Review: Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora by Sheree Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As with many short story collections, this was very uneven. There were a lot of stories in this collection that I loved, and quite a few that just didn't hold up. Steven Barnes' "The Woman in The Wall" was beautiful and evocative and powerful, Derrick Bell's "The Space Traders" rings strikingly true on the feelings of white Americans toward their fellow black citizens even today, and I loved the inclusion of W.E.B. DuBois' "The Comet." But there were a lot of stories that were clearly experiments in style and subversions of the tradition sci-fi, in ways that just didn't work for me. And maybe I'm the problem, as I am a white reader coming with my white-influenced interpretations of what speculative fiction should be, so I hesitate to criticize, and any criticism I do give must be taken with a grain of salt as I might not 'get it' because I have never lived the cultures from which these stories come. A lot of stories that experimented heavily with structure and formal elements (like punctuation, vocabulary, etc.) were weak on story, and while I can see *why* that would happen, it does make the effort of adjusting to the non-standard elements less rewarding. I also think including short excerpts from novels weakened the anthology. "Black No More" by George Schuyler worked, but it was the only one; the rest just didn't flow as well without their context. Even Octavia Butler's contribution, while interesting on its own, was strikingly similar to her other works - as in her 'Patterns' series, select people with a potentially dangerous mental power can control others with that power, but unlike in her novels, the ideas of power and interpersonal dynamics aren't explored in a satisfying way (and giving her characters almost the exact same supernatural power as the one in her 'Patterns' stories made me realize that it's basically the same as the aliens' powers in 'Lilith's Brood,' which makes me feel like she only had one good idea... which is sad for me, because I love both of those series, and I wish this short story hadn't made me like them less). I absolutely loved Delany's essay on racism in the science fiction world - the other essays were only a page or two long, and I could have used more from them, but they do provide a good glimpse of the culture of SF fandom and criticism, so they're useful.

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