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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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So looking up the Blake story it’s not really sci-fi at all?
At best it’s maybe alt-history, except if I wrote a story about the next few months that doesn’t mean I’m telling an alternative history.
Edit: Lola Leroy is set during American civil war, so I guess it’s historical when looking back a few decades?
And Imperum in Imperio is set in the period it’s written.
Feels like calling any of those titles Science Fiction is a lot of a stretch. Might as well say the DaVinci Code is SciFi at that point.
You might be right about these not being sci-fi, but sci-fi can take place in the period in which it was written. Alternative history plus sci-fi can definitely be a thing. Or writing sci-fi that's supposed to take place in just a few years.
And I addressed that. I wouldn’t even feel comfortable calling said title alt-history.
Do you think a title like the DaVinci Code is sci-fi because it altered history?
These sound like fictional drama/thriller books in a period piece setting to me.
Wow, I didn't expect such a rude response.
You find a question, rude?
In this case, yes. It's not a serious question. It's poking at me. Of course I don't find the DaVinci Code to be sci-fi. The question makes no sense and comes across as aggressive.
The question is because the DaVinci code fits that authors reasoning for why Blake should be Sci-Fi, in that it explores an alternative history.
It’s a rhetorical question, but that does not belie the seriousness of it.
It explores alternate history but doesn't contain any sci-fi elements. At least not that I recall. So that made the question seem very unserious to me. Especially since I had already agreed with you that it wasn't sci-fi.
Speculative fiction is generally a better term to avoid quibbling over details. The speculative step is the important defining thing in any case.
You should edit the wikipedia entry then, because it disagrees with you.
"Samuel R. Delany described it as "about as close to an SF-style alternate history novel as you can get.
Further, while it incorporates elements of the fugitive slave narrative, Blake's narrator is also a scientist, whose focus on data collection and research stand in repudiation of the racial science of the day.[10] In fact, this reflects one of Delany's major themes: that Africa and its contributions to science and math were foundational to the Western world.[12]"
Because one author says so does not make it so.
Considering we're talking about the era of the belief in Drapetomania, I'd say a slave revolt followed by an attempt by black people to take over Cuba would be considered sci-fi by a lot of readers.
Edit: Also, sci-fi wasn't really a thing in 1862.
No sci-fi wasn't an official thing, yet the title of this is 'were developing the Afro-Futurism/Black Sci-Fi genre...'
I'd say a fictional story about slaves successfully rebelling and taking over a country, narrated by a scientist, who does science things, counts.
It is ridiculous how much hair-splitting is done when it's Black culture, and I'm quite embarrassed by the attempt to claim entire wikipedia sections are 'wrong' like this.
(Not saying you're saying that, I understand we're on the same page.)