Solomon, Rivers
Entry updated 15 March 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1989- ) US author whose first novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), is set in a Generation Starship many years into its journey. The SF Megatext provides a generous range of likelihoods for this setting to illuminate, some of which Solomon duly invokes: the ritualized maintenance procedures designed to keep the ship and its inhabitants in order; the hierarchized society, whose ruler may be a figurehead and whose Secret Masters may only be uncovered late in the action; the rebel teenager; the fact that the destination is now unknown, and may have always been a hoax (see Ship of Fools). But Solomon makes deft use of this material. Their Black female protagonist, though reminiscent of Robert A Heinlein's competent man, is at the same time luminous with interactive presence as she mediates between the Black underclass (see Race in SF; Slavery). Sorrowland (2021), though set in a familiar Dystopian world where young girls are raised in coercive Keeps, can also be understood as the origin story of a Black female Superhero (see again Race in SF; Women in SF); this novel won an Otherwise Award (formerly the James Tiptree Jr Award).
Solomon is a knowledgeable writer, who honours tradition while significantly re-using older topoi for new purposes. [JC]
Rivers Solomon
born California: 1989
works
- An Unkindness of Ghosts (New York: Akashic Books, 2017) [pb/]
- The Deep (New York: Simon and Schuster/Saga Press, 2019) with Daveed Diggs, William Hulson & Jonathan Snipes [hb/Sonia Chaghatzbanian]
- Sorrowland (New York: MCD, 2021) [hb/]
links
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