For some reason, I thought that the Greyjoys in the George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series Song of Fire and Ice were black. Re-read the series and then saw it was not so. There is at least, but AFAIK, none of them played a role in the series other than as a bystander.
Does anime count? Bob in Tenjo Tenge is a major character, and is black. He’s a sidekick, but a sidekick to an Asian. There is a black character in Alice 19th who represents America, but can’t remember his name and Google isn’t helpful. In Battle Angel Alita, there is a black female Motorball champion. In Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, the leaders of the space-age Earth, including Alita’s primary enemy, are black (see this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Alita-calendar.jpg ).
All of the major characters in Walter Mosley’s Futureland anthology/series are black, and the story lines are all about race relations in a future dystopia. Yes, that’s the same guy who writes the “Easy Rawlins” mysteries.
IIRC they had cosmetic pills that would let one change one’s skin color to match one’s outfit or mood, so race certainly wouldn’t matter in that society. Or am I thinking of some other story?
The woman in Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, Ellen IIRC, was black, but that wasn’t relevant to the story line.
Jonesy, the genius sonar operator in “The Hunt for Red October”, was race-unspecified in the book but black in the movie - but that might be more military/intelligence porn than SF.
The Summer Islanders are black, and they play a larger part in the latest book. They’re portrayed as a very open, friendly society.
She may have been mentioned, but what about Susannah Dean/Odetta Walker from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower?
That may be because it’s not immediately apparent what an author’s race is, unlike the case with actors. It’s quite possible to read and enjoy a book without having a clue as to the author’s identity. In some genres, the press for a book will bill the author as “a great black writer”, or otherwise emphasize race, but this doesn’t seem to be so much the case in science fiction (a fact which I like to think reflects positively on the ideals of the science fiction community).
Mahlon “Momma” Maxwell, a police officer in Lee Killough’ series of cop novels set in a future Topeka, Kansas. Brilliant guy, but he will drive you crazy.
Menolly’s always depicted as a white redhead in Pern coverart. But speaking of Pern…
Pretty sure it’s mentioned in at least one book (White Dragon?) that MasterHarper Robinton is dark. I’ve always pictured him as black, at any rate.
> Interesting that the thread has gone this far without a mention of Samuel R.
> Delany.
DocCathode writes:
> I kept forgetting to look up the author of Stay Black And Die.
It’s a play by Addena Sumter-Freitag, although I never heard of it before and only know that by Googling on the title this very minute. What does that have to do with my comment about Delany? I don’t see any relationship. Furthermore, is the play Stay Black and Die science fiction, fantasy, or horror? If not, have we transitioned to talking about any literary work with black characters or creators?
Perhaps he thought Delany wrote the play. He’s writing a memoir with that title. That’s a shortened version of an old defiant saying in African-American culture… the full quote is, “I don’t have to do a goddamn thing except stay black and die!”
Mickey Smith in the new Doctor Who has the dubious distinction of being the Doctor’s first black companion (at least in the TV shows, I don’t know about the audio dramas and novelizations).
Other British stuff in the right approximate timeframe: Gerry Anderson’s CGI remake of Captain Scarlet has the same racial mix as the original marionette version (Lieutenant Green and Melody Angel are black, Harmony Angel is Asian).
The BBC’s atrocious Invasion: Earth in 1998 included one black actor, playing a computer genius/linguistics type who was trying to talk to the aliens instead of machine-gunning them like the (white) military types were doing. I think he ended up walking into the aliens’ extra-dimensional construct in an attempt to make contact, and never being seen again, though …
Also in 1998, Idris Elba played a lead character in the Ultraviolet mini-series, and made it all the way to the end.
The 1999 post-apocalyptic mini-series The Last Train included one black actor (Treva Etienne) and three Asians (Amita Dhiri, Sacha Dhawan, Dinita Gohil). Can’t remember which of them lives, I’m afraid.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s works contain black characters.
In her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter’s one of Richard’s bodyguards is black–I think his name is Jamil. I’m pretty sure that there are other minor but possibly recurring characters who are black, they just are mentioned too slightly to cause me to remember names.
In her Meredith Gentry, Faerie series, one of the male harem guarding/surrounding Meredith is black–but I can’t be sure of the name of the character, maybe Doyle?
I think the evil voodoo priestess from The Laughing Corpse was black.
Yes, it’s Doyle, but he’s not black-person black; he’s really black, like he was “carved from ebony”. I don’t think his facial features are ever implied to have an African cast, either. He’s Sidhe, not human after all. IIRC either his skin or his hair or both has a faint rainbow sheen to it as well.
Which would make him the Stay Black And Die guy .Delany spoke about his memoirs and that saying in an interview with a local paper a few years ago. Here we go Sex, Race, And Outer Space
