Black God’s Drum, by P. Djèlí Clark

Novel Background

• Published in 2018
• Nominated for Hugo and Nebula (loses to the sequel to the Martha Wells novella we’re reading next)
• Published by Tor.com
  • Part of the recent renaissance in short-form SF (stories and novellas)
  • Perhaps 15 years ago, short SF was dying out in favor of novel publication
    • This was mostly due to the decline in magazine reading generally
    • Novel-centric nature of SF was a longer trend starting in the 1960s
  • Recently, the rise of smart phones and e-readers has rejuvenated the market
    • Many online-only SF journals are winning awards and seeing remarkable success
  • Similarly, Tor.com, which is a spin-off from Tor (an established SF publisher), was created as a novella-focused platform, primarily targeting Kindle readers
  • Additionally, as an under-published market, authors have had a lot of success
    • In the last three years, either 4 or 5 of the 6 nominees for both Hugo and Nebulla novella awards have been Tor.com publications
• This represents a growing trend in the shifting manner in which SF is published and consumed.

Steampunk

• Black God’s Drum is an example of “steampunk”
• Comparable to Afrofuturism and cyberpunk in that it is also a multimedia project
• Steampunk imagines an alternate 1880s future/present
  • Usually Victorian England
  • American West
• In which Victorian contraptions imagined in period SF (Zeppelins, steam-powered spider walking machines, etc.) and strange scientific theories actually work
• We could also say: it is a modern reimagining of futures using 1880s perspectives on art, style, and technology
  • So, people writing War of the Worlds fan fiction
• Also a big deal in art and design
  • Building steam-powered devices
  • Elaborate, fantastic outfits
  • Brass contraptions
  • Clock work devices
  • Lots of Goggles
  • The Wikipedia page for Steampunk has a lot of good images of this stuff
• The term is first coined in 1987 by K.W. Jeter
  • reference to work he (Moorlock Nights (1979), Infernal Devices (1987)), James Blaylock (Homunculus (1986)), and Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates (1983)) were all doing at the time.
  • Was originally a tongue-in-cheek reference to cyberpunk: steam instead of computers
  • Why? Now? In the 1980s
    • Think of how mass-produced everything, even people, is in Neuromancer. Steampunk comes to celebrate the eccentric, the hand-made, and the unique: tinkerers, crafters.
  • Jeter acknowledges a lot of early references:
    • Wild Wild West (TV, 1965-6)
    • Michael Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air (1971)
    • Wells, Verne, and Edisonades such as Edward Ellis’s The Steam-Man of the Prairies (1886)
• Term becomes more legitimate when William Gibson and Bruce Sterling publish The Difference Engine (1990), which imagines a cyberpunk narrative set in an alternate Victorian London that has working digital computers thanks to Charles Babbage.
• Other Examples of Steampunk
  • Hayao Miyazaki, especially Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service
  • Disney’s Treasure Planet and Atlantis
  • Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  • Visual Design in Doctor Who
  • Bioshock Infinite
  • Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies

Alternate History

• Black God’s Drum also imagines an alternate past, in which the history of the Caribbean is very different
• Speculation about the present or past, not the future
• Popularized by
  • Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) in which the confederacy wins the US Civil War
  • Keith Laumer’s Worlds of Imperium (1961)
  • Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962)
• Speculation about the nature of causality
• How is alternate history SF? How is it not?

Afrofuturism, Steampunk, and Alternate History in Black God’s Drum

• I’m interested in Clark’s novella as Afro-retrofuturism
  • Building an alternate past from the experiences of the African diaspora
  • But also built on a particular Victorian imagination

Themes

• Steampunk:
  • 7 (“The night in … the Dead City”)
  • 8 (“Better than … for a Thieving Boss”)
  • 8-9 (“I can count … are to see”)
  • 15 (“I change my route … do without.”)
    • Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor was an important sourcebook for early Steampunk
    • Described a variety of jobs the poor did in London
  • 17 (“Best watch … on my skin”)
    • Magic is often an element in steampunk narratives
    • Does this change the novel’s SF qualities?
  • 35-6 (“Her right … my business”)
  • 70 (“Drapeto gas … at the corner of her lips”)
  • 95-6 (“He didn’t … slow and building”)
• Climate:
  • 7-8 (“Les Grand Murs … like a bowl”)
  • 45 (“No one schupid … shaking her head”)
  • This novella does interesting things with the recent history of New Orleans, especially Katrina. How does that factor into Clark’s novella?
• Oya
  • 10 (“When I open … to mean.”)
  • 16 (“Best watch where … bumps on my skin”)
  • 40 (“The captain’s head … eyes blazing.”)
  • 47-8 (“I’m not one … I answer”)
• Civil War
  • 11-2 (“These men … in New Orleans”)
• Alternate History
  • 19 (“There’s Prussians … red uniforms”)
  • 20 (“New Orleans … open port”)
  • 30-1 (“I used to ask … would say.”)
  • 43 (“If it’s so powerful … on your airship.”)
  • 44-5 (“The captain nods … was born”)
• Afrofuturism
  • 31 (“In Haiti … catch on”)
  • 32 (“That last part … go cold inside”)
  • 36-7 (“The magic of those … what that means”)
  • 39 (“I’m half expecting … one you hear about”)
  • 100 (“We change … your protection”)
• Magic
  • 60 (“The captain … to figure out”)
  • 63 (“The captain looks … odd.”)
  • 86 (“So you got dem … the folk magic”)

Conclusions

Clark’s novella is interesting in that it imagines a future where Haiti is freed through the use of a combination of science and folk magic and in which New Orleans is a free port established after a slave revolt. Yet in certain ways the history of slavery that remains and has been technologized is even more horrifying given its continuation post-Civil-War. Why do this? Clark’s alternate history is not so much wish-fulfillment as it is a survey of many aspects of African diasporic experience in America and the Caribbean. So in that way, Clark is repurposing Afrofuturist ideas in the context of Steampunk.