Best African American Science Fiction Books
Here you will get Best African American Science Fiction Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Kindred
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
English
288 pages
0807083690
A Good Morning America 2021 Top Summer Read PickThe visionary author’s masterpiece pulls usalong with her Black female herothrough time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South.
Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
2. Parable of the Sower (Parable, 1)
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
Grand Central Publishing
English
368 pages
This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale” and includes a foreword by N.K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores.
But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith … And a startling vision of human destiny.
3. Catherine House: A Novel
Author: by Elisabeth Thomas
B07WG8LXSD
May 12, 2020
English
[A] delicious literary Gothic debut. THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, EDITORS’ CHOICEMoody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step. THE WASHINGTON POSTA Most Anticipated Novel by Entertainment Weekly New York magazine Cosmopolitan The Atlantic Forbes Good Housekeeping Parade Better Homes and Gardens HuffPost Buzzfeed Newsweek Harper’s Bazaar Ms. Magazine Woman’s Day PopSugar and more!
A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students … And the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.
Trust us, you belong here. Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents.
4. Parable of the Talents (Parable, 2)
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
Grand Central Publishing
English
448 pages
Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel’s timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever. In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed.
The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to “make America great again.” In an increasingly divided and dangerous nation, Lauren’s subversive colony-a minority religious faction led by a young black woman-becomes a target for President Jarret’s reign of terror and oppression.
Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. As she searches for answers about her own past, she also struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.
5. Earthseed: The Complete Series
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
B072NZBPFG
May 16, 2017
English
A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner’s powerful saga of survival and destiny in a near-future dystopian America. One of the world’s most respected authors of science fiction imagines an apocalyptic near-future Earth where a remarkable young woman discovers that her destiny calls her to try and change the world around her.Octavia E.
Butler’s brilliant two-volume Earthseed saga offers a startling vision of an all-too-possible tomorrow, in which walls offer no protection from a civilization gone mad. Parable of the Sower: In the aftermath of worldwide ecological and economic apocalypse, minister’s daughter Lauren Oya Olamina escapes the slaughter that claims the lives of her family and nearly every other member of their gated California community.
Heading north with two young companions through an American wasteland, the courageous young woman faces dangers at every turn while spreading the word of a remarkable new religion that embraces survival and change. Parable of the Talents: Called to the new, hard truth of Earthseed, the small community of the dispossessed that now surrounds Lauren Olamina looks to hertheir leaderfor guidance.
6. Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Author: by Damian Duffy
Abrams ComicArts
English
256 pages
#1 New York Times BestsellerWinner of the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium Octavia E. Butler’s bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day.
Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler’s mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the preCivil War South.
As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.
7. Wild Seed (Patternist, 1)
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
Grand Central Publishing
English
320 pages
In an “epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant” story of love and hate, two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together – and changing the destiny of the human race (Viola Davis). Doro knows no higher authority than himself.
An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire.
He fears no one – until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbors and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her.
No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu – until she meets Doro. The moment Doro meets Anyanwu, he covets her; and from the villages of 17th-century Nigeria to 19th-century United States, their courtship becomes a power struggle that echoes through generations, irrevocably changing what it means to be human.
8. Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents Boxed Set
Author: by Octavia Butler
Seven Stories Press
English
752 pages
A beautiful boxed set brings together the great sci-fi writer’s two award-winning Parable booksThe perfect gift for fans of Octavia Butler, this boxed set pairs the bestselling Nebula-prize nominee, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which together tell the near-future odyssey of Lauren Olamina, a “hyperempathic” young woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized.
In Sower, the place is California, where small walled communities protect from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicts. Lauren sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown. The book has an introduction by feminist, journalist, activist, and author Gloria Steinem.
Parable of the Talents celebrates the classic Butlerian themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, separation and community, to astonishing effect, in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032. It is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina’s daughterfrom whom she has been separated for most of the girl’s life-with sections in the form of Lauren’s journal.
9. Sorrowland: A Novel
Author: by Rivers Solomon
B08FGV6LB2
MCD (May 4, 2021)
May 4, 2021
A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction Vernseven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raisedflees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the futureoutside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.
10. The Deep
Author: by Rivers Solomon
English
192 pages
1534439870
Octavia E.Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Awardnominated song The Deep from Daveed Diggs’s rap group Clipping. Yetu holds the memories for her peoplewater-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave ownerswho live idyllic lives in the deep.
Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save onethe historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her.
And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilitiesand discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own pastand about the future of her people.
If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identityand own who they really are. The Deep is a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gazea superb, multilayered work, (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.
11. Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories (LOA #338) (Library of America)
Author: by Octavia Butler
English
790 pages
1598536753
The definitive edition of the complete works of the “grand dame” of American science fiction begins with this volume gathering two novels and her collected storiesAn original and eerily prophetic writer, Octavia E. Butler used the conventions of science fiction to explore the dangerous legacy of racism in America in harrowingly personal terms.
She broke new ground with books that featured complex Black female protagonistsI wrote myself in, she would later recallestablishing herself as one of thepioneers of the Afrofuturist aesthetic. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her achievement in creating new aspirations for the genre and for American literature.
This rst volume in the Library of America edition of Butler’s collected works opens with her masterpiece, Kindred, one of the landmark American novels of the last half century. Its heroine, Dana, a Black woman, is pulled back and forth between the present and the preCivil War past, where she nds herself enslaved on the plantation of a white ancestor whose life she must save to preserve her own.
12. Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Author: by Damian Duffy
Harry N. Abrams
English
272 pages
The follow-up to #1 New York Times Bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, comes Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking dystopian novel In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America’s future.
In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher’s daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny …
And the birth of a new faith.
13. Aftermath
Author: by LeVar Burton
B097DL1XDX
July 13, 2021
English
The acclaimed actor’s shockingly prescient novel of speculative fiction presents a near-future United States torn apart by civil war and deep racial strife (Tampa Bay Times). America today is teetering on the edge of the alarming vision presented in LeVar Burton’s debut novel, written more than two decades ago …
In 2012, the first African American president is assassinated by a white extremistjust four days after he is elected. The horrific tragedy leads to riots, financial collapse, and ultimately, a full-on civil war. In its aftermath, millions are left homeless as famine and disease spread throughout the country.
But from Chicago, a mysterious voice cries out … To Leon Crane, a former NASA scientist now struggling to survive on the streets, the pleas he hears remind him of the wife he could not saveand offer him a chance at redemption.
To Jacob Fire Cloud, a revered Lakota medicine man, the voice is a sign that the White Buffalo Woman has returned to unite all the races in peace and prosperity. And to little Amy Ladue, the cries are those of her mother, who disappeared during the devastating St. Louis earthquakeand who must still be alive.
14. Mind of My Mind (Patternist, 2)
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
Grand Central Publishing
English
259 pages
A young woman harnesses her newfound power to challenge the ruthless man who controls her, in this brilliant and provocative novel from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. Mary is a treacherous experiment. Her creator, an immortal named Doro, has molded the human race for generations, seeking out those with unusual talents like telepathy and breeding them into a new subrace of humans who obey his every command.
The result is Mary: a young black woman living on the rough outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1970s, who has no idea how much power she will soon wield. Doro knows he must handle Mary carefully or risk her ending like his previous experiments: dead, either by her own hand or Doro’s.
What he doesn’t suspect is that Mary’s maturing telepathic abilities may soon rival his own power. By linking telepaths with a viral pattern, she will create the potential to break free of his control once and for all-and shift the course of humanity.
15. Dawn (Lilith's Brood, 1)
Author: by Octavia E. Butler
English
320 pages
1538753715
One woman is called upon to rebuild the future of humankind after a nuclear war, in this revelatory post-apocalyptic tale from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali.
She discovers that the Oankalia seemingly benevolent alien raceintervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earthbut salvation comes at a price.
Hopeful and thought-provoking, this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.
16. Alien Stories (American Reader Series, 36)
Author: by E.C. Osondu
English
200 pages
1950774317
A vital voice in the short story, telling us new truths with deep humanity.” George Saunders Celebrated Nigerian-born writer E.C. Osondu delivers a short-story collection of nimble dexterity and startling originality in his BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning Alien Stories.
These eighteen startling stories, each centered around an encounter with the unexpected, explore what it means to be an alien. With a nod to the dual meaning of alien as both foreigner and extraterrestrial, Osondu turns familiar science-fiction tropes and immigration narratives on their heads, blending one with the other to call forth a whirlwind of otherness.
With wry observations about society and human nature, in shifting landscapes from Africa to America to outer space and back again, Alien Stories breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as aliens’ within a complex and interconnected universe.
