Contents PRefAce “All At One Point” Conveys the Point, Period: Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over ix IntRODUctiOns: “DARK MAtteR” MAtteRS l Imaginative Encounters Hortense J. Spillers 3 l Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0 Mark Dery 6 l “On the Other Side of the Glass”: The Television Roots of Black Science Fiction Marleen S. Barr 14 EssAYS: THE BLACKness OF OUteR SPAce FictiON AS BLAst(Off) FROM THE PAst l Becoming Animal in Black Women’s Science Fiction Madhu Dubey 31 l “God Is Change”: Persuasion and Pragmatic Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed Novels Ellen Peel 52 l Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson Revisit the Reproduction of Mothering: Legacies of the Past and Strategies for the Future Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan 75 Barr_final.indb 5 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM vi | Contents l Close Encounters between Traditional and Nontraditional Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Gayl Jones’s Corregidora Sing the Time Travel Blues Jennifer E. Henton 100 l Beyond the History We Know: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Nisi Shawl, and Jarla Tangh Rethink Science Fiction Tradition De Witt Douglas Kilgore 119 l Responses to De Witt Douglas Kilgore Bubbling Champagne Power Trip Nisi Shawl 130 “Of Course People Can Fly” Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 131 Carla Johnson/Jarla Tangh: A Close Encounter with My Pseudonym Jarla Tangh 132 STORies: TecHNO/MAGic SistAHS ARE NOT THE SistAHS FROM AnOTHER PLAnet l The Book of Martha Octavia E. Butler 135 l Double Consciousness Andrea Hairston 151 l Dynamo Hum Nisi Shawl 158 l The Ferryman Sheree R. Thomas 167 l Herbal Nalo Hopkinson 174 COmmentARies: KinDRED SPIRit l On Octavia E. Butler Tananarive Due 179 l Can a Brother Get Some Love? Sociobiology in Images of African-American Sensuality in Contemporary Cinema: Or, Why We’d Better the Hell Claim Vin Diesel as Our Own Steven Barnes 182 Barr_final.indb 6 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Contents | vii l A Conversation with Samuel R. Delany about Sex, Gender, Race, Writing—and Science Fiction Samuel R. Delany and Carl Freedman 191 l Black “Science Faction”: An Interview with Kevin Willmott, Director and Writer of CSA, The Confederate States of America Kevin Willmott and Marleen S. Barr 236 l Octavia’s Healing Power: A Tribute to the Late Great Octavia E. Butler Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 241 AfteRWORD The Big Bang: Or, the Inception of Scholarship about Black Women Science Fiction Writers Marleen S. Barr 245 l Response to the Afterword Connecting Metamorphoses: Italo Calvino’s Mrs. Ph(i)NKo and I, Dr. Ph(d)SalvagGIo Ruth Salvaggio 249 NOtes ON COntRibUTORs 251 Barr_final.indb 7 4/15/2008 2:52:26 AM.