Hey, folks! In today’s Scary-Crayon book review, we take a look at Walter Mosley’s Futureland, a collection of science fiction stories in which racial conflict and racism are pervasive and inescapable. It’s a difficult book to review — it was a difficult book to read — and I know that I say this every time an article takes a serious turn, but this is probably the most serious piece on the site. Hopefully the tone of the review and the ideas expressed therein won’t turn you off to reading SC in the future!

On a side note, I kind of like having articles like this on the site. I mean, sites that deal exclusively in wacky and apparently pointless humor are cool, but I kinda like being able to point to articles like this when SC’s detractors call the site a waste of space or berate me for wasting time recording Beatles song parodies and writing creepy poems about wanting to photograph pretty girls. I also like the apparent contradiction that the presence of these articles presents! On one hand, we’ve got admittedly juvenile humor and cutesy drawings of Wolverine giving Nightcrawler a handjob (WARNING: don’t click that link if you’re at work); on the other, we’ve got discussions concerning the meanings of racial descriptors and thorough book reviews. Scary-Crayon is an enigma.

Anyway, like I said in the review, I’m not sure what to make of Futureland. So whether you’ve read it or not, if you’ve got any possible interpretations, anything to say about the subject matter, etc., feel free to comment. And that’s all for now — ja!