Books Five Books About Five Books That Make History Fantastic When we make history fantastic, we remind ourselves that the future has not already been written By Andrea Hairston | Published on June 22, 2026 The Adventures of Mary Darling cover art by Elizabeth Story Comment 0 Share New Share The Adventures of Mary Darling cover art by Elizabeth Story A few weeks ago a colleague and friend told me to be realistic about Generative AI. In fact, he insisted we all needed to be realistic. Generative AI is the Reality, the Inevitable Reality. Nothing to do but accept this and figure out how to live with it. Many people have told me that AI and other (heinous, unjust, abusive, destructive, stupid) systems are the Inevitable Reality. This Resistance-is-Futile mindset has ratcheted up recently in the face of Gen AI, Neo-Fascists, Climate Change, Forever Wars, etc. Don’t waste time fighting, figure how you’re going to deal! Only a few of us make history. This from the privileged and the dispossessed. Realism is often the default setting of acquiescence—empire normal, keeping us in line. As a writer, as a person in the world, I want to be fantastic, not realistic. I’m an Afrofuturist in league with Indigenous Futurists. Stories that have been erased, stolen, warped, or hidden call to me. Characters, particularly women, who got left out of the action, raid my mind. I don’t want to comply with the Inevitable Reality or just make the best of a colonized future. I want to make a way out of no way. I want to conjure a wonderous future. This is a serious challenge, but history offers hope. In all my novels, I get the ancestors talking to the future. History is fantastic, full of people not being realistic in the face of heinous crap going down. Instead, folks get on the Underground Railroad—not a railroad, not underground—and ride to Freedom—nowhere they’ve been before! I told my colleague and friend, Harriet Tubman was not realistic and her escape was fantastic. My novel, The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays (out now), is an extra-dimensional murder mystery with romance, adventure, alien tricksters, and a dog detective who navigates an Underground Railroad of sorts. The novel features characters who don’t want to be realistic in the face of heinous crap. They believe history is fantastic and insist the future has not already been written. They are agents of change who plot a way out of no way toward a world they imagine. Their adventure is creating a future they want to inhabit. These five fantasy adventures also make history fantastic—literally and figuratively. Ballad & Dagger by Daniel José Older Daniel José Older creates an island nation in the Caribbean, San Madrigal, that for centuries offered sanctuary to Santeros, pirates, Sephardic Jews, and others running from persecution, despotic Caribbean empires, or pogroms in Europe. Fifteen years ago, the island nation sank under mysterious circumstances. The diverse population relocated to Brooklyn and reinvented their community—a fragile enterprise. The main character, Mateo, was born just as San Madrigal was slipping under the sea. Almost sixteen and of the island, but never living there, Mateo must recover lost history, discover his own powers, and heal the lethal rifts in his diverse community. He’s got to do this while maybe falling in love. As always Older writes in the vernacular of our spirits. He turns dreams into maps. The questions that haunt Mateo and all the characters, also haunt the readers: Who do you want to be? Who do you mean to be? What is that shadow on your soul? How can we be different, together? How do we make a world that can hold us all? The Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy Pat Murphy sets her swashbuckling tale of mystery and magic in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century fictional world of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes. This is a time of brutal colonialism, a time when intelligent, spirited women were locked up, a time when exotic “natives” spiced up adventure narratives or comedy routines. A dashing Victorian housewife turned detective faces off against literal-minded skeptics, bad boy spirits, and blood-thirsty fairies and mermaids. Her allies include a pirate from the Solomon Islands; people from the Kanien’kehá:ka nation who joined the circus to save their children from being kidnapped and sent to an Indian school; a community of women who run a pirate haven on a desert island. Like Older, Murphy offers startling perspectives on history and the heroes we think we know. She uncovers the powerful characters who had to hide in plain sight while saving their world. As I turned the page to get to the next delightful reversal, revelation, surprise, I had to laugh out loud and do a little dance. Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark In P. Djèlí Clark’s horror novella set in the 1920’s, the Ku Klux Klan are literal monsters. D. W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of Nation (which glorifies the Klan, infantilizes white women, and proclaims Black inhumanity) is a magic spell used to recruit folks for the Klan’s plot to let Hell loose on Earth. The main character, Maryse Boudreaux, combats Griffith’s and the Klan’s sorcery with the collective power of Gullah ancestors, manifest in a magic sword, conjure roots, and the ring shout—African American call-and-response singing and dancing to call down the spirits. Maryse also has help from her girlfriends. These include: a foul-mouthed sharpshooter, a Harlem Hellfighter (World War I veteran), a scientist whose family was enslaved by the Choctaw, and a German Jewish socialist revolutionary. In addition to fighting Klan monsters, Maryse has inner demons to face—a shadow on her spirit. She must heal herself to save the world from drowning in the cruelty and hate that would consume us all. The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman Alice Hoffman’s fairy tale novel is set in 1941, in Germany and France. Hanni Kohn, rather than lose her daughter, Lea, to the Holocaust, decides to create an artificial being, a golem to protect the girl. When no one else will help her, Hanni works with Ettie, a rabbi’s disobedient daughter. Ettie shouldn’t know this magic. Together they conjure Ava from mud, tears, menstrual blood, and the secret names of God. Golems are powerful and unpredictable, initially helpful but possibly dangerous. But the Nazis are about to raid Hanni’s home, so she sends Lea, Ava, and Ettie to France, to a future she will not live to see. The characters journey from Berlin to Paris and finally to the French countryside and a convent that shelters Jews. They face soul-crushing brutality and horrific indifference. Desperation is rampant. And yet the three also encounter dazzling courage and inspiring self-sacrifice and love. They carry Hanni’s love and sacrifice with them. This love is fuel and sustenance as they make a way in a world that would crush them. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due Tananarive Due’s horror novel, set in the Jim Crow South of the 1950’s, was impossible to put down. Like Older, Murphy, Clark, and Hoffman, Due uses brilliant dramatic structure, elegant characterizations, and lyrical language. She roots her tale in specific history. The Dozier School for Boys in Florida was a model for her fictional Gracetown School for Boys. Two young protagonists, Robbie and Gloria, must deal with haints, restless spirits wandering the blood-soaked ground of our history. They must fend off monstrous men who torture and kill children with impunity. Hoodoo relatives and ancestors help out. There are also allies hiding in plain sight, ordinary folks who surprise themselves with courage in the face of a mighty, repressive regime that declares itself invincible and inevitable. Robbie and Gloria face the horrors of our world and resist despair. As they try to imagine a way out of no way, their determination is thrilling. Refusing to settle for the illusion of their insignificance, they gave me hope. Hope is very entertaining.[end-mark] Buy the Book The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays Andrea Hairston Buy Book The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays Andrea Hairston Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Five Books That Make History Fantastic appeared first on Reactor.