Warriors of the Four Worlds: Black Military Sci-Fi

This month, I read a straight-forward military Science Fiction novel: Warriors of the Four Worlds by Ronald T. Jones. I enjoy this genre. I just lean back and read about heroes spreading bullets and American-style liberty across the known universe. I’m usually against the “American-style” portion of these novels, but rest easy, there’s no flag-waving in this particular book. These stories can just be a violent romp through a hail of bullets and a spray of alien guts. Warriors of the Four Worlds delivers in the “hail of bullets” category and while it doesn’t have much philosophical weight to it, it does leave you with something to think about without too much of the taste of colonialism left behind. It opens into the action immediately. “I soaked in the grim scene, tallying the numbers of dead Vingin in my mind. Reverse thrusts kicked in, bringing about the drop-pod’s near instantaneous deceleration. High gear inertials prevented that deceleration from turning me, and the 100 Tac-Assault Troopers on-board, into a bloody stew.” Our hero is Lev Gorlin. In Chapter 2, we’re told he has dark brown complexion, but outside of that initial description, his ethnicity doesn’t really come up. This is the future – there’s no racism, sex is a mutually enjoyed casual pastime, and there are more mind altering drugs to be had than the author bothers to name. This lack of specificity has an interesting side effect. In most fiction, speculative or not, there’s an assumption of Whiteness – if a …