Home of the Extraterrestrial Brothers: Race and African American Science Fiction

Abstract

The fifteenth century saw the emergence of complex notions of race, essentially coinciding with European exploration of the Americas. Rather than delve into existing material conditions, science fiction prefers to use metaphor to deal with race. Jewish-American writers, from Jack Dann to Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Carol Carr, Harlan Ellison and Avram Davidson, have made significant contributions to science fiction, but their ethnic or racial identity is not evident in the presumed socio-economic location of most of readers, writers, and editors. Most African Americans have been seemingly absent from American science fiction. This chapter explores some of the novels by Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, the two most significant African American science fiction writers from the 1970s. It also considers some of the African American science fiction music and films of the period. The chapter first examines science fiction's attempt to tackle race relations through metaphor or indirectly in novels by Silverberg, Philip K. Dick and Gardner Dozois, as well as in the Planet of the Apes movies.