If Aliens Can Be Anything, Why Not Black? Who Gets to Exist in the Future—A Question Sci-Fi Still Avoids
- D. (Kushaqxi) Relaford
- Jan 3
- 4 min read
From Wakanda Forever, Sinners and Lovecraft Country to stories like Supacell, Project Power, and The Man Who Fell to Earth, Black science fiction has surged into the mainstream with undeniable force.
These stories proved something audiences already knew but industries long ignored: Black imagination does not stop at history—it extends naturally into the future, the cosmos, and the unknown.
Yet even as sci-fi expands, a strange absence remains.
Modern cinema has no shortage of extraterrestrials, mutants, gods, hybrids, and imagined beings. Blue-skinned races. Ash-white immortals. Metallic greys. Reptilian humanoids. Feline species. Chalky specters and synthetic lifeforms fill the screen. And yet, Black-skinned beings—melanated, cosmic, ancestral—are almost entirely missing from the broader galactic imagination.
Not sidelined. Missing.
That omission isn’t subtle. And it isn’t accidental.
The Absurd Gap in the Galactic Narrative
Science fiction prides itself on boundless imagination. It asks audiences to suspend disbelief—to accept faster-than-light travel, multiverses, time loops, and sentient machines. Yet somehow, the presence of melanated beings beyond Earth is treated as implausible, controversial, or unnecessary.
This contradiction is not just ironic—it’s asinine.
If intelligence can evolve as reptilian, feline, synthetic, or translucent, then excluding Black-skinned beings from the universe reveals less about science fiction and more about who is permitted to be imagined as eternal, advanced, or cosmic.
In other words, the future has been selectively curated.
As mentioned earlier, the narrative changes when the power to imagine the future rests in the hands of those who actually wish to see it. When storytellers reclaim authorship over the cosmos, new worlds emerge—not as corrections, but as inevitabilities.
In this moment, science fiction is no longer waiting for permission. Independent creators, writers, and visual artists are building entire mythologies outside of traditional gatekeeping systems. And from that shift—where imagination is no longer filtered through exclusion—one franchise rises with clarity and intent.
Not as a reaction to what was missing, but as an affirmation of what has always belonged.
It is from this turning point that The Melanated Universe emerges.
The Melanated Universe:
Ancestral Fantasy Across the Cosmos
The Melanated Universe—Kushite Publishing’s most anticipated upcoming release—was created to correct that distortion, not as protest, but as possibility.
This five-volume collection of short stories presents ancestral fantasy drawn from across the universe—worlds where melanated beings are not symbols, side characters, or metaphors, but architects of civilizations, carriers of memory, and inheritors of cosmic lineage. These are not Earth-bound narratives stretched into space, but fully realized mythologies where melanin is neither novelty nor explanation—it simply is.
In these fabled tales, Blackness is not limited to a single planet, era, or struggle. It is ancient. Adaptive. Interstellar. Spiritual. Technological. Remembered.
Here, ancestry does not end at Earth’s atmosphere. Lineage does not dissolve in space. And the future does not require erasure to feel advanced.
Standing on the Shoulders of Visionaries
This universe does not emerge in isolation. It follows a lineage carved by speculative pioneers like Octavia Butler and Tananarive Due, whose work insisted that Black futures were not optional but inevitable. Their stories explored genetic memory, destiny, survival, and inheritance long before studios and algorithms recognized the demand.
The Melanated Universe extends that tradition outward—beyond Earth, beyond time, beyond familiar mythologies—asking a simple but radical question:
What if Blackness was always part of the universe’s original design?
Stories, Artifacts, and a Living Mythos
This project is not only a book. It is a world.
The stories form the narrative spine. The cover art and posters are not merchandise—they are artifacts, visual fragments from the universe itself. Each image suggests a civilization, a lineage, a history that stretches backward and forward at once.
To read The Melanated Universe is to step into a cosmology that feels remembered rather than invented—one that offers a more feasible, expansive, and honest narrative of who belongs in the stars.
Reclaiming the Right to the Infinite
Science fiction has always been about more than the future. It is about permission—who gets to imagine, who gets to endure, and who gets to evolve.
The Melanated Universe does not ask for inclusion. It assumes presence.
And in doing so, it reminds us that the cosmos was never meant to be monochrome.
The Melanated Universe is an invitation—to readers, collectors, and dreamers—to engage a future that does not erase its origins, but carries them forward, across galaxies, intact.
Help Finish the Five-Volume Series — Start by Owning the Art .
BOOK COVER POSTERS NOW FOR SALE--ALL 5 VOLUMES
Why These Posters Matter
The posters you see are not promotional afterthoughts. They are visual fragments of the Melanated Universe—artifacts pulled from a mythology still in the process of being fully revealed. Each image represents a world, a lineage, a story that either gets to exist… or disappears unfinished.
Your support helps ensure these stories are finished with the level of editorial care, refinement, and craftsmanship they deserve—so readers experience the Melanated Universe at its highest quality.
Purchasing a poster is not just acquiring art. It is a way of participating in the completion of the Melanated Universe, a five-part series of short story volumes that explore ancestral fantasy across the cosmos—civilizations, beings, and futures rarely allowed to take shape in mainstream science fiction.
More Than Art — A Vote for the Future
Science fiction has always been about who gets to imagine tomorrow. By supporting this work, you’re doing more than decorating a wall—you’re backing a future that refuses erasure.
These posters say:
Blackness belongs beyond Earth
Ancestry does not end at the atmosphere
The cosmos is wide enough for every lineage
They are conversation pieces, declarations, and quiet acts of resistance against a future that too often forgets who helped imagine it.
For Collectors, Readers, and Co-Creators
If this blog resonated with you—if the question “Who gets to exist in the future?” landed somewhere deep—then these posters are an opportunity to help answer it.
Not with outrage.Not with argument.But with creation.
Each purchase brings the Melanated Universe closer to completion and helps ensure that all five volumes reach their full expression.
Thank You for Building this Universe With Us
Stories like these don’t survive on algorithms alone. They survive because people choose them.
If you believe the future should be vast, plural, and unapologetically Melanated—this is one way to help make it so.
Neat! We applaude your works. Keep doing what you’re gifted to do.
Looking forward to some feedback