- In 2018, something happened that shattered every truism Hollywood has held dear for the past...

Ever.

"Black Panther," a story set in Africa with a mostly black cast, became the highest-grossing domestic film of the year, beating even "Avengers: Infinity War."

Take that, Thanos.

And while many people may have heard the term Afrofuturism before "Black Panther" took the world by storm, suddenly it solidified Afrofuturism's entry into the mainstream.

But while "Black Panther" is a milestone for Afrofuturism, it certainly isn't the sum total of the genre.

Later the same year, Tomi Adeyemi's "Children of Blood and Bone" topped the New York Times bestseller list.

And Janelle Monae, who's been dabbling in the genre, both musically and aesthetically, for over a decade released her third album, Dirty Computer.

I got the T-shirt, it's an amazing album.

Please listen to it.

But Afrofuturism doesn't just mean science fiction plus Africa, it's a bit more nuanced than that.

Afrofuturism addresses the cultural issues and concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture and science fiction, which is what "Black Panther" does, but you can't just wrap a lightsaber in kente cloth and call it Afrofuturism.

Unless you're John Boyega, he can do it.

Afrofuturism like rap, reggae, jazz, blues, and all the music that has come out of the black experience, is about creating art out of pain, strength, loss, and successes.

It is fundamentally rooted in being denied a full history and looking to the future to correct that.

In his 1994 essay "Black to the Future," author and lecturer Mark Dery asks, "Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?"

And this is where Afrofuturism comes in.

At the root of Afrofuturism is black speculative fiction, which uses science fiction as a way of telling stories about black resistance, history, and hope.

According to sociologist Alondra Nelson, who convened an early online forum on Afrofuturism, quote, "Afrofuturism has emerged as a term of convenience to describe analysis, criticism and cultural production that addresses the intersection between race and technology.

How does the resilience of black culture and black life is about imagining the impossible, imagining a better place, a different world.

Afrofuturism draws upon the feeling of alienation inherited from the slavery of American blacks, which it sublimates.

in this conception, certain elements of Afro-American culture, such as the transcendence of spirituals, are re-imagined and transposed into a new cosmic and legendary perspective, where the alienated becomes extraterrestrial."

In an essay written by N.K.

Jemisin from 2013 titled "How Long 'til Black Future Month?"

which later became the title of her 2018 short story `collection, she discusses watching the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Jetsons, and being struck at how homogeneous the series' depiction of an idyllic future is with no people of color in it.

According to Jemisin, quote, "There is nobody even slightly brown in the Jetsons' world.

Even the family android sounds white."

- Here I am, sir.

- "This is supposed to be the real world's future, right?

Albeit in a silly, humorous form.

Thing is, not-white people make up most of the world's population, now as well as back in the sixties when the show was created.

So what happened to all those people in the minds of this show's creator?

Are they beneath the clouds, where the Jetsons never go?

Was there an apocalypse or maybe a pogrom?"

Although the mainstreamification of Afrofuturism is relatively new, its themes have appeared in literature for over a century.

in 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt published a collection of short stories called "The Conjure Woman," which discussed themes of black resistance and revenge against antebellum culture using traditional African-American spirituality.

Beginning in 1902, "Of One Blood" was published serially by Pauline Hopkins, which talks about a man who goes on an expedition to Ethiopia and discovers a hidden, technologically-advanced civilization.

It's basically Wakanda before Wakanda.

The novel also explores the protagonist's own anti-blackness and ignorance towards black history.

He goes to Ethiopia to find treasure, but instead finds his own form of black identity.

In the 1920s, W.E.B.

Du Bois wrote among the first post-apocalyptic short fiction with black subjects called "The Comet."

In the story, Du Bois writes about a black man named Jim Davis, The only man left alive after a comet hits New York City and releases toxic gases that kill everyone, except himself and a white woman named Julia.

Jim rises as a symbol of the savior and hero of the narrative, a new Adam in this destroyed New York.

In the book "Afrofuturism: the World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture," Ytasha L. Womack, a leading Afrofuturist, explains that the story is one of the first to portray that "blackness is not a mark of shame, but a source of pride, establishing a space where black culture can thrive."

No conversation about Afrofuturism would be complete without Octavia E. Butler, widely considered the Grand Dame of sci-fi today, I call her the G.O.A.T personally.

Starting with the release of her first book "Pattern Master" in 1976, Butler went on to release a dozen science fiction novels featuring Afrofuturist themes.

While she wasn't as appreciated in her time, renewed interest in Afrofuturism has led to a surge of new readers of her work.

Her books are now often included in many high school and college required reading lists.

That Butler is only recently getting her due reflects how slow the mainstream has been to take interest in black fiction.

But hey, we're getting there.

Noted modern works that fall under the Afrofuturist umbrella include Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death," and "Binti."

"Binti" is a novella about a girl that overcomes humble beginnings and is offered a place at Oomza University, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the galaxy, but a great deal of this series focuses on Binti trying to reconcile her heritage with her own natural intelligence and personal goals.

"An Unkindness of Ghosts" by Rivers Solomon, who was a Campbell Award nominee for Best New Writer in 2018, explores how sustained acts of abuse and violence can shape a culture and people.

This one takes place on a generation ship that is not only stratified based on race, but also extremely restrictive of any non-conformity, especially with regard to gender.

It is affectively coping with the violence of colonialism in space.

(futuristic music) Afrofuturist storytellers take advantage of the speculative nature of the genre by simultaneously creating new worlds and deconstructing the racial politics of this one.

One of the criticisms lodged against dystopian fiction like Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" or Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy, is that even in the worst of futures, there's no place for black bodies because either they were banished or just seemed to disappear.

This is why it's important to recognize the thematic elements of Afrofuturism that go beyond the idea that Afrofuturism is just science fiction plus Africa.

Afrofuturism is about reclaiming our past in order to craft our future, and that is done by infusing black sound and stories with forward-thinking desire to see how our culture could have evolved or could still evolve, unhindered by colonial influence.

Here's how author N.K.

Jemisin put it as part of a panel in 2016, quote, "I think one of the most radical things that anyone in this world can do is imagine that black people have a future."

Through Afrofuturism, black society has a future that is beyond the clouds, just like everyone else.

One final question we should ask.

Is Afrofuturism too broad a term?

Some African authors, like Okorafor, reject the title of Afrofuturism because they do not write through the perspective of Western blackness.

Okorafor is a Nigerian-American who is deeply connected to African culture, and she explains in her TED Talk how she writes science fiction through that lens.

Quote, "I can best explain the difference between classic science fiction and Afrofuturism if I used the octopus analogy.

Like humans, octopuses are some of the most intelligent creatures on earth.

However, octopus intelligence evolved from a different evolutionary line, so the foundation is different.

The same can be said about the foundations of various forms of science fiction.

In non-Western culture, the mystical coexisting with the mundane is normal."

Okorafor also points to the history of Afrofuturism being associated with music, especially in the United States, with African artists as an afterthought.

In short, "I understand the necessity of it.

I understand the uses of it, but I do not consider myself an Afrofuturist."

As we enter a post-"Black Panther" era, Afrofuturism is not just a cultural aesthetic philosophy of science and a philosophy of history, but also a money-making machine.

Disney, Marvel and Ryan Coogler turned the story of the first black comic book superhero into a film that became the 12th highest-grossing film of all time with over $1.35 billion worldwide.

Coogler took the story and infused it with the kind of narrative that is at the heart of Afrofuturism, the possibility that Africa and its descendants could have a powerful present and future, and made it immensely entertaining and marketable.

It will genuinely be exciting to see Afrofuturism grow and expand as more black authors tackle the questions, claim the aesthetic, and build upon its core idea that not only do black people across the world have a future, but it's going to be pretty darn lit because we created it for ourselves.