#indigenous sf

Summary: In spite of everything local con artist gets dragged into a magical destiny and has to be a hero and fight racism. Meanwhile, multiple area families are having an ordeal.

Score: 8/10

Sexual assault drinking game: At least 5

(+) Black/Indigenous people up the wazoo.

- Actually managing to do a racial allegory right

- Good blend of fantasy and scifi elements

- Actually managing to do a good deconstruction of superhero worlds

- Well written morally grey characters

- Racists are killed/murdered. That’s good shit.

- Uses folklore/mythology/religious beliefs of a people not commonly seen in media. 

- Has a dragon

- The protag learns how to animorph into a bird

- That theme song fucking slaps

- Koen’s superhero look is good

- Pretty down to earth and believable

- The spirits trying to get Koen to get his fucking life together and be a better person

(-) White love interests.

-Needs more ladies

- Sexual slavery

- Koen and white lady 1 having a damn affair.

- No season 3

Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean (2017)

Nineteen contributors from India and Australia—including Printz Award–winning author Margo Lanagan and New York Times *bestsellers Justine Larbalestier and Samhita Arnir—team up to create a “rare treat of speculative literature” in this groundbreaking feminist collection that “bursts with imagination” (Kirkus Reviews*, starred review).

A post-apocalyptic Little Red Riding Hood. Girls and boys turning the tables on creepy old cat-callers. Female pirates rescuing abused women. A futuristic cooking show.

These are just a few of the stories told in Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean, a feminist speculative fiction collection, born of a collaboration between Australian and Indian writers. Finding themselves inspired to action after crimes against women dominated national conversations, the editors of this collection paired writers and illustrators from India and Australia together to write stories, graphic novels, and even a play that reimagine what girls can be and see themselves as.

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (2004)

Nalo Hopkinson (Editor), Uppinder Mehan (Editor), Samuel R. Delany (Introduction)

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of color.

Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing. Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre “speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves.” It’s an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.

The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the “third world.” It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the “developing” nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.

The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.

Contributors include: Opal Palmer Adisa, Tobias Buckell, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Tamai Kobayashi, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree Renée Thomas and Greg Van Eekhout.

Nalo Hopkinson is the internationally-acclaimed author of Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk, and Salt Roads. Her books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Philip K. Dick Awards; Skin Folk won a World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award. Born in Jamaica, Nalo moved to Canada when she was sixteen. She lives in Toronto.

Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012)

Grace L. Dillon

Extrapolation special issue on Indigenous Futurism, edited by Grace L. Dillon, (Anishinaabe), Michael Levy, and John Rieder.

In the last decade and a half, a number of scholars have explored the way that SF throughout the last century and a half  has borne a close relationship to colonial, and later postcolonial history, discourses, and ideologies. One of the most prominent features of colonial ideology in SF has been the widespread assumption that the future will be determined by the technological and cultural dominance of the West, the “progress” of which often entails the assumption that non-Western cultures will either disappear or  assimilate themselves to Western norms. Indigenous Futurism designates a growing movement of writing, both fictional and critical, that envisions the future from the point of view of Indigenous histories, traditions, and knowledges—and in so doing situates the present and the past in ways that challenge (neo/post)colonial ideologies of progress. This special issue of Extrapolation aims to bring together critical and scholarly explorations of and responses to fictional or theoretical and critical work in or on Indigenous SF, where SF is broadly conceived of as including science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, and slipstream.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

       fictional and theoretical confrontations of Western science and Indigenous knowledges

      use of Indigenous traditions in fiction or theory to envision a sustainable future

      responses to and evaluation of Indigenously-inflected SF in any medium from any geographic location

      representation and use of Indigenous traditions in classic SF texts

      Indigeneity and SF adventure fiction, Indigeneity and space opera, Indigeneity and the New Weird

      challenges of publishing and distributing Indigenous Futurism

 We invite submissions of 5,000-12,000 words to John Rieder ([email protected]) by April 1, 2015. Submissions should conform to the usual requirements of Extrapolation

"London Waka" by Robert Sullivan (Ngā Puhi) from the collection Voice Carried My Family (2005)