Black science fiction

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Black science fiction or black speculative fiction is an umbrella term that covers a variety of activities within the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres where people of the African diaspora take part or are depicted. Some of its defining characteristics include a critique of the social structures leading to black oppression paired with an investment in social change.^[1] Black science fiction is "fed by technology but not led by it."^[1] This means that black science fiction often explores with human engagement with technology instead of technology as an innate good.^[2]

In the late 1990s a number of cultural critics began to use the term Afrofuturism to depict a cultural and literary movement of thinkers and artists of the African diaspora who were using science, technology, and science fiction as means of exploring the black experience.^[3] However, as Nisi Shawl describes in her Tor.com series on the history of black science fiction, black science fiction is a wide-ranging genre with a history reaching as far back as the 19th century.^[4] Also, because of the interconnections between black culture and black science fiction, "readers and critics need first to be familiar with the traditions of African American literature and culture" in order to correctly interpret the nuances of the texts.^[1] Indeed, John Pfeiffer has argued that there have always been elements of speculative fiction in black literature.^[5]