Hey there readers of ABW! I’ve been gone for far too long haven’t I? Sorry. Been rather busy. This is going to be a short update, unfortunately.
1. Con or bust, the auction programme that works towards sending POC fans to Wiscon, is now open and will be until March 6. All sorts of fun stuff are on offer, from autographed books to pretty shiny jewelry to short story critiques to to spice blends, handstitched book marks, blogposts on your topic of choice, photographs once a week for a year, baked goods including cookies and pies, custom made figurines, podfic offers, Translation of Korean Text into English, Coraline Nike Shoes and more. Go thou and see if you like something there!
2. Rec me some sci-fi, technology heavy novels by POC authors please? Preferably with an emphasis on Women of Color authors but I will take what I can get. Steampunk is fine. Worlds with magic are fine too, just have some technology all around. I don’t care if the technology is powered by magic or the rules of physics just get me some technology up in there! Anthologies would be great. I also don’t care which year the books were released.
3. Like Shadow and Act says, the German film Transfer has the potential to SUCK so badly. Or not:Rich Whites Pay To Have Their Souls Deposited Into The Bodies Of Poor Blacks In Sci-Fi Drama Transfer’
4. In the vein of something that one can look forward to with rather less trepidation:Watch Vogue’s Profile Of Up-And-Coming Kenyan Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu That would be the director who is bring Nnedi Okorafor’s epic Who Fears Death to the big screen. I cannot WAIT.
5. Speaking of Ms. Okorafor…Akata Witch is coming: April 14, 2011. And for those of us who are impatiently waiting, she has a short story up at Tor.
6. The last several posts at Beyond Victoriana has been highly interesting. Go thou and read.
7. ITVS Future States has got its second season of shorts inquiring what America might be like in 25 to 50 years going up right now. They are free and pretty damned interesting. If you missed the firs season, that’s there too.
8. Did you know that Zadie Smith’s White Teeth was made into a BBC production? That is now on Hulu? Well, now you do.
9. Hell. Why not?
Take That – Kidz
Though that lens flare was rather overused, yes?
la la la lalala lalala la la la lalalala lalalala …
Oh, and one more thing:
10.Amanda Ray – Stronger
Sci-fi technology heavy books by POC authors? -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Have you read anything by Octavia E. Butler? I’d suggest starting with “Parable of the Sower” (and the sequel, “Parable of the Talents.”)
They aren’t technology heavy, unfortunately, but they are fantastic books and #2 is closer to what you’re looking for than the first book.
I strongly suspect that the author has read Octavia Butler, yes. ;-)
I’m afraid my list of SF authors I know are POC is fairly short – hopefully this comment thread will help. But maybe I can help with the tech-heaviness.
There is the question of quite what kind of tech-heaviness you’re looking for: neato tech ideas (e.g. Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep), gadgetry for the sake of gadgetry (e.g. William Gibson’s Neuromancer), or social implications of technology (e.g. David Brin’s Kiln People)?
Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring is near-future SF, but it’s not really techy, being set in an inner-city Toronto that has been abandoned by anyone with money or power (and hence technology). Well, except that Voodoo works and is a source of power for the otherwise disenfranchised, including the girl who’s the focus of the story. There was sort of a fad for Voodoo in stories around the time it was written, I think, producing things like The Invisibles and Emma Bull’s Bone Dance.
Bone Dance is an interesting one; the protagonist, Sparrow, (who is neuter) makes a living scavenging and fixing pre-Apocalypse electronics (which means VCRs and the like). So tech-heavy in that sense, at least. Also Emma Bull writes really well, though it’s mostly Charles de Lint-style elves-in-the-dark-parts-of-the-city urban fantasy (and hence, not tech-heavy).
Haruki Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland is sort of cyberpunk, but it really feels like someone who’s more used to writing “literary” fiction trying cyberpunk on for size.
Karl Schroeder’s Lady of Mazes is a very interesting discussion on technology and voluntary simplicity, informed I think by his Mennonite background.
Samuel R. Delany’s Triton is somewhat tech-heavy, being set partly on the moon Triton, but his focus is mainly on the societies and the people in them (though he has an imagined calculus of analogy and personality).
I’m pretty sure Emma Bull is not a POC, and was implicated in RaceFail 09. Though Nalo Hopkinson later nominated her for amnesty.
Ditto Elusis.
I hadn’t seen that thread, Elusis. Interesting.
I try to confer situational amnesty on everyone who isn’t W*ll Sh*tt*rly, but it was actually sort of nice to see other people mirroring what I thought about some of the people who were caught up in the conversation. Not that my POV is the only right one by any means, but it’s nice to see that I’m not totally on the moon when I think TNH and PNH probably got pinched between rocks and hard places. (They’re not the only ones, just the only ones I feel like mentioning here right now.)
I apologize, I didn’t follow RaceFail at the time and don’t really know who was involved. But yes, as far as I know neither Emma Bull nor Karl Schroeder are POC (nor am I, for that matter, and I’m not really in a position to comment on anyone’s handling of race). Murakami is also Japanese living in Japan, so his experience as a POC may be rather different from that of, say, a North American POC. Sorry, I guess I got too focused on the “tech-heavy” part of the question. Hopefully my post will disappear in a sea of more-helpful ones.
Mandolin – I didn’t know about that post either until I googled EB/RaceFail for a quick reminder to myself.
I’m of two minds about it – it feels a bit like the Good White People Cookie Wagon come to town, but I respect some of the folks participating in it, and I certainly have appreciated it when POC or other minority folks have extended me an olive branch when I’ve fucked up. OTOH I’ve generally had to make a fairly clear and unambiguous apology and statement of responsibility to receive that.
I was particularly upset by the NH’s because I used to read their blog when I had more time, and up until that point felt very strongly positive about them, only to be completely horrified by their… contributions. The remarks at Tempest’s blog about TNH to the tune of “well the thing you do not do is attack people she cares about” tread very close to trading in that repulsive “uncomfortable calling out = violence” meme, certainly suggest that the unreasonable act was the calling out, and also contain the implication that when the chips are down, all bets are off, choose your gambling metaphor, social justice is a principle that’s available to jettison in order to protect whomever one considers “mine” – who, in this case, appeared to be exclusively white people, to the surprise of exactly no POC at all who are used to not being considered “mine” for the purposes of affiliation and protection.
Anyway. Apparently I still have feelings about that situation and am not ready for “amnesty” as my bookshelf attests. Though the fact of Nalo’s nomination softens me a little bit on EB. Definitely not ready to go there with the NH’s, or Bear, which I find particularly too bad as I’d just started reading her things and liking them.
(This de-rail brought to you by the fact that I am not a big reader of tech-heavy sf, but I also have issues with forgiveness.)