The undersigned, being alternately pissed off and bored, need a means of speculation and asserting a different set of values with which to re-imagine the future. In looking for a new framework for black diasporic artistic production, we are temporarily united in the following actions.
Aventuras con Libros
El Manifiesto Mundano 2004
I reproduce below the full text of “The Mundane Manifesto,” signed by Geoff Ryman and others from the 2004 Clarion West workshop (the complete list of workshop participants at the end of this post). The Manifesto argued for a science fiction that was squarely centered on humans and the future of planet Earth, including its science and technology, rather than spaceships and aliens.
¿Qué comían los reyes y qué bebían los magos?
En general, la vida moderna es buena para nosotros. Si me antojo de un bocadillo ligero de camino a casa desde el trabajo, puedo detenerme en una docena de servicios de comida rápida para recoger desde mi auto, tomar un café con leche o incluso servirme de una máquina expendedora llena con una variedad de snacks, algunos de las cuales podrían ser comida de verdad. Las cosas son un poco diferentes cuando estás caminando (o corriendo) en una era anterior a la refrigeración o, si tienes mucha suerte, viajando a lomos de una bestia o dentro de un carruaje. Necesitarás llevar comida contigo o tener lugares donde detenerte y reabastecerte.
Erick Mota writes about the future after your world has ended
SFRA 2024: This paper discusses the strategies used by Erick Mota in his Habana Underguater (2010) to process the economic and political effects of the Berlin Wall fall (1989) on the collective Cuban psyche, positing that this crisis affected the idea of national unity and expectations of collective progress, and its association with European ideals of modernity and implicit social whitening.
Diario de viaje: Conferencia anual de la Asociación de Investigación de Ciencia Ficción
Tuits de mi experiencia en la Conferencia anual de la Asociación de Investigación de Ciencia Ficción. Tartú (Estonia), del 7 al 11 de mayo de 2024.
Cuban-made Socialist Paradise?
Paper for ACLA 2024 Annual Meeting This paper proposes a critical reading of Cuban Science Fiction literature between 1959 and 1989, focusing on its problematic relation with Utopia. For almost forty years, the USSR's conventions and cultural policies regarding the genre strongly influenced Cuban science fiction. Yet, Cubans never managed to write Utopias or even happy socialist worlds.