Black Man's Burden

Mack Reynolds' Black Man's Burden is a hard-edged science-fiction story of empire, race, and social revolution in the Sahara. From its Kipling-reversing title onward, it frames Africa not as a backdrop but as a battleground where colonial habits, tribal hierarchies, and modern development collide. In the desert, Tuareg chief Moussa-ag-Amastan meets a band of itinerant "smiths" whose advanced vehicles, portable solar television, and confident talk of wages, schools, medicine, and equality reveal them as agents of a transforming continent. Their message unsettles him: labor projects, mixed communities, and new towns are dissolving caste, slavery, and clan boundaries, even as younger men and slaves listen with interest. Elsewhere, Homer Crawford and his team enforce the fragile order of the African Development Project with ruthless efficiency, ambushing armed intruders and then wrestling with the moral cost of violence. A quiet young woman named Izubahil unexpectedly steps forward to join the new world being built, and a diverse international group assembles amid sharp banter and political tension. Across the Sahara, the old order is giving way to a future shaped by science, organization, and uneasy human compromise. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.