BILL CAMPBELL, ROSARIUM PUBLISHER (MF GALAXY 165)

MF GALAXY

Humanity needs books. I don’t mean that everybody loves reading, because clearly that’s not true. But it is true that many of us do love books, not only for the remarkable ideas they make us consider, but for how they lift our morale above the mundanity and the cruelty of the world, and inspire our souls and our intellects to transform our societies for the better.

No genre is more devoted to such inspiration and transformation than science fiction. And that’s why the refusal of the science fiction publishing industry, for generations, to offer a racial, cultural, and gender palette that reflects the true range of humanity has been so galling. It has deprived the majority of the human race the comfort and provocation we seek, and deprived our species of the ingenuity that we would have unleashed had we been so inspired.

Fortunately, the last two decades in particular have seen the beginning of a change, with the rise of African writers winning major sales and the top prizes for science fiction and fantasy writing, and the emergence of my guest’s company, the multiracial SFF publishing house Rosarium.

Based in Washington DC, Rosarium publishes novels, graphic novels, and comics, beginning with the seminal anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. The house’s writers include Pan Morigan, Nisi Shawl, Sheree Renee Thomas, Maurice Broaddus, Damian Duffy, Jaymee Goh, Ed Hall, and John Jennings, among many others. If you check the MF GALAXY archive, you’ll hear my conversation with one of one of Rosarium’s authors, Eileen Kaur Alden, the writer of the Super Sikh comic.

Bill Campbell spoke with me online on March 03, 2018. We discussed:

• How he fell in love with SFF
• The significance of authors Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler to his work and life
• The racist obstacles he faced as a novelist from publishing industry gatekeepers who told him his work wasn’t “ghetto” enough
• How he founded Rosarium Publishing
• Why it’s so difficult to racially integrate the shelves of comic book stores, and
• How the gigantic success of the Black Panther movie will affect Africentric science fiction and fantasy publishing

Along the way, Campbell mentions “POD,” meaning “print-on-demand,” a system in which writers can get single copies of their books made for as little as a few dollars each, rather than having to pay to print, ship, and store hundreds of books at a time. Campbell also discusses his anthology Mothership and co-editor Ed Hall. In full disclosure, one of my stories is in that anthology.

Rosarium Publishing

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