The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life. This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life on the page. The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. 'A kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time' (Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature), from the Ice Age to the first appearance of microbial life 550 million years ago, by a brilliant young paleobiologist.

Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

If you are new to Afrofuturism, this book is an excellent place to start.  Am I describing the life of an East African person in the 17th century, or the story of an alien abduction? Womack evokes such questions throughout the book, transcending the frame of race to show us how Black history and, more importantly, Black futures reflect society at large. Imagine a person taken by surprise aboard a foreign vessel to a land beyond their imagining, a fate unknown. One question I had going in was, “How would modern conceptions of race even factor into a society in the stars?” Womack addressed this in the second chapter, which revolves around race as a social construct - one that correlates to humanity’s relationship with the unknown, i.e. By envisioning the future through a Black lens, Afrofuturism critiques the past and constructs a whole new frame for viewing the Black experience. Like the contemporary cyberpunk, steampunk, and solarpunk movements, Afrofuturism is a way of reimagining the future. If you can jam to Parliament-Funkadelic or cheer on Uhura, you are already on your way. And you don’t need a background in critical race theory to get a grip on Afrofuturism after all, the arts came first - the theory came later. Womack is both informative and accessible with a wealth of citations from academia and the arts alike. It can be read cover-to-cover (which I did) or in segments relevant to your current interests, whether they be feminism in the movement or afrosurrealism. This book is equally at home in a personal library or on a college syllabus.  Womack, Afrofuturist scholar and author of Rayla 2212, walks us through the origins of the movement through to the present, exploring the neighborhoods of this genre with as much affection as the foundations underneath them. From Sun Ra and George Clinton to Janelle Monae and NK Jemisin, the Afrofuturist movement has touched most major art forms over the past several decades.

Emma donoghue author