Dark Matter:
Reading the Bones

An erudite editor returns to assemble another rich and varied anthology of speculative black voices

	Dark Matter: Reading the Bones
	Edited by Sheree R. Thomas
	Warner Books/Aspect
	Hardcover, January 2004
	416 pages
	ISBN 0-446-52860-9
	MSRP: $25.95/$36.95 Can.

Review by Pamela Sargent

ark Matter: Reading the Bones is the second volume of a series that began with Sheree R. Thomas' critically acclaimed 2000 anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction From the African Diaspora, which won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology. Just as oracles and diviners try to look into and affect the future by using their traditional arts, writers of speculative fiction, Thomas writes in her introduction, share "an affinity with ... ancient traditions of divination in their desire to gaze into the future in order to anticipate developments, whether social, environmental, or technological ... to caution or offer counsel and direction ... to heal, to protect."

Nonfiction is included among these imaginative attempts at such divination. Thomas offers readers "The Second Law of Thermodynamics," a transcription, by noted writer and activist Jewelle Gomez, of a 1997 panel discussion at a conference of black speculative fiction writers. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu pays tribute to Virginia Hamilton, one of the most important writers of fantasy for younger readers and one whose works featured African-American themes, in the essay "Her Pen Could Fly." Carol Cooper, in an essay on Andre Norton, "Celebrating the Alien," observes that much of Norton's appeal in her popular young-adult novels lies in her use of nonwhite protagonists and her depictions of interracial, intercultural and interspecies cooperation.

But most of the anthology is devoted to fiction, including both reprints and original stories written especially for this book. The authors here draw on African, Caribbean and North American traditions in exploring the connections and conflicts between the past and future, and the stories here range from horror to fantasy, from glimpses of remembered pasts and near futures to imagined worlds rooted in the most rigorous of science-fictional speculation. Included are science fiction stories by such formidable talents as Samuel R. Delany and Charles Johnson, fantasy tales by highly praised writers such as Nalo Hopkinson and Tananarive Due and work by several promising new writers, among them Kevin Brockenbrough, Tyehimba Jess, Nisi Shawl and Pam Noles. Detailed and informative notes about each of the authors appear at the end of the anthology.

Haunting tales that will open eyes

Offering readers a variety of excellent and well-chosen stories, as editor Sheree R. Thomas has done, is only one of the requirements of a fine anthology. She also succeeds at the more difficult task of orchestrating and arranging the stories, so that readers are led from fantastic tales of the past to stories of the far future, as if they are themselves divinators reading the bones to see what the future may hold.

Near the beginning of the book, Cherene Sherrard, in "The Quality of Sand," offers a sharply etched story of a female pirate, a slave she has rescued and a djinn who is the pirate's companion, while Charles R. Saunders writes movingly of a young girl fleeing from the ritual circumcision required to appease the spirits in "Yahimba's Choice." Nalo Hopkinson's "The Glass Bottle Trick" is an atmospheric and disconcerting horror tale set in the Caribbean, the story of a young wife with a husband not unlike Bluebeard. A look at race relations in the early 20th century is presented in "Jesus Christ in Texas," a 1920 fable by the influential historian W.E.B. Du Bois, and Tananarive Due's "Aftermoon" is a witty look at werewolves. "Voodoo Vincent and the Astrostoriograms," by Tyehimba Jess, is an entertaining morality tale centered on a homeless man who is improperly grateful for some good fortune, while Jill Robinson's "BLACKOut" takes a look at some prejudices within the African-American community with a biting satirical look at what might happen if a reparations bill were passed to compensate African-Americans for their slave labor.

Fans of rigorous science fiction should feel well rewarded by Walter Mosley's original treatment of one classic science fiction theme, that of the exceptionally gifted child imperiled by his extraordinary talents, in "Whispers in the Dark," and Samuel R. Delany's stunning 1967 story "Corona," about a suicidal child telepath, a badly injured worker and an interplanetary celebrity, will remind readers of why Delany was, and remains, one of science fiction's incandescent best. Nisi Shawl, in "Maggies," writes a personal story rich in subtle science-fictional detail of the interaction between humans and genetically engineered mutations during a terraforming project. "Excerpt From Mindscape," a portion of a novel by Andrea Hairston about a far-future Earth divided into zones by an almost impenetrable barrier, will whet readers' appetites for the entire book. In "Trance," Kalamu ya Salaam writes of a future where human diversity is vanishing and black people exist in only a few outposts; this tale of time travelers who can inhabit the minds of people in the past is a moving and fitting end to the volume's fiction selections.

One of the most welcome developments in science fiction and fantasy has been the increasing number of writers who are a part of or influenced by non-Western traditions and cultures. Dark Matter: Reading the Bones enriches speculative fiction while also demonstrating how much promise such traditions still offer to writers and readers.

Dark Matter: Reading the Bones may not be quite as comprehensive as its predecessor, Dark Matter: A Century of Fiction From the African Diaspora, but it is every bit as rewarding and eye-opening. Libraries and discerning readers of speculative fiction should have both of these volumes on their shelves. — Pamela

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Also in this issue: Tales of the Grand Tour, by Ben Bova

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