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~ About the project ~

In summer 2022, I began building an archive of diverse speculative texts as part of my UCSC Public Humanities Fellowship with Meta’s Reality Labs. I worked to “read” and analyze 39 books, comics, films, and visual artworks in mainstream, Afrofuturist, Indigenous-futurist, Asian-futurist, and Latinx-futurist subgenres. The outcome of this project resulted in a 40+ page white paper, co-authored with Sarah Papazoglakis and Nicol Perez. I have presented my analyses at major events including the Inclusive Metaverse Summit in October 2022. I continue to build this archive and chart the technologies present in these texts in order to better understand what projects in speculative fiction communicate about the role of technologies in community concerns and desires for the future.

The Archive

Afrofuturist Texts

  • Books and Short Stories

    • Space Traders by Derrick Bell

    • Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky) by N.K. Jemisin

    • Parable Series (Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents) by Octavia Butler

    • Red Dirt Witch by N.K. Jemisin

    • The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

    • The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois

    • Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

  • Comics and Graphic Novels

    • Bitter Root (Vols. 1-3)

    • Excellence (Vol. 1)

    • Destroyer by Victor LaValle

    • Eve by Victor LaValle

  • Films and Television

    • Afronauts

    • Neptune Frost

    • Black Panther

    • Wakanda Forever

    • Lovecraft Country

    • Watchmen

    • Nope

    • Sankofa City

    • Space Traders

    • Traveling While Black (VR)

Indigenous-futurist Texts

  • Books and Short Stories

    • “Plight,” “The Gift is in the Making,” and “Caribou Ghost and Untold Stories” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

  • Comics and Graphic Novels

    • Moonshot Vol. 1

    • This Place: 100 Years Retold

  • Films and Television

    • Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes)

    • File Under Miscellaneous

    • The 6th World: An Origin Story

  • Art

Latinx-futurist Texts

  • Films and Television

    • Sleep Dealer

  • Game

    • Sin Sol (for iOS)

Asian-futurist Texts

  • Books

  • Comics

  • Films and Television

    • After Yang

“Don’t you EVER talk to me about the way things are, unless you’re willing to talk to me about how things can be.” ”
— Blink (Bitter Root Vol. 2)

Mainstream Texts

  • Books

  • Films and Television

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