But in a horror movie, isn’t being a black actor with a rack a double guarantee that you’re going to die?
And “Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones” isn’t anywhere near being the best SF story ever. The concept of the Singers was great, and there were a few other interesting ideas in the story, but they weren’t held together well. And, of course, there were some utterly ridiculous ideas, too: The cops find out the Word almost instantly, but it doesn’t matter, because no cop can possibly say it the right way? Um, no.
What about Dappa from The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson? He was one of the most compelling characters in that series, and certainly the most eloquent. Enoch Root must also have thought so, because he still seems to be alive in the Cryptinomicon.
I dunno about a “grim reality” – fr’crissakes, she grew up in Pasedena. Plus she was bookish, religious, gay, black and had a self-acquired middle class educational background and is one hell of a writer with an excellent storytelling sense.
I’m not sure what draws African-Americans and other blacks into science fiction. Something about seeing the outsider reflected in storytelling is part of it.
I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Steven Barnes or Nalo Hopkinson before today, so thanks for adding their names.
I still get Delany and Zelanzy mixed up, which is probably another reason why I’ve never read Delany extensively.
Sophie Aldred as Ace. If she’s black, she’s doing a damn good job of hiding it. (She was, certainly, offended by the racist attitudes of London in 1963 (in the story “Remembrance of the Daleks”), but she wasn’t, herself, black.)
Exapno. This is my point. To me, her childhood, when she was a girl, wasn’t all that grim despite elements of tragedy. Her mom worked, she lived with her grandmother, they had ths support of relatives and the church, I always got the feeling her reading habits as a child were more diversion than escape. She had a fine mind. In my experience it’s unusal as hell to find a student who is both dyslexic but likes to read.
I guess, to me, when she struggled as an early writer, she was a lonely woman, possibly unaccepting of her sexual orientation, who chose a grim, menial lifestyle in order to write and paid some psychic dues. Writing daily with less than optimal sleep doesn’t sound like an escape to me. Purposeful toil, maybe.
Been a while since I read WoEarthsea or Tombs, but I remember Ged being reddish. More recently, I read LeGuinn’s response to the movie in which she repeated that Ged and his people were not caucasians.
Doom 2099-SPOILERS- It’s Doctor Doom in a cyberpunk future. Bodyguard and expert martial artist Xandra is black. She has a romance with a white character. Nobody ever remarks on it. She may have been descended from the royal family of Wakanda (an African nation that is ruled by the Black Panther), but that was never followed up on. Xandra was killed when Doom took over America. Her lover wroter her name in his own blood and killed himself. Pilgrim, a sort of mercenary, is also black. He eventually also has a romance with a white character. Both romances come naturally based on the characters. Pilgrim was a former chain (or was it called drill?) addict. It’s a nasty synthetic drug which kills users in a decade. The cure is vile (it starts with drinking water laced with nicotine and vomitting for four hours) and takes five years off your life expectancy. Upon discovering chain dealers in Latveria (they had been kept out for years), Pilgrim rushed off to kill them. He was doing great until he lost his footing and was killed.
A letter praised the artist for drawing such realistic black people. It also asked if the artist was black, as no white guy could draw Pilgrim and Xandra. The editor responded that the artist was not black.
This thead discusses the skin colour and ethnicity of the inhabitants of Earthsea: the Kargads - who are a bunch of Aryan window-smashers - apart, most people are a copper-brown like Ged, while Vetch is a darker black-brown. I’m not sure if they’d qualify as African, but they’re definitely not white.
**Sam Jackson. ** We’ve mentioned him as Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels and as the superhero Frozone in The Incredibles and the walking chum in Deep Blue Sea – but he’s been in other sci-fi movies, too.
He was the briefly seen computer programmer in the first Jurassic Park.
He was the doctor/logistician/mathematics prodigy in Sphere
He was the villianous ideological/physical opposite of superhero Bruce Willis in Unbreakable.
He was Minister Garth in Def By Temptation – a mostly black horror flick by black director James Bond III, starring Kadeem Dwayne Wayne Hardison and Bill “Radio Raheem” Nunn.
He was the voice of Rumbo the Dog in the fantasy Fluke.
Bit parts include him as a blind man in* Exorcist III * and a recurring voice character in the annoyingly PC and sadly animated children’s fantasy series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child."
Upcoming is Sam in two animated projects: voicing a black samurai in the far future in a film called Afuro Zamurai, which he’s executive producing (oh, god. PLEASE have a cameo by Samurai Jack’s Phil LaMarr) and as the voice of Fear in something called 2004: A Light Knight’s Odyssey.
I joined this forum to mention Samuel R. Delany, but took my sweet time to post.
Cat gets a mention, but not Lister? Huh.
Charles de Lint definitely has some characters that are black, and I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I am pretty sure Phol does, too (I remember noticing that his future universe was not nearly as straight and white as other writers).
The character Bean, of Ender and the shadow of series, is half-African, on his mother’s side, and it is established he looks African in Greece and Greek in Africa, but this isn’t established until the last book in the series.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is based in Victorian England, and so most of the characters are white. There is, however, a black character: Stephen Black, the butler, plays an important role in the story.
Does anyone remember what human races appear in China Mieville’s New Crobuzon books? (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and The Iron Council). I don’t remember human race being that important, but knowing his political concerns, I’d be a little surprised where there not dark-skinned characters.
There was an excellent independently-produced roleplaying game supplement released a few years ago, Nyambe.
Oh, that reminds me. Speaking of “steaming jungles, bloodthirsty cannibals, and dark gods long forgotten by the civilized races,” I don’t think anyone’s mentioned King Kong yet, have they?
Another one that occurs to me: The Time Machine movie of a few years ago (2001?) had all of the “Eloi” brown-skinned, and the “Morlochs” pale albinos, a reversal from the more typical depictions. I don’t know if the surface-dwellers (or the actors who portrayed them) were specifically African in heritage, though: They looked more like a mix of a variety of ethnicities.
Welcome to the boards. I’m happy you picked this thread for your very first post! Glad you could come, don’t be shy, and mingle, mingle, mingle! Now where’s the pie?
> Another one that occurs to me: The Time Machine movie of a few years ago
> (2001?) had all of the “Eloi” brown-skinned, and the “Morlochs” pale albinos, a
> reversal from the more typical depictions. I don’t know if the surface-dwellers
> (or the actors who portrayed them) were specifically African in heritage, though:
> They looked more like a mix of a variety of ethnicities.
The Eloi were all played by Polynesians in that version of the movie.
