Sally StrangeYesterday I was talking about my longing for scifi books that don't take nation-states (or planet-states?) for granted as the default for political organization. Then, completely randomly (literally, by putting my library search results sorting on "random"), I started reading "Sweep of Stars" by Maurice Broaddus. I'm not sure what kind of political organization his characters are living under yet but it's definitely not the typical capitalist liberal quasi-democracy; it appears heavily influenced by West African cultural forms. The opening chapter is about a young person having her adult naming ceremony while wearing green/black/gold kente cloth and in the second chapter we meet an elderly griot who is also an ambassador to Old Earth (O.E. or "Oy!" as they sometimes call it). I'm delightfully surprised. What serendipity!
#Books #SciFi #ScienceFiction #SFF #SpecFic #SpeculativeFiction #AfroFuturism #BlackLiterature #BlackFiction
Sally Strange (@[email protected])
imagining a science fiction universe where planets aren't an easy stand-in for countries. SF writers solve the problem of how to have interstellar travel in various ways but nobody so far has questioned the arrangement of having one state rule over an entire planet or more than one planet. Imagining inhabited worlds where it's easy to travel between them but administration of each planet is shared among various organizations, none of which are states #ScienceFiction #SFF #anarchism
Cheryl
Roxanne Rhoads