The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the writing of one of the most legendary figures in African-American history, W.E.B. DuBois is almost certainly not science fiction. Passionate declarations of equality and the call for civil rights and basic human decency constructed within the form of the non-fiction essay, sure, but science fiction? As the familiar saying goes, one of these things does not belong with the other and in the world of DuBois and literature, it is science fiction that should by all reasonable estimates be the odd thing out. The publication of “The Comet” proves that assumption wrong, of course.
“The Comet” is an example of the shorter writings of the author, but don’t presume that means it is just some short-short piece of fluff. Much more than a sketch or yarn, it is a fully realized work of fiction that features two distinctly well-drawn main characters acting out a traditional apocalyptic set-up, but in a way given an entirely fresh and creative spin that speaks to the experiences of its author.
The arrival of the title astronomical event which has historically presaged doom appears to have annihilated everyone on earth not fortunate enough to be located in the requisite underground environment to protect them. A poor black man and a wealthy white woman happen to be two of those who managed to pull of this feat of extraordinary survival and, for most of the story, they seem to be pretty much alone in sharing this common bond which unites them in a way that never would have happened before. Inevitably, the common bond of possibly being the last two humans on earth helps to chip away at the multitude of differences separating them and one can even, for a moment, imagine them eventually coming together as lovers to restart the process of populating the world anew.
This is a work of science fiction, however, and even within science fiction there are limits to what is possible. Just as incredulity must be stretched to a certain degree to accept traveling faster than the speed of light so would any suspension of disbelief reach the breaking point long before one could accept that a poor black man and a rich white woman would engage in carnal lust for the purpose of repopulating earth with nothing but mixed-racial species of human being in a story published in 1920.
It is precisely within the various points of tension in “The Comet” that the unifying element tying all the varied examples of the shorter writings of DuBois lives and breathes. It is there in one of his first published works of short fiction, “Of the Coming of John” in which the young black protagonist escapes the constrictions of the small southern town in which he was raised to pursue education. The result is alienation both from whites and blacks for the same reason: being uppity and thinking he’s superior. He winds up the victim of a lynch mob. The basics of that story also provide the template for “Jesus Christ in Texas” in which the long-awaited Second Coming is a profound disappointment for true believers convinced of the essential honey-haired whiteness of their lord and savior. The Jesus who shows up in Texas is distinctly not so described.
Whether working in the field of apocalyptic science fiction, religious satire, or simply a story about an average guy going to school and learning things, the world DuBois presents remains the same. Significant above all other aspects of personality or depth of character, one thing reigns supreme as the motiving factor: skin pigmentation. It is a world in which white society seems to be genetically predisposed to mistrust and distrust of blacks. On occasion, this universal proclivity is overcome—as in “The Comet”—while in others, events are almost predetermined to follow a natural line of progression toward tragedy. In fact, the latter is more often the case than the former.
