At The Science of Fiction, an interview with Maurice Broaddus about his book Sweep of Stars and the world he created for a planned trilogy “that blends the writer’s loves of science, art, and religion in an intrigue-filled tale about a pan-African society called the Muungano that’s forging a new future for itself across the Solar System.” Lots of good bits on world building, and a couple of nerdy spots where I laughed out loud.
Sweep of Stars is a love letter to the world that could be if Black people in Africa and the African diaspora were finally free from the effects of centuries of slavery, colonialism, and ongoing systemic racism. […]
[T]he whole idea was ‘Let’s get to a place where we can carve out some time to just sit and think and just dream, essentially, about who we could be, what we want to be, how we want to do things differently.’ And I think that dreaming process is the process of trying to shake off the weight of history. Can we shake off enough of the weight of history so that we can try and create something new? […]
There is the split that says ‘It is dangerous. It is an Other. Let us destroy, control, capture, study it.’ Then there’s a faction that’s like, ‘Hey, How about we adapt to life alongside it? What does that look like?’ What does it look like to embrace its presence and then see about living life alongside it?