Customer Reviews

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

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This book will no doubt be required reading for generations to come. Finally a three dimensional globe of fiction that surpasses genre and cliche. Regardless of what it is categorized as; science fiction, future, fantasy, or horror, Dark Matter enlightens, entertains and leaves you wanting more, hence GOOD FICTION by Tananarive Due, Steve Barns, Ocativa E.Butler, Walter Mosely, Jewelle Gomez and more.

The first story by W. E. B. Dubois is the perfect example... this story of a black man and a white woman discovering that they are the only ones living among a massive meteor disaster in the streets of New York begin re-evaluating their roles as black or white, lower class or upper class and begin to see that none of that matters. As the last two humans living on earth, the record is wiped clean of labels and salvaging humanity is the only real issue.

It's a must read, can't put down, tell all your friends about book that will hopefully get the recognition and reward it deserves.

This white guy Iowa boy gets skeptical when confrounted with ethno-centric titles, not to mention ponderous ones. I won't go out of my way to give special attention to anyone based on ethnic heritage. But, it was an SF book in the new section of the library, and I am ALWAYS on the lookout for good, new SF since almost all of the Golden Age boys are dead and most of the new stuff is recycled bug-eyed monsters or Tolkein wannabees.

Some of the authors - Butler, Delany - I knew. Any friend of Dahlgren's is likely to be a friend of mine. Checked it out.

Start to finish, this anthology introduced me to people I would likely never have read - only because I had no idea who they were. Now I have a whole new reading list from authors I met in this collection. I have yet to be disappointed in a novel from any of the authors I met here, and I continue to seek out their work at the library.

Thank you Sheree R. Thomas for putting these works together for me to sample many new-to-me authors of speculative/science fiction.

Will the future include people of color? Do Non-Europeans have fantastic myths from their cultures? If you are a reader of speculative fiction, you will probably answer no to both of the preceding questions. Speculative fiction has mostly ignored everything except the western way of perceiving the world. Many people do not read SF because they see nothing in it that speaks to them. SF seems like a big happy party where only whites are invited.

Now the party crasher has arrived. "Dark Matter" not only bum rushes the party yelling, "We are here and things will never be the same!" It also informs the partygoers that we have always been here.

"Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora" is an important anthology that sends an important message. Sheree R. Thomas has compiled a wonderful collection of SF from all over the African Diaspora. Every aspect of SF is covered in the wonderful tales that are included in this book.

Steven Barnes' "The Woman in the Wall" is the best fiction I read from him. This story is definitely one of the emotional highlights of the anthology. Nalo Hopkinson has two stories and both are excellent. "The Space Traders" by Derrick Bell brings up many important issues concerning the role African Americans play in our society. This book is full on many more examples of thought provoking and emotional fiction.

The essays included in this book will give you a better understanding of racism within the science fiction community and hope for a more inclusive future.

I hope that every SF fan embraces this book.

I have been waiting for someone to put together an anthology of Black Sci-Fi writers for years now! All too often people think that black folks can't write intelligent stories whose characters could be of any color. The world places our writers in a small bubble and we have to fight to break out. This book gives people a taste of the talent of black writers that is, and has been out there. It inspired me to go out and find the books of the the writers I didn't know and also to find other books from the writers I was familiar with. Although it is not this book's fault, there is a down side; some of the writers depicted in DARK MATTER are hard to find or out of print. Maybe with more books out there like this, publishers will realize just how starved the black audience is for talented black writers of any venue and do something about that. I really enjoyed it, you will too and truly... DARK MATTERS!

This is a collection that the literary world needed badly. Typical 'speculative fiction' (encompassing sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and other literary persuasions) often features humanity uniting against common enemies or disasters. But for people of color, the alternative present or near-future utopia/dystopia in any speculative story probably won't be so rosy. Technological advancement, alien contact, or astronomical disasters probably won't eliminate prejudice and inequality, as the writers of African descent collected here show us in consistently hard-hitting ways.

The settings and themes of these short stories are uniformly fascinating and thought-provoking for any intelligent reader. As with any collection of works from various writers, the quality of the stories varies a bit, and this book does have a few bumps in the road that deserve the thumbs-down for heavy-handedness. Examples include the predictable melodrama of 'The Woman in the Wall' by Steven Barnes, or the poorly-plotted conspiracy theories of 'The Space Traders' by Derrick Bell. However, these are minor quibbles, and even these stories contribute to the sheer fascination of this book as a whole.

My favorites include the supremely moving Jazz Age vampire story 'Chicago 1927' by Jewelle Gomez, an outstanding look at the human costs of cloning in 'Like Daughter' by Tananarive Due, the creepy erotic thriller 'Ganger (Ball Lightning)' by Nalo Hopkinson, and the heartbreaking dark fantasy of 'Gimmile's Songs' by Charles Saunders. Of historical interest we have 'Aye, and Gomorrah...' from the master Samuel Delany, the groundbreaking 'The Goophered Grapevine' from way back in 1887 by Charles Chesnutt, and the very chilling 'The Comet' by W.E.B. DuBois (I had forgotten that DuBois wrote fiction, and his important stories are ripe for rediscovery). Kudos to Sheree Thomas for creating this hugely important, haunting, and illuminating anthology. [~doomsdayer520~]

Fans of science fiction and fantasy will be delighted with this new anthology that focuses on the contributions of Black authors to the speculative fiction genre. The 40 tales have been written over the past century and include many notable writers such as Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson. Historical figures like Web DuBois have also contributed to this enchanting collection.

Most of the stories are excellent and have a satirical bite to them. None of the tales fail to entertain. Although some of the older contributions shows their "age" (as many of the nineteenth and early twentieth century science fiction tales do), nonetheless they are well written and enjoyable. Readers of short story science fiction or fantasy will find DARK MATTER an entertaining, enlightening collection.

Harriet Klausner

A huge sci-fi and fantasy reader I am also getting ready to be a high school teacher of special ed, reading & English. This is a book that will go on my list of books to write lesson plans about and to make sure my students read. The one complaint I have about this book is that I'd read the Butler, Delany & Saunders already. Couldn't we have gotten new stories for this historic anthology? But other writers were a revelation to me.
A great book! Nalo Hopkinson's story about a (...)gone amuck, Tannarive Due's story about the very human side of cloning and Steven Barnes' chilling almost apocalytic picture of a modern African state after a coup are all terrific reading-- and why my students -- and you -- should be excited!

I'm not a big sf reader. I'm even less of an anthology reader and tend to skip around from story to story, eventually leaving the book half finished and moving on to something new. DARK MATTER was an entirely DIFFERENT MATTER! I read it from cover to cover and was drooling for more. Found myself having to put the book down and catch my breath at times. Even had a dream about being chased by a horny,electric doppelganger from one of the stories. Amazing! It was a very unexpected treat (borrowed it from a friend on a whim). Thank you Sheree Thomas. I was truly blown away.

I cannot put a firmer recommendation on a book. This is far and away the best story collection I've read in a few years. It will appeal to anyone with an inkling of interest in fantasy/sf, literary fiction, or African-American writing. Frankly, I can't imagine many people who are serious about reading contemporary fiction that would not love this volume. My personal favorites out of this were Schuyler's story about a machine that can make people white, Steve Barnes neo-holocaust story of love, sacrifices, loss, and the human spirit, and the work of the incredible up-and-coming Nalo Hopkinson.

Writers of African descent have played a long and important role in the history of speculative literature, even though that's not always recognized, either in the past or today. But this book opened my eyes to how much wonderful talent has gone underappreciated until now. Often raw, but always colorful and deep, many of the stories in this collection have the quality to be compared with the masters of the past and present. As both a reader and a writer, this collection inspired me greatly.

I highly recommend it to anyone who's a true officianado of speculative literature.