Friday was my birthday! And I'm... O.L.D! :( :(
Old enough to remember when...
The ONLY black film star was Sidney Poitier (so he had to represent the WHOLE race)
There were no black characters in the comicbooks I saw.
There were no black people in scifi series on TV.
There were no... well, you get the picture!
My, how things have changed!
For my birthday-which I'm going to celebrate over a 2 week period, just for the hell of it- I want a LOT of things.
I want World Peace!
I want a Green Lantern film with John Stewart as Lantern- played by Idris Elba, or Adewale Akinbiyi-Agbabe (Mr Ecko from Lost)
I want some fabulous black anime series on tv where I can easily see it- not just Afro Samurai.
Now we've sent a bunch of Black Brit actors over there (the US) I want us to get bunch of Black American actors over here (Britain) on stage and screen and tv. The woman who played the president's wife in seasons 1&2 of 24 Penny Johnson Jerald, I want to see her on stage in the West End or at the Old Vic, or at the Donmar Theatre (all in London) playing Lady MacBeth...
I want the next episode of the super low budget Brit scifi series Misfits (delinquent teens serving community service orders get unexpected superpowers) which has some sharp writing and amazing acting, and has taken an EPIC turn last week, to come on NOW.
I want them to discover a hidden set of previously unknown recordings of funk and Jazz by James Brown covering the period 1967-1977. Stuff that rivals Get on the Good Foot, Give it Up, Turn it Loose, and James Brown Plays New Breed (he plays Hammond organ on that album, people! He tears that s*** up!).
I want all my BSFS colleagues to write me a short story, full of our own scifi tropes, native wit, the kind of thing where you read and know it could only have been written by a black man/woman.
I want to go to the major bookstores and get colour in my Science Fiction! Set in African, Asian, Arab countries, with protagonists from those countries. And we want stories where indigenous peoples - North or South America, Australasia, or the Indian sub-continent, or Inuit- are the heroes, the tellers of the tale,who save usf rom the aliens!!
Damnit- I want a scifi tv film that is set amongst the Dogon, rooted in their cosmology...
I want to finish my attempt to do this year's NaNoWriMo (I'm cheating: flinging everything in- extracts, fragments, vignettes, short scenes, character studies, re-mixes, and God-Knows-What-Else, to get to the finish line in just over an hour tonight). Funnily enough, the pressure is making me write good little nuggets, with characters' voices coming through.
I want World Peace.
What do you guys want????
(late birthday greets will be graciously received)
PS' check out this video set in India with Scifi Elements...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6yuW40iw0
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