Blackness as Out of This World

Science fiction encourages us to accept the fantastic while making us look more critically at the real or material. In the Space Traders story and short film, the science fiction “alien” element allowed the author to generally suspend disbelief and to convince the reader to accept his portrait of blackness in America without questioning if…

Space Traders: From Pages to Screens

The sci-fi elements that are developed in the short story “Space Traders” by Derrick Bell allows for the existence of a fantastical, yet very relatable, world in which an unlikely event brings forth arguments centered around race. Aliens from another world are shown to make contact with earth and present a trade, giving the United…

Using Science Fiction to Analyze Blackness

The genre of science fiction allows authors to create a world where they are able to exaggerate the position of blacks in society. In his piece “Space Traders”, Derrick Bell creates a fictional world where the United States is forced to decide between fixing all of their economic and environmental problems for the exchange of…

We Won’t Go Lightly: Science Fiction and “Space Traders”

Derrick Bell’s short story “Space Traders,” even the outlandish science fiction strikingly mirrored reality. Even though the story began in the realm of science fiction, with aliens arriving on the shores of the East Coast, it quickly turned to conversations among business and political leaders of the United States that I can legitimately imagine happening….

Science Fiction Meets Black Matter

Using the short story “Space Traders” as an exemplary text, discuss the potentially unique ways in which the genre of science fiction might enable us to think through questions about blackness and its relationship to the material and what matters. Science fiction allows for a satire that is in many ways ridiculous but also in…