Afrofuturism is a cultural movement of art and literature that looked to alternative realities and futures for Black people and communities. The term was first used in 1993 by writer and cultural critique Mark Dery, who described this movement in his essay Black to the Future as "speculative fiction that treats African American themes and addresses African American concerns in the context of the twentieth-century techno culture—and, more generally, African American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.” This tradition has led to massive creative output. Tour a digital Afrofuturist exhibit from the National Museum of African American History & Culture.

Afrofuturism has had many iconic black women associated with it, including Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek and Science Fiction writer Octavia Bulter. Octavia Bulter’s fictions imagine many strange (but familiar) realities and futures emblematic of the Afrofuturist movement.