Afro Futurist Lit Is Bleaker Than Cyberpunk  In the Afro-
futurist fiction of Walter Mosley and Octavia Butler, the heroes
are often at the mercy of the system, writes blogger Christopher
Bradley. That isn't so much the case for Cyberpunk's outsider
heroes, he points out.  "Cyberpunk literature toyed with this -
but, I feel, never very successfully. It's like in Gibson's
work. In some sort of grand theoretical sense the protagonists
were "from the street", but their interaction with the system
was essential one of equals. That is, I believe, an attitude
that is quite natural for white men to take - that the system,
even if stupid and corrupt, nevertheless recognizes them as
human and acknowledges their ability to challenge or destroy
that system. It is my experience, so far, that in afro-futurist
works that assumption is not there. The system often does not
recognize the legitimacy of the humanity of the protagonists. I
feel that even in science fiction where humans are regarded as
backwards, and I am reminded