This CNN post by Radhika Marya from 2023 is much more thoughtful than your average watchlist recommendation listicle. It explores the history of black exclusion and erasure in the sci-fi and horror genres and celebrates the terrific and impressive legacy black artists were able to build in these spaces anyway. Lastly, it examines the explosion of black stories and projects within these genres that are finally being funded, published, filmed, distributed, and more.

Science-fiction author N.K. Jemisin loved “The Jetsons” as a child, fantasizing about taking a flying car to school thanks to its space-age vision of the 21st century. But while watching reruns as an adult, she noticed that there was “nobody even slightly brown” and that “even the family android sounds white” in a show meant to envision the future.

“Thing is, not-white-people make up most of the world’s population, now as well as back in the Sixties when the show was created,” Jemisin wrote in a 2013 essay. “So what happened to all those people, in the minds of this show’s creators?”

It’s a question many have asked about science fiction, a genre that some laud for its progressive imaginings and portrayals of the future, but others have called out for minimizing or erasing people of color — across literature, television and film.

Read the full piece here.