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In the Afro-futurist fiction of Walter Mosley and Octavia Butler, the heroes are often at the mercy of the system, writes blogger Christopher Bradley. That isn't so much the case for Cyberpunk's outsider heroes, he points out. More »
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Spinning out of an off-hand comment at Comic-Con from Grant Morrison about how "artists tend to draw white guys," comic critic and commentator David Brothers offers up an insightful essay about what science fiction can represent with regards to black cultural identity. More »
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Rapper Kanye West premiered his space opera-themed Glow In The Dark tour last night in Seattle, and he may have single-handedly reinvented hip hop performance for a science fictional era. Rapping alone, in front of screens that showed whirling backgrounds of space porn, he navigated through the story of an "astronaut on a mission to bring creativity back to Earth," says the L.A. Times. More »
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Everybody is YouTubing Barack Obama's March 18 speech about racial politics partly because it was one of the most nuanced political speeches in recent memory, but also because he played the futurist card. He talked about his own racially-mixed family, and speculated about how mixed-race community and people represent the future of the United States. He described several ways that racial reconciliation of the future could begin on a foundation of mixed-race identity. What do you think of this style of futurism? By answering, you can help an undergrad at the University of Arkansas, who wrote in to pose a question about Afrofuturism. More »
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