SFF180 Special 📖 The Origins of Black Speculative Fiction

the novel was in some ways written as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's very popular Uncle Tom's Cabin which delaney very much disliked for the complacency of its slave characters and it stands as an early example of speculative fiction by the way it not only anticipates a violent overthrow of the system of slavery prior to the Civil War itself indeed Delaney's entire point is that violent revolt is the only appropriate way to overthrow such a system but also in how Delaney plays around with the actual timeline of real-life events to suit his plot

in 1904 Johnson published a very accessible short novel called light ahead for the negro whose narrator is enjoying a pleasant ride in an airship one day when there's a horrible accident and he's knocked out

the story has a whole lot of romantic complications that sound a bit over the top but it also has secret passages and treasure rooms full of booby traps and you certainly can't go wrong with any of that stuff

it's a collection of seven stories all narrated by the very memorable uncle Julius McAdoo patterned after Uncle Remus a former plantation slave uncle Julius regales in his thick dialect a somewhat awestruck northern white couple who have come south for the sake of the wife's health hoping to own a vineyard with stories of magic spells and charms and haints like the goofer grapevine and hotfoot Hannibal