt from the 1931 novel Black No More, George S. Schuyler wonders what would happen if black people simply and easily became white. Derrick Bell imagines alien visitors whose only desire is to depart with all America’s blacks. In W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1920 tale, a comet kills everyone in New York except a poor black man and a rich white woman. Other topics encompass: Adam and Eve, vampires, music, modern folk tales, astral traveling, VR, multigenerational starships, female warriors, an American woman caught in the gears of an African civil war, the Ark, Santa, alien contact, UFOs, alien abduction, and robots. The essays are equally fascinating. Delany examines racism and science fiction—it’s largely unconscious but present, he reports. Walter Mosley predicts an imminent explosion of new, black SF writers. Charles R. Saunders becomes generally unhinged about Mike Resnick’s African fables. Paul D. Miller explores music and black identity. And Octavia E. Butler wonders how much reality is too much.

Read. Enjoy. Ponder.

-Kirkus Review

My favorites have to be the Octavia Butler story, the second Nalo Hopkinson story, and Tananarive Due’s story. I’ve now read three Octavia Butler works since I read my first just under a year ago. It’s starting to look like she’s going to be one of my all time favorites, because I’ve really liked all three. (At one point, Orson Scott Card was my favorite author, and so was David Eddings, so getting onto my favorites list isn’t necessarily a mark of distinction or good writing.)

Full review, including of individual stories: http://reading.kingrat.biz/reviews/dark-matter-sheree-thomas ( )

I will preface my ruminations on this book with some long, rambling personal commentary. Please indulge me.

In the last year or so I have started exploring more of the online communities, LibraryThing being only one venue. I have also been reading more and more blogs, beginning with friends' and branching out to group blogs devoted to various social topics, particularly questions of racism and, to a lesser degree, sexism.

In other words, I've been educating myself, which is a very embarrassing admission--to be middle-aged and still pretty clueless--and an obvious sign of my fairly privileged position in society, for all that I was on welfare as a child and spent my formative years in very diverse neighborhoods, unlike my high school years and beyond, which have proven to be quite, quite segregated in retrospect. On the other hand, when I was younger, I prided myself on my flexibility and my ability to get along with other people, which meant that I tended to put the most favorable interpretation on events and people, always bending over to give the benefit of the doubt.

Now that I am older, I feel crankier, more set in my ways, more opinionated, and much less willing to "go along to get along." I am perhaps not as wonderful a companion, because I feel compelled to challenge people's assumptions and various stupidities, even in fairly casual conversation, rather than letting these small things pass. Perhaps this is the result of reflecting on incidents in my own past for a good decade or so, putting together so many small, subtle things, as well as some great big ones, and realizing "no, this person wasn't young and stupid, he was just an asshole," as well as finally really getting comments made by older women when I was still quite young and truly believed there were no real gender differences.

Also, my background is in science, so I have little academic exposure to these social issues and the scholarly discourse about them. That has been just as fascinating as the topic itself. The other fascinating aspect is that many of these blogs overlap into the science fiction and comic book fan communities. Now I have read science fiction and fantasy my whole life, and comic books sporadically, but I have never been part of any fan community, though many of my friends have. So it has been just as amazing to see these new perspectives from a completely different angle about the literature that I am most connected to, and not just the writing itself, but the community--from online publications to author chats and more. I have followed parts of the RaceFail and MammothFail discussions, which overlap a great deal. I have read and enjoyed the works of some of the authors involved in these, so it is certainly interesting to see interpersonal communication from them. It's all been quite educational on so many levels.

So that is one key piece of background information. The other is that I fell away from exploring fantasy and science fiction for a great many years. After devouring endless novels in my youth, I grew sick of the sheer repetition and lack of originality. I was hungry for something that wasn't medieval northern European with magic or essentially modern American in spaceships. I wanted aliens that were alien, not just guys with prosthetic foreheads (sure, the vast majority of hypothetical life out there must be about our size, with bilateral symmetry, vocal communications, etc.), and something other than people riding around on horses in oak forests meeting with elves on so many other worlds. Why not make further north hotter for change? Come on people, how hard is it to change such a simple assumption. I can't say that I was more than vaguely aware that there were no minorities in most of the stories, or gay people for that matter. But I certainly noticed on the rare occasions when they were present, because in addition, the author usually started with a different set of assumptions or cultural models that also helped the novel stand out, and I wanted more of it.

But it never occurred to me to seek out minority authors. Frankly, I didn't spend much time thinking about the authors. I didn't figure out that Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney were African American until very recently, again with the embarrassment. Neither have I read any of their works, though I recognize that they are big names. I haven't read many other luminaries either until pretty recently, thanks to my Hugo quest and the gifts of friends outraged by my ignorance. This is also true of non-American authors--once again, I am ignorant and lazy and should read more beyond my borders.

So I was delighted when I stumbled across Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction From the African Diaspora at the university bookstore discount table. Somebody did the work for me--a whole smorgasboard of African-American authors spanning a hundred years. Like any anthology, it included a range of quality, tone, style, voice, and general flavor. Some I liked a great deal, some I felt an immediate connection with, others I found strange, confusing, disturbing, or otherwise uncomfortable. The book consists of an footnoted introduction by the editor, Sheree R. Thomas, 29 short stories (3 being excerpts from novels), and 5 essays. Authors whose names I recognized: W.E.B. DuBois, Samuel R. Delaney, Octavia E. Butler, Nisi Shawl (but only from reading blogs concurrently with this book), and Steven Barnes. Contributors new to me: Linda Addison, Amiri Baraka, Derrick Bell, Charles W. Chesnutt, Henry Dumas, Robert Fleming, Jewelle Gomez, Akua Lezli Hope, Nalo Hopkinson, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Anthony Joseph, Tony Medina, Paul D. Miller, Walter Mosley, Ama Patterson, Ishmael Reed, Leone Ross, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Charles R. Saunders, George S. Schuyler, Evie Shockley, Darryl A. Smith, and Sheree R. Thomas.

The book was definitely worth the read. I'll be keeping it on my shelves and looking up some of the authors for additional works. And it was successful enough to spawn at least a couple of sequels, as thematic anthologies often do.

Not surprisingly, the stories I found most engaging were narrated by women, because, while I could not necessarily connect with these women of color through personal experiences of racism, I certainly share many of the observations and feelings of being a woman in a sexist society. There are some (many) things that (straight) men just don't think about. And the women in these stories were so warm and real and strong: Lilith, Adam's first wife in "Sister Lilith," Gilda in "Chicago 1927," the nameless narrator in "Can You Wear My Eyes," Dossouye in "Gimmile's Songs," Granny in "Greedy Choke Puppy," I could go on.

Also not surprisingly, more stories had a dystopian tone rather than optimistic, which is to be expected in meditations upon racism, however speculative the medium. Standing out in this direction are "Black No More," "The Space Traders," "The Pretended," Future Christmas," and "Tasting Songs."

Other stories explored more general science fiction and other speculative themes, whose protagonists happened to not be white. I won't continue listing titles though. Go read the book.

The authors drew upon American, African, Caribbean, South American, and probably still other cultures for their inspiration, historical and modern and mythical, creating a vibrant storytelling palette without any sense of repetitiveness. And the science fiction involved some fascinating ideas.

So I mostly liked it, just like other anthologies by multiple authors I have read. And as I said, I will continue to rectify my reading lacunae, following the excellent leads provided in this book.

ETA grammar, punctuation, spelling fixes (blush) ( )

It’s a great book, worth the wait. The one wish I could have for it is that Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler and Charles Saunders wrote new stories for this volume. What each of them, plus Walter Mosely did write were new essays. Of the 29 short stories many are remarkable.

I particularly liked Tananarive Due’s (Steven Barnes’ wife) story “Like Daughter” about a clone child created by a mother with a horrible childhood. Nalo Hopkinson’s “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” is a very erotic, scary, wonderful piece about a sex toy that goes crazy and nearly kills a couple. “The Woman in the Wall” by Steven Barnes takes place in an unnamed African country where the president has just been killed and an American couple and their daughter are sent to a truly frightening refugee camp. ( )

A stupendous collection of sci-fi/speculative fiction all written by authors of African descent (African, African-American, Haitian, Carribean, etc. etc.). Not every story is a winner, but I'd say easly 3/4 of them were great. Also, there is plenty of fiction in here by people I had never read, or people who aren't normally consider sci-fi authors, such as W.E.B. Du Bois. It's a great collection to read all the way through, or to read occasional stories out of. ( )