The conspicuous absence of African-Americans is especially perplexing when one considers that their African ancestors suffered a sci-fi experience very much like an alien abduction (Dery 180). "[African-Americans] inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements; official histories undo what has been done; and technology is too often brought to bear on black bodies (branding, forced sterilization, the Tuskegee experiment...)" (Dery 180).
Both the absence of African-Americans in science fiction as well as the derth of African American writers in the genre prompted Mark Dery to discuss the situation with Samuel Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose in his article "Black to the Future." In this article, Dery explores "Afrofuturism," best explained as futuristic themes in the hand of members of the black diaspora. Afrofuturism has been, by and large, and artistic movement, with musicians as its most visible and vigorous innovators. Jazz artist Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, funkmaster George Clinton and the Funkadelic/Parliament crew, and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry have been heavily influential and are the most immediately recognizable examples of the Afrofuturist aesthetic. Artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rammellzee, and Futura 2000 have inserted themselves into the post-industrial landscape with their graffiti, canvases, and performance art. Rammellzee, for example, has made gallery appearances in his 148-pound sci-fi costume, titled Gasholeer; the costume is made of technological and industrial scraps, and it recreates the artist as a powerful cyborg and suggests new ways to find "coherence in a fractured world" (Dery 184-185). Greg Tate also rattles off a number of African and African-American writers who have used science fiction elements in their stories and novels: Ralph Ellison (The Invisible Man, the story of a stranger in a strange land if there ever was one), Ishmael Reed, John A. Williams, and Amos Tutuola (Dery 208). Tate also notes that the black and Latino fascination with science fiction imagery helped to turn video games into a million-dollar industry (Dery 209).
The pull of the future has proved irresistible across generation of black artists. Afrofuturism exists because science fiction lends itself to the sort of inquiry that questions the nature of society, its institutions, its values, how people in that society are treated, and how this treatment affects individual behavior; in other words, science fiction is about alienation, something to which nonwhites (and women) can certainly relate (Dery 211). Younger generations--primarily the hip-hop generation--have used technology as a way to insert themselves into both real and imaginary landscapes, to physically assert their presence in the present, and to make it clear that they intend to stake their claim in the future (Dery 209).
Dery, Mark. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994.