Under strange stars: Black writers and fans explore race through science fiction. (Culture).

Colorlines Magazine; 12/22/2002; article by Libero Della Piana

excerpt (Click on excerpt to access the rest):

Science fiction has been a part of the Black American experience from the first moment slaves looked to the skies to follow the “drinking gourd” North to freedom. To enslaved people ripped from their homeland and dragged to a new world, the idea that the stars would lead them to an unknown land of freedom might have seemed a fantastic fiction, an imaginary hope. That the symbol of freedom was both a distant star and a symbol of the African communal past is no small irony. The tension of black existence has always been a pull between the hope of the future and the magical legacy of …