Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond
Edited by Bill Campbell and Edward Austin Hall
This
is a book I was interested in reading after I heard about the editors'
Indiegogo campaign (which, full disclosure, I did not contribute to).
It's is a speculative fiction anthology, and, as is typical, the stories
within aren't even in quality. A few are poor; a few a bland; many are
good; and a few are excellent. But a range of quality (or, perhaps, the
range is in the reader's taste?) is par for the course in an anthology.
In any case, a few weak stories don't mar the reading experience the way
a few weak sections would hurt a novel. So, yes, it's an anthology, and
if you like reading short speculative fiction, it's probably your cup
of tea.
The biggest issue with this book is labeling:
It's not what it says on the tin. The title suggests science fiction -
Afro-centric science fiction - but the contents are speculative fiction,
including fantasy, from a range of cultures. Which, of course, is a
totally valid theme for an anthology, but it's not what most readers are
going to expect given the title and the cover art. (The stories include
those with African, Asian, Caribbean, Latino/a, and Native American
themes, as well as a couple of Euro-centric and white-American stories.
Of course white American culture is part of multiculturalism, just like
WASPs have ethnicity and white is a race, but in an anthology designed
to showcase diversity that usually isn't privileged in the genre, I
found their inclusion an interesting choice.) The stories range from
those that are decidedly future to those set in the present and even
several set in the past. In other words, it's not all Afro, nor all
future.
So, that's a bigger weakness than uneven story
quality - because it's a marketing error, and part of the point of the
anthology is to get some of this stuff out to a larger audience.
Alright, titles matter. But aside from that?
What
I'm taking away from the book is a couple of authors I was unfamiliar
with. It didn't come as any surprise to me that N.K. Jemisin or Junot
Diaz, for example, could write a good story, although it's always
pleasurable to encounter new pieces by writers you generally enjoy.
However, there were some writers whose names I was previously unfamiliar
with who I am now on the lookout for - Chinelo Onwualu, Vandana Singh,
S.P. Somtow, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Joseph Bruchac, Daniel Jose Older,
Tade Thompson, Tenea D. Johnson - I am ashamed to say I had heard of
none of them. What this means is the anthology has done its job. I can
quibble about the title all I like, but at the end of the day I think
you should read it, and also I have to go make my Amazon wishlist
longer.
