A cultural and literary movement blending African diasporic culture with science fiction, fantasy, and speculative vision.
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic and philosophy that reimagines the future (and reinterprets the past) through a Black cultural lens. In fiction, it combines science fiction, fantasy, and speculative elements with African mythology, diasporic experience, and Black cultural traditions. It's a creative reclamation: imagining futures where Black people don't just survive but thrive, lead, and shape civilizations.
Afrofuturism has moved from a niche literary movement to a major cultural force, influencing fiction, film, music, and visual art. If you're writing speculative fiction that draws from African or African-American cultural traditions, understanding Afrofuturism helps you engage with an established and growing community. It also challenges all speculative fiction writers to imagine futures that aren't default-white.
A foundational Afrofuturist text: a modern Black woman repeatedly pulled back to the antebellum South.
A Himba woman at an interstellar university, blending African cultural identity with space-opera adventure.
Wakanda as the ultimate Afrofuturist vision: an African nation that's the most technologically advanced on Earth.
Research one African mythology or cultural tradition you're unfamiliar with. Write a 500-word scene set 200 years in the future where that tradition has shaped a technology, a social structure, or a way of life. The future should feel rooted in cultural specificity, not generic.