Thursday, October 26, 2006

More on Islamic sci-fi/futurism


It turns out I was wrong in my post below when I wondered whether Fun^Da^Mental's song "786 All Is War" might "launch an Islamo-futurism trend?" I learned today of Yusuf Nuruddin's article, Yusuf Nuruddin on "Ancient Black Astronauts and Extraterrestrial Jihads: Islamic Science Fiction as Urban Mythology," published in the latest issue of Socialism and Democracy. It's part of a special issue on "Socialism and Social Critique in Science Fiction," and also includes articles by Steven Shaviro and Carl Freedman, among others. I look forward to checking it out.

Yusuf Nuruddin, by the way, is the author of a very fine, and groundbreaking study of the Nation of Gods and Earths: "The Five Percenters: A Teenage Nation of Gods and Earths," in Muslim communities in North America, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, eds., Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

(Photo: Keith David as Abu 'Imam al-Walid in the Vin Diesel sci-fi movie Pitch Black [2000]).

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