In the remainder of New Suns 2, Shawl uses their penchant for inclusive representation to remind you of the radiance of a promised sun. There is a hint of the Afrocentric in Walter Mosley’s introduction, in Alex Jennings’s, and perhaps Tananarive Due’s short stories, but the grassroots lived experience of Africa is contained to Tlotlo Tsamaase’s genderfluid narrative ‘‘Haunted Bodies of Wombmen’’ that heartens you to engage with difference. So, if you’re looking for an Afrocentric anthology, New Suns 2 is not it. And new stories by some of the authors from the first anthology, including Alex Jennings, Kathleen Alcalá, Minsoo Kang, Jaymee Goh, Hiromi Goto and Darcie Little Badger, promise much. Unlike those earlier anthologies, which focused on stories and writers from Africa and the diaspora, Shawl has a broader focus in New Suns 2, wherein stories traverse global cultures, including Indian, Bangladeshi, Japanese, Indigenous American, African American, Filipino, South American, and more. Hartmann’s AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers (2008). This was in the wake of similar pacesetter anthologies which featured stories by people of color, including Sheree Renée Thomas’s Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000) and, perhaps, earlier Afrocentric predecessors such as Ivor W. The earlier New Suns, with its effusive foreword by LeVar Burton, cast seasoned and emerging writers in cross-cultural stories of chants and altars, harvests and intergalactic odysseys.

Nisi Shawl’s New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color is a showcase anthology that features some big names and which enters the scene with big shoes to fill, following as it does hot on the heels of its World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy award-winning predecessor. New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, Nisi Shawl, ed.

New suns original speculative fiction