Black Empire

by George S. Schuyler, Brooks E. Hefner (Editor)

A pioneering work of Afrofuturism and antiracist fiction by the author of Black No More , about a Black scientist who masterminds a worldwide conspiracy to take back the African continent from imperial powers

A Penguin Classic

“An amazing serial story of Black genius against the world” is how Black Empire was promoted upon its original publication as a serial in The Pittsburgh Courier from 1936 to 1938. It tells the electrifying tale of Dr. Henry Belsidus, a Black scientific genius desperate to free his people from the crushing tyranny of racism. To do so, he concocts a plot to enlist a crew of Black intellectuals to help him take over the world, cultivating a global network to reclaim Africa from imperial powers and punish Europe and America for white supremacy and their crimes against the planet’s Black population.

At once a daring, high-stakes science fiction adventure and a strikingly innovative Afrofuturist classic, this controversial and fearlessly political work lays bare the ethical quandaries of exactly how far one should go in the name of justice.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Classics, African American, African American Literature, Novels, Speculative Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

(1895–1977), satirist, critic, and journalist. George Samuel Schuyler was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Eliza Jane Fischer and George S. Schuyler. He grew up in a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood in Syracuse, New York, where he attended public schools until he enlisted in the army at the age of seventeen. He spent seven years (1912–1919) with the black 25th U.S. Infantry and was discharged as a first lieutenant.

From early on, Schuyler possessed a high level of confidence and boasted of his family having been free as far back as the Revolutionary War. In 1921, Schuyler joined the Socialist Party of America, through which he connected with A. Philip Randolph, who hired him in 1923 as assistant editor for the Messenger; in that position, from 1923 to 1928, Schuyler also wrote a column entitled “Shafts and Darts: A Page of Calumny and Satire.” In 1924, Schuyler became the New York correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier, contributing a weekly commentary, “Views and Reviews.” Schuyler led several investigative series while with the Courier, including one entitled “Aframerican Today,” reporting on race relations in Mississippi in 1925–1926. In 1926, his article “The Negro-Art Hokum,” published in the Nation, propelled him into the middle of the literary debate of the Harlem Renaissance. While Schuyler was concerned with race difference always being interpreted as inferiority and was trying to refute negative stereotypes, his statement in that essay, “the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon,” caused him to be labeled as an assimilationist throughout his career. In 1927, “Our White Folks” was published in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury; from this, Schuyler's reputation grew and Mencken published nine more of Schuyler's articles between 1927 and 1933.

By the end of the 1920s, Schuyler began to acquire a national reputation as an iconoclast; despite his constant attacks on white racism, his commitment to exposing fraud, regardless of race, caused some African Americans to doubt his racial loyalty. In 1928, Schuyler married Josephine Cogdell, a white Texan ex-model.

In 1931, Schuyler published his first satirical novel, Black No More, Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free. The bulk of Schuyler's reputation rests on the success of this novel, which attacks myths of racial purity and white supremacy and the ways in which the perpetuation of racism serves economic purposes. Also in 1931, Schuyler became the first African American writer to serve as a foreign correspondent for a metropolitan newspaper, when the New York Evening Post sent him to assess the controversy of Liberia's slave labor. The articles were condemned by Marcus Garvey supporters, but based on the experience he published Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia (1931).

Schuyler also had several literary alter egos. Between 1933 and 1939, he produced fifty-four short stories and twenty novels/novellas in serialized form under such pen names as Samuel I. Brooks and Rachel Call. Until recently, scholars paid no attention to this body of work and Schuyler's own attitude toward his serialized fiction ranged from amusement to disdain. The freedom of a pen name allowed him to explore melodrama, and in contrast to the audience for his satirical essays and his novel, Black No More, Schuyler wrote his serialized fiction for an exclusively African American audience. To date, four of his serialized novels have been reprinted into two volumes: Black Empire (1991) and Ethiopian Stories (1995). Black Empire explores the success of the retaking of Africa from European colonial powers; Ethiopian Stories explores Ethiopia's wars against Italian occupation.

Schuyler continued his career as a journalist until 1966, when he published his autobiography, Black and Conservative, which gives an inside track to the feuds among the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance.

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve got to get it out of the way and admit that I don’t really like this book. Admittedly, reading it as a “book” is the first step in distorting the narrative experience because this is a collection of columns that satirist George S. Schuyler published in the Pittsburgh Courier in the late 1930s under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. He was dashing them off week after week, and the Courier audience was gobbling them up. To read a whole volume of them at once is to experience unrelentingly the repetitive plot devices, political dooms-saying, and appeals to shock value, which means, basically, that this gets boring, even though it seems like pulp science-fiction (done in a semi-parody) should be the most gobble-worthy scholarly reading on the planet.

And from the scholar’s vantagepoint, I want to say that the editors did a great job. This material is laid out in a readable, clear way, and they are very precise about the changes that they made for editorial consistency (choosing one spelling of a character’s name, etc.), and the inconsistencies that they kept in there to stay true to what Schuyler wrote (even if he sometimes didn’t stay true to what he had written in previous weeks—presumably he wrote in a headlong rush and never looked back). Also, their essay at the end, which examines his contradictory views about racial essentialism and race-as-a-construct, not to mention about back-to-Africa movements (Marcus Garvey) and black internationalism, and which presents important historical context (the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and contemporaneous intertexts (pulp science fiction), is basically a model for the genre. They educate their reader and enrich their understanding of the text that came before, with thorough notes and a strong sense of Schuyler’s variegated periodical output. Also helpful for the scholar who wants to know Schuyler’s pseudonymous work but isn’t going to fall down the rabbit hole of the archives to do it, they present a list of his pieces written under this pseudonym for the Pittsburgh Courier, accompanied by pithy synopses.

The actual book (or, really, two books, as two narratives, Black Internationale and Black Empire were serialized in the Courier) is totally fascinating, even as I found it difficult to read in the long sitting in which I read it. Schuyler imagines an anti-hero, Dr. Belsidus, determined to right the wrongs that white people have done to black people over the centuries. He is charismatic, sexually irresistible (based on his ornately decorated love nests and the swooning response of women around her), brilliant, and ruthless. The book opens with our narrator, Slater, witnessing Dr. Belsidus murdering a white lover and then being kidnapped by Belsidus and his cronies, to serve as Belsidus’s personal secretary. In a dazzling case of Stockholm syndrome avant la lettre, Slater seems basically to forget that he was kidnapped and forced into service as he becomes an enthusiastic contributor to the schemes towards global domination undertaken by the Black Internationale, a group that kills all betrayers and dissolves their corpses in an acid bath (really).

Schuyler’s narrative alternates between utopian technological triumphalism (solar power, hydroponic farms, consumer cooperatives, cyclotrons that can conquer enemy airplanes) and international spy intrigue, punctuated by terrorist action. These wild swings in tone (from the technocrats’ hope for a better, more rational civilization to the bloodthirsty search for revenge and world domination) can be unsettling, as the latter is claimed as a way to the former. While Schuyler is critical of Mussolini, it is clear that the specter of fascism fascinated him and appealed to him, as Dr. Belsidus claims unlimited power, and all the sympathetic characters seem to agree that it is best for him to do so.

One of the most fascinating characters is Martha, Belsidus’s white lover, whom he dismisses as another pawn in his grand scheme but who becomes crucial in the plot that follows, particularly to foment conflict in Europe (in order to get the former imperial powers to ignore the Black Internationale’s take-over of Africa). Martha is just as ruthless as her lover, helping with the plot to gas 15,000 technicians for Britain’s munitions factories, shooting a white cop at close range, and assassinating the Prime Minister. But at the end of Black Empire, when Belsidus has experienced his greatest victories, Martha is left weeping, perhaps recognizing that she can never bridge the gap between them, his derisive view of white people. I couldn’t help but think about Schuyler’s white wife, Josephine, and how she might have felt about this dramatization of a white woman who is helping with the battle but who can never be recompensed by the full personal participation of Schuyler in their household and family. (I have her on my mind today, as I read a wonderful chapter about her in Carla Kaplan’s Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance.)

Also, it is so tricky to try to interpret Schuyler’s authorial positioning vis-à-vis the views in this book. This is always hard with Schuyler because he’s deliberately provocative (and later became an arch-conservative, so it’s tricky not to read back his later views onto his earlier views) and a satirist (hence, the reader is forced to play “where’s the irony?” or, perhaps harder, “where’s the sincerity?”). In this pseudonymous fiction, another level of uncertainty comes into play because Schuyler in print was totally dismissive and derisive of what he wrote as Samuel I. Brooks, claiming that he was deliberately playing into his audience’s “racial chauvinism.” At the same time, many of the ideas that he printed under his own name in political columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, show up in this book, particularly in the monologues of Dr. Belsidus.

I don’t like these books, but they are fascinating historical documents, in their longing for a black diasporic political unity, in their depiction of violent revenge against white institutions and individuals, in their flirtation with fascism and their embrace of technological utopianism.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This bizarre collection of George S. Schuyler's serials is at first a madman-takes-over-the-world science fiction story. However, underneath that is a commentary of national and international events: the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the black-on-black slavery in Liberia, the fomenting war in Europe, Jim Crow and segregation laws in America...I love Black Empire, which is actually 2 collections: the first is Black Internationale: The Story of Black Genius Against the World and Black Empire: An Imaginative Story of a Great New Civilization in Modern Africa. The first tells of Dr. Belsidus's plan and execution in taking over Africa and killing all whites who cross his path; the second tells what happens when Belsidus's plan is realized. Romance, humor, death, betrayal, murder, violence, sex, these serials were way ahead of their time.

[Vika Herrera]

Concept and legacy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Language/writing style (from my vantage point in 2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heavy focus on describing infrastructure and battle: ⭐️⭐️

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a special relic and fascinating piece of literary history. While it may have been written as a tongue-in-cheek pulp fiction— it reads like a pure exercise of thought, emotion, and fantasy. As it was originally published as a serial in the Philadelphia Courier, many Black people wrote to the paper believing the stories in the series to be true. I was fooled too— not in thinking it was real and trying to join the Black Internationale/Empire as they did, but in believing Schuyler was an incredibly brave advocate for the liberation of all Black people. Upon researching Schuyler (as the book inspires one to do…!), it is dizzying to try and understand the intention, target audience, and impact of this text penned by a Black conservative man in the 1930’s. Could it have just been a purely artistic exercise? Or a bold self-expression that encapsulated the weight and size of his bitter critique without snuffing out the faint light of his hopes for the future? While his desire may have been to emphasize how ridiculous the concept of world domination by Black people seemed, there are moments where he can’t help but make a case for the necessity and beauty of such a reality, and provide commentary on how to handle power after regaining it from one’s oppressor.

While on a political level this book is confusing at best and heartbreaking at worst, it was a joy to read. It’s a noir fiction through and through— from fast pace to its femme fatale to its moral ambiguity. There’s romance, suspense, violence, humor— a rare exploration of what unadulterated and unabashed freedom, passion, and excitement looks and feels like from the perspective of a conflicted Black man in America.

[Michael Kilman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this one three stars because I'm conflicted about it. I still think it's worth a read, but I think (based on quotes and interviews) the the author essentially wrote this book to mock his own readers. We discussed this one at length including a book summary on Resistance Reads for our 8th episode. You can find it either on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/zvI4fNBJAJU?...

Or

Through your favorite Podcast App. https://loridianslaboratory.podbean.com/

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can really tell that it was a serial

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is composed of two connected short novels originally serialized in the Pittsburgh Courier in 1936-38. This novel could be seen as a precursor of today’s Afro-futurism.

Dr. Henry Belsidus is a Black scientific genius, an anti-hero who starts a movement to found an independent African empire, dubbed Black Internationale, in defiance of the established powers of Europe and America. The story is narrated by Carl Slater, a reporter who Belsidus kidnaps but soon is persuaded to become Belsidus's personal secretary (in part to be near Pat Givens, a beautiful female pilot who is the head of Belsidus's air force). Slater witnesses the technological marvels that Belsidus and his team of scientists and engineers create: advanced airplanes, hydroponic farms, and even a death ray. Belsidus finances all this through a vast criminal organization that spans the entire globe. Belsidus comes across as a not very likable totalitarian who uses any means to obtain his goals, including murder, terrorism, and even germ warfare. That Slater and the rest of the supporting cast goes along with these plans illustrates, I think, the appetite of the Black readership to accept violence towards their white oppressors. Several times Belsidus says that whites have brutalized Blacks for four hundred years, so it's fine for him to return death and destruction onto them.

The style of Schuyler's writing is pretty basic pulpiness, fairly clearly written hastily and without a huge amount of editing. The original was published one short chapter at a time over more than a year, so reading it collected here results in repetition and inconsistency that detracts from its impact. The real importance of this work is to demonstrate that Black writers were a key part of the pulp literature of the 1930s. Editor Brooks Hefner does a good job of providing the background of the book's historical importance and supplies notes about the cultural context in which it was published.

[Lauren Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess you can say I kinda finished this book. I finished the first half and skimmed the second. The book was a little too detailed for my taste and I found it difficult to visualize the numerous characters (and keep them all straight).

If I were back in college, I'd comment more on the Martha Gaskin character being the Great White Hope, Dr. Belsidus's views on women, the author's satire on religion, or the Black Internationale's economic regime. But I'm not so I'll just say that the book was, ehh, so-so.

I'm glad I read it though. It's one of those books everyone should at least be somewhat familiar with. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Group- Penguin Books and Classics for an advanced copy of this book of pulp serial adventure and Afrofuturism.

Weekly magazines and newspapers to keep subscribers reading would print serial adventures, weekly or bi-weekly stories of adventure, derring-do, romance, and in this case science fiction with a lot of what could be considered Afrofuturism. A story of man with a plan, and a ruthless heart for the betterment of his people, no matter the cost both in material and and in human life. A story that kept readers on edge as the tale grew, a tale of violence, and yet hope. Black Empire by George S. Schuyler is a tale that mixes pulp stories of invisible menaces, but makes them the heroes in a battle for marginalized people everywhere.

The book begins with a young reporter spotting a well dressed man and an attractive woman at a diner near his paper in Harlem. Something about the man draws his attention, and he follows the couple out of the diner, where in a doorway the man touches the woman on the neck while whispering something, causing her to fall, in what looks like death. The reporter steps forward, but is captured by the man, made to drink an elixir which causes him to pass out. Upon awakening he finds himself not a prisoner, but offered a job as secretary to Doctor Henry Belsidus, a black doctor to many rich white patients by day, but a leader of a group planning to overthrow white tyranny. Soon the reporter learns of fast fields with rich production of farm products, solar powered factories building planes and weapons, schools for engineers from countries treated as colonies by European powers. The reporter even finds love with a young aviatrix, General of the Doctor's air force, as war plans are drawn up.

This is really two stories brought together, both serial adventures so there is a lot of repetition, and sometimes some things seem a little off, but all in all this is a really fascinating story. Dr. Belsidus is as if a bad guy from the Shadow or Doc Savage won the fight, and yet his fight really kind of does make sense. The Doctor uses the racism that is present in the whites, both against color and religion to make America so busy fighting itself, it does not even notice the actions of Dr Belsidus' group. The chapters were written with a quick turnaround time, so real world events could be injected into the story, which makes sense in the second part, discussions of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the change or British Governments. The characters are pulpy, so good, bad or just fodder, nothing real in development, and most remains ciphers for the entirety of the story. There are no backstories, just this is what I plan, and what is going to happen. There is a lot of violence as most of the fighting is pretty unconventional warfare, sabotage, chemical warfare, and a real big radiation weapon at the end that might be more Buck Rogers, than anything else. However it was an easy read, and one that really made me think. Also the historical essays were interesting, both about the author and his publishing history and the information it gave about black newspapers and readership.

Not for everyone. While the writing might be dated, and for some people a bit simplistic the problems discussed are still with us, and unfortunately still accepted. For readers interested in Afrofuturism and its origins, early science fiction, and people who like to read about worlds that might have been.

[Lord English SSBM · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's actually two books (which are actually both serials in collected form), the first being more interesting than the second (which, to be honest, I did not finish). Schuyler insisted that his story of an amoral mastermind orchestrating a violent revenge against the white race was intended to be ironic, but that's not a reading easy to get from the text itself, and the issue is only complicated more by Schuyler's evolution from socialist to Goldwater-supporting conservative sometime after he wrote this serial. Belsidus is never portrayed as anything other than an amoral and ruthless if highly effective monster, but it's hard to know if Schuyler perceived all of that as a negative.

The magic of the first book is precisely that ambiguity. It's impossible to know for sure where Schuyler drew the line between absurd pulp story and his actual philosophies. The main character is swept up in Belsidus' machinations and is more or less along for the ride out of fear of Belsidus and love for a very pretty member of Belsidus' movement. He initially holds reservations about what Belsidus is doing, but his objections to violence become weaker as the book goes on. I don't think this development is explored enough to make it the main theme of the book, but certainly the man at the beginning who is horrified to watch Belsidus murder one woman is not the same man who brushes off the murder of basically every white person in all of Africa. By the end of the book Belsidus wins, establishing a dictatorial regime over an Africa (yes, the entire continent) completely liberated from European control. If Schuyler did think that Belsidus was a monster who deserved to lose, he certainly wasn't going to say so (this isn't a criticism, just an observation).

The fun in reading The Black Internationale is getting repeatedly flashbanged by insane image after insane image with no easy hints as to how you're expected to interpret any of it. There's even a paragraph about two-thirds of the way through the book about how dating is so much harder now that women and men have equal societal standing and it used to be so much simpler in the past (this book was written from 1936-1937 , so it was interesting to see that people have always been complaining about how dating used to be easier). Schuyler was certainly committed to the bit, and maybe trying to read into the politics of someone who, left or right, spent his life in the political fringes is overthinking it. Maybe he just enjoyed saying controversial stuff for its own sake. I respect it.

The problem is that it's the only trick Schuyler has, and it's hard to get more shocking than the wildly violent climax of the first book. Schuyler tries with a chapter about how Belsidus is instituting eugenics in Africa as a way to wipe out diseases, but the treatment there is a bit too on-the-nose, and you can tell that whatever Schuyler's fascination with power, Schuyler didn't actually support eugenics. The book's shock factor is really the thing that grounds an otherwise absurd story, so once that stops working the book stops working because Shuyler's plotting and characters (aside from arguably Belsidus) aren't any better than his contemporaries.

I'm glad I read the first book, but I probably won't come back to read the second.

[Peter Kerry Powers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit I read this book somewhat dutifully, having written on the Harlem Renaissance extensively in the past, but having not paid a lot of attention to Schuyler beyond some of his shorter works, which I loved, and having only skimmed somewhat cursorily through it before to see how much relevance it might have to my own subject on religion and gender. While a religious organization plays a significant part in the book in establishing a kind of proto-Afrocentric religious experience that may be trying to evoke the religiosity of Marcus Garvey's UNIA organization, I didn't find a lot of substance there and did not pursue the book seriously in the past. I decided to come back to it and give it a second chance. Although I'd like to say it's a major statement of African American letters, it clearly isn't. Other things in Schuyler I find compelling. His shorter work is sharp, he's iconoclastic and acerbic without being merely combative. I don't share his generally conservative political outlook, but he usually made me think hard about what I thought about the Harlem Renaissance and why.

This book not so much. Its worst features are its predictability, so much so that even when it tries to be shocking it is predictably so, and so even it's horrors end up being kind of boring. A kind of black fascist revenge fantasy, the book focuses on a kind of Garveyesque empire-builder, Dr. Belsidus, who is willing to cross any and every ethical boundary in the quest to develop a black empire noted in the title. Belsidus seems to be a type of moral fascist, willing to destroy everything in his path to realize what he recognizes as the greater ultimate good of his vision of a black empire. Although Belsidus seems sometimes to thrust the narrator--who seems to be something of a journalistic stand-in for Schuyler--into moral quandaries, these quandaries are short-lived as the narrator dismisses them in favor of Belsidus's overwhelming and compelling will. One can imagine such a scene result either in forms or moral reckoning or in ironic recognitions of the violence of power and empire building, but the book and its ethics never really ascends to irony or moral complexity, being content to remain within the bounds of a revenge fantasy. It never really ascends beyond that in a way that seems to interrogate racial conflict, white supremacy, black resistance and identities with the complexity they might deserve. On the other hand, it is worth noting that this began as a serialized newspaper fiction, written largely to give his primarily African American readers a source of entertainment and to give himself a weekly paycheck. It reads that way. And so my final feeling that I have done my duty by Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance to come back and give the book a more serious read. That would be time better spent if it were a more serious book.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best known for his provocative 1931 race satire Black No More, Schuyler was a prolific contributor of editorials and serial fiction to the national Black newsweekly The Pittsburgh Courier. A cliff-hanging melodrama of the overthrow of white supremacy by all means necessary, it isn't hard to see why his The Black Internationale and its 1936 sequel Black Empire were both popular in the era of Jim Crow. Ruthless, fanatical Dr. Henry Belsidus is the mastermind of an elaborate scheme to reclaim the African continent and thence achieve global domination by means of futuristic solar energy, hydroponics, and fax machines. Prone to satanic smirks and speechifying, the suave Belsidus is hardly a utopian, unleashing pandemonium via petty thievery, eugenics, death rays, total war, and the eradication of the British upper crust in a concert hall converted into a gas chamber. This moral ambivalence reflects gadfly Schuyler's own deep cynicism but doesn't detract from the lurid, pulpy fun, which includes orgiastic rites, a sexy aviatrix in a golden autogyro, and a trained attack-leopard named Ben. A proto-Afrofuturist potboiler poised between Black Panther and the works of Percival Everett, this fascinating glimpse beyond the Harlem Renaissance canon anticipates Black power and Afrocentrist themes.

[Tim Callicutt · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5 Stars] Dr. Belsidus is a black genius with a simple goal: lead his secret agency, the Black Internationale, in an effort to take back the African continent for the black man. Well... maybe not that simple of a goal.

This is a fascinating piece of writing that best operates as a historical document, particularly when viewed as a critique of black separatism (specifically, the Garveyism that was in vogue at the time). As a novel for enjoyment, the book doesn't quite work as well. Schuyler originally wrote Black Empire as two separate series of columns for the Pittsburgh Courier. Considering that the original audience was reading this in parts from week to week, the pacing is all off. There are so many cliffhangers that they become essentially meaningless. There's exposition all over the place, with heavy doses of repetition. And there is almost a complete lack of tension. When it appears, it is resolved within a couple of pages.

That's not to say there are no redeeming qualities, readability-wise. There are so many creative elements here: the science fiction elements, the basic narrative, and the utter shock value of it all are all points in its favor. However, you can tell that these chapters were meant to be disparate pieces of a larger narrative. Reading them all together is an exercise with significantly diminishing returns.

[Rhonda Hankins]

This book is a compilation of chapters originally published weekly in a newspaper in the 1930s. I bet if you read them back in the day, they were good fun and mind blowing in some ways. Taken as a whole, though, and trying to read this as a book is asking a lot of the reader. This is pulp fiction; reminded me of crazed Get Smart or Austin Powers' villains. Fun in short doses, tedious for a longer read. Also the vitriol is unrelenting and gets to be obnoxious.

Yet this is absolutely a worthwhile book to introduce yourself. I bet if you just read one short chapter a week, it'd be a quite powerful read. But for me this is a loan from the library so that's not a good option and reading it as a book isn't that fun: too much repetition and too much a celebration of hatred.

Oddly, then I'm recommending you check out a book I couldn't read all the way through. Not sure what's up with that.

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I've read Three Musketeers, and as another serial it is way better compared to Black Empire. Black Empire, historically, makes sense. If you try to ignore the context of the time period for Black Americans you will not only miss out on the enjoyment of the book, but also the purpose; that was to be almost a story of a Black-savior for black Americans in the 30s.

All of this said, it's honestly kind of boring until the end of the book. The book starts out as Black Internationale, the original serial- then it concludes on Black Empire. While it's not horrible, Schuyler's writing is pretty poor in terms of his inability to describe characters beyond one word (ala 'sardonic' for Belsidus).

Overall, it's almost like a black-2000 Leagues, with a race war happening throughout. Interesting- not eath-moving.

[Rena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with a lot of other reviews. This is not meant to be read as a full book. It's intended reading was to have a single story each week.

That being said, it's not bad for what it is. I wasn't much a fan, but I can still appreciate what it was supposed to be. Though it's so angry. I understand why considering it's written by a black man for the larger black community in the 30s... But wow is this just callous at points. It just feels wild to me in the context of a piece of literature, but it is supposed to be more like fictional essays that happen to tell a story.

This was a struggle for me to read and review, but don't let that discourage because I imagine it was pretty incredible during the time that Schuyler was writing it.

[Anna Hawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so interesting to read speculative fiction written in the past because you get to compare all their fantastic intentions and crazy events with things that actually happened. This one, written before WWII, imagines a different world war powered by solar power, using long distance video communication, and weaponizing EMP-like devices.

Highly recommend this edition that came with an extensive introduction, appendixes, and footnotes to edit and contextualize the story. It was written as two separate serials so some aspects feel overly pulpy or repetitive when read all at once but the historical value of reading early Black sci-fi makes it worth a read

[Mackenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This is such a great novel. I am very excited for it be become widely published in January. A great work of science fiction that predicted a lot of the technology and ideas of the future. Schuyler plays around with a lot of theories on race relations and racial power. It was just really fascinating to dive into a lost serialized novel from this author. Highly recommend.

[Trevor]

There's nothing more fun that peering into the mind of an absolute crank, and it seems like Schuyler was one of the crankinest. I've never read this sort of serialized pulp fiction before, and that took an adjustment, but the moves he makes and the ideas he puts forth here are fascinating. Not a "good book" in a regular sense, but very interesting.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The long, lost proto-Afrofuturist/badass sci-fi classic is back in a new edition. It deserves to be an international bestseller, with a movie and graphic novel adaptations. Why aren't people dancing in the streets? Go buy and read it now!

[Gurldoggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mad genius engineers a global genocide so that Black people can take over the planet. The story is actually insane and the writing is abysmal, but one additional star for the sheer audacity of writing and publishing this in 1930's America.

[skwoofwoof · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read

[Jonathan Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing work! If you are Black this is an absolute imperative!

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the satire does not translate as clearly as Black No More, Black Empire makes for a powerful Afrofuturist inversion of pulp novels in a pre-WW II context.

[Polly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alternate history

[Ty Lasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely worth reading despite the collection of all chapters being slightly repetitive due to its original format.

[Wood Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schuyler is crazy as hell but I did enjoy this. Interesting that it even got published by penguin classics based on his past and the source.

[sam! · Rating 3 out of 5]

wonderful idea, mediocre execution….

[Ayoub El Ouali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mf hated white people so much he hit them with the plague

[Roslyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1936, this Afrofuturist novel written original in serial form is really interesting. It describes efforts of a Black doctor to build a cadre of Black expertise to eliminate white supremacy and establish a Black empire in Africa by deposing the colonial rulers. Although written in 1930s, it brings up themes like alternative energy, raw diets and hydroponic farming. It indirectly pokes fun at or addresses Black leaders like Marcus Garvey and Dubois also questioning the sincerity of white support Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance. While the book is corny in many parts and writing seems like it comes from a cheap novel I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading his other novel Black No More/