Black Speculative Fiction: The View from Here

You don’t need me to tell you, it has been an amazing year for Black Speculative Fiction. Books come out daily that amaze, challenge, and inspire — even if you limit yourself to only Fantasy, or only Urban Futurism, you can’t read it all. That’s what I’m here for, to read the books you don’t know about, haven’t heard of, or haven’t gotten to. I take the job of being a book reviewer here at Black Nerd Problems to heart and try to throw to you not just the headliners in the field, but new tracks too. And from this vantage point, reading famous and unknown, new and old, what do I see as the current state of Black Speculative Fiction? The means of reaching the audience have changed

The publishing powers that be have been wringing their hands over this one for a long time. Going to the big publishers is no more the only move to find quality books, just like going to Barnes and Noble is no longer the only way to buy the books themselves. These establishments only have themselves to blame. Black and brown authors have been banging on their doors for years, begging to be published. We got tired of knocking and moved to utilize the means of production for ourselves. Small presses, self-publishing, sponsored series, webcomics – these are all being used to produce amazing content with the only gate keeper on quality being the readers. Sure it produces some crazy stuff, unedited, badly illustrated, just plain bad stuff, but it also allows anyone with time and dedication to produce thei…