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Williams, John A

Entry updated 20 May 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1925-2015) US academic, poet and author, almost all of whose work reflected his experiences (including service in World War Two) as a Black American. His sf (see Race in SF) is similarly focused. The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) posits a Black genocide plot on the part of the American Government, known as the King Alfred Plan and to be put into action – beginning with mass transfer of Black people into concentration camps – in case of civil uprising; the protagonists of the tale are murdered by their government. Williams's description of the plan was plausible enough that for some years a "King Alfred Plan" was thought to exist in fact. Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light: A Novel of Some Probability (1969) presents a Black revolt centred on Manhattan (see New York), comparable to Warren Miller's The Siege of Harlem (1964) as a Mainstream use of sf material. Captain Blackman (1972) features a hero who via hallucinatory Time Travel takes part, as a Black soldier, in all the wars of American history from 1775 to a Near Future conflict in 1975. [JC/PN/DRL]

John Alfred Williams

born Jackson, Mississippi: 5 December 1925

died Paramus, New Jersey: 3 July 2015

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