Dark Matter

December 8, 2003
After the spectacular Dark Matter
(2000), Thomas offers something of a mixed bag in her second anthology of speculative fiction from the African diaspora. Of the stories set during the days of slavery, ihsan bracy's "ibo landing" proves that stylization of subject matter can be more powerful than historical fidelity. The shimmering, brutal outlines created by such simple sentences as "each in their own way understood the distance. they would never again be home" stay with the reader for a long time. By contrast, the weight of research muffles the emotional impact of a story like Cherene Sherrard's "The Quality of Sand." Similarly, Charles R. Sanders's "Yahimba's Choice" seems written by an anthropologist studying a distant culture, the story unable to move past surface ritual and wooden dialogue. The strongest entry is Kuni Ibura Salaam's "Desire," an experimental retelling of a folktale that's wonderfully fresh, with exquisite detail: "Quashe's back formed one gleaming stretch of reptile skin. Her torso, neck, and arms were honey-amber, human-soft skin moist with river dew." This story will probably appear in at least one year's best collection. Other stories of note include Pam Noles's "Whipping Boy" and Tananarive Due's "Aftermoon." Solid reprints from Samuel R. Delaney and W.E.B. Du Bois, among others, round out the volume, along with several essays of varying quality. Agent, Marie Dutton Brown.

November 1, 2003
From a tale by Nalo Hopkinson involving a glass bottle trick to Jill Robinson's story of reparations, the 24 selections in this anthology of speculative fiction, sf, and fantasy by African Americans provide a look into the future from another perspective. Included are works dating from the early 20th century.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2004
In an excellent, idiosyncratic collection of sf, fantasy and folktale-derived fiction by African American (including Caribbean) writers, the quality of writing is uniformly high, and the contributors constitute practically a who's who of African American writers who have dealt in speculative fiction, beginning with W. E. B. DuBois, represented by a piece dating from 1920. Samuel Delany, Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, and Walter Mosley also appear, and the tone of most of the stories, even "Anansi Meets Peter Parker at the Taco Bell on Lexington," is serious and even desperate. One compensation for that tone is that Mosley seems much more at home in short sf and fantasy than he is at novel length, as in " Blue Light" (1998). But writing of this quality speaks eloquently for itself, and so do such surprises as Carol Cooper's panegyric to the consciousness-raising influence of Andre Norton, one of three essays at the end of the volume.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 3, 2000
The striking central metaphor that Thomas (who edits the literary journal Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora) chose for this first collection of SF stories and essays by black authors is "dark matter," the scientific term for a non-luminous form of matter not directly observed, but whose existence is deduced from its gravitational effects on other bodies. Ranging from Charles Chestnutt's self-parodying 1887 tale "The Goophered Grapevine," to more than a dozen brilliantly diverse selections dated 2000, this big anthology includes 26 stories and excerpts from two novels, as well as five thoughtful essays from the leading black authors in the field. Accurately observing in her introduction that black writers have been engaged with speculative fiction for far longer than is generally thought, Thomas hopes her collection will inspire more black authors to enter the field, since, as Walter Mosley observes in his essay "Black to the Future," this genre speaks clearly to the dissatisfied through its power to imagine the first step in changing the world. Almost all of these stories explore the profound sense of loss central to the "black diaspora"Dloss of self-respect, loss of identity, loss of a sense of humanity itself. In manyDnotably "Sister Lilith," Honoree Fanonne Jeffers's biting contemporary vision of Eve as Adam's trophy wife, Samuel R. Delany's widely praised "Aye, and Gomorrah," where sexuality is sacrificed to spacefaring, and Steven Barnes's searing "The Woman in the Wall," which hurls an American black woman artist into a hellish African concentration campDthe brutal common denominator is the depredation of the soul through the violation of the body. Several of these stories are almost unbearably poignant, like Ama Patterson's "Hussy Strut," and many are ferociously angry, like Derrick Bell's savage "The Space Traders." All manifest a powerful effect, far stronger for being largely unacknowledged, and perhaps heralding, as Mosley projects, a coming explosion of black SF. Agent, Marie Dutton Brown.

January 1, 2004
Unlike the powerful and necessary Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, this follow-up anthology focuses almost exclusively on contemporary "speculative fiction"-an umbrella term that covers sf, fantasy, horror, and other hybrid genres-by writers of African descent. Unfortunately, the result is a mixed bag. The best work is by Samuel R. Delany ("Corona"), Nisi Shawl ("Maggies"), and Kalamu ya Salaam ("Trance"). Also included are short essays on Virginia Hamilton and Andre Norton and a transcript of a Q&A session with writers like Delany, Octavia Butler, and Steven Barnes, among others. Recommended for public libraries, especially those with an interest in African American literature.-Roger A. Berger, Everett Community Coll., WA

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