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…

The Absence of Black Matter and Importance of Narrative Medium

1) In engaging Derrick Bell’s “Space Traders” in our ongoing dialogue on the meaning of black matter, I examined two key images on the last page of his short story. While the Black Americans are being herded on to the beaches towards the Space Traders Bell describes their “vast empty holds… [yawning] in the morning…

Slender Chains

“Space Traders” by Derrick Bell highlights, through its genre of science fiction, the bizarreness and unfairness of our American history and, possibly, our future. The short story uses extraterrestrials as a new form that embodies oppression while using the white- American community as moderate and undefensive of its black brothers. In his short story, Bell…

Revealing the Space Traders

Even though the sci-fi genre has many fantastical and otherworldly elements that might strike or fascinate us, they are able to highlight real problems of the treatment of marginalized groups such as black people. This is clearly shown in the short story, “Space Traders” by Derrick Bell. Aliens from another world are shown to arrive…

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…

Science Fiction, Social Commentary, and Space Traders

The genre of science fiction is important for people to consider events, places, and living beings that are unknown in the current world. While at times it may seem ridiculous and impossible, the newness of worlds based in science fiction helps people think differently about real issues. Placing a real social issue, such as racism,…

Don’t Accept Gifts From Strangers – there may be strings attached

As a text, “Space Traders” uses the genre of science fiction to aid the irony within the text. The fantastical concept is portrayed as very unrealistic and the word choice of the author, such as when they describe the different perspectives of the aliens (“no-nonsense folks” vs. “menacing”), makes the text seem more ironic and…

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…

“Space Traders”: What’s In Focus?

Cosmic Slop’s adaptation of Derek Bell’s short story “Space Traders” illustrates that the medium of film informs the way we think through questions about blackness and its relationship to the material and what matters through its use of camera angles. In particular, the people who are and are not in focus in the camera’s frame…

The Twilight Zone: Galactic Obscurity and Objectification of Blackness

One: Science fiction often centralizes upon the consideration of the benefits and consequences of acquiring a means of superior technology possessed by a technologically superior species.  Regarding the latter (consequences), the genre often depicts humanity deliberating moral questions in order to determine if whether or not a sacrifice needed to be made by their species…