Even if you haven't heard the term Afrofuturism before, you've certainly seen examples of it. It was coined by culture critic Mark Dery in a 1993 essay, Black to the Future (available in the anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture). It charts the rise of science-fiction-oriented art from black artists, starting with Sun Ra's fusion of space imagery (evoking ancient Egyptian mythology) and innovative jazz. Octavia Butler's novels, like Patternmaster, actively questioned race and gender roles in society.

More recently, Afrofuturism has been reflected in songs and videos from the likes of Missy Elliot, Janelle Monae (who's entire aesthetic is practically a sci-fi orgy) and FKA Twigs. You can think of the label as a way for black artists to claim their corner of the science-fiction and fantasy genres -- which are still predominantly driven by white artists and characters.

"The notion of Afrofuturism gives rise to a troubling antinomy: Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?" Dery writes. "Furthermore, isn't the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners and set designers—white to the man—who have engineered our collective fantasies?"