The Simplest Equation by Nicky Drayden

Fractals of love.

Queer love, aliens and mathematical equations take center stage in this wonderfully poignant short-story. 

Levar Burton does an excellent reading here and even comments afterwards about this story being deeply personal for him because his daughter identifies as queer. The struggle for acceptance and feeling marginalized in this heteronormative society, especially as a black queer woman, hits close to home for him. He was even crying while speaking on the subject and I found this all to be quite moving.

The first-person narrator is a young black woman unsure of herself, trying to find their passion and sense of place in the world. She is a top-notch math student although remains uncertain if this field of study is the right career path for them. She also has a crush on the new classmate who happens to be of the non-human species variety. Paradoxically, the black "other" is normalized and the alien takes on this role. We are never provided any historical background information about this new race although they look similar to humans despite a few extra limbs and teeth. They are intelligent beings, with a proclivity for mathematics. The idea of mathematical equations--more specifically, fractals--as being another form of storytelling is brilliantly conceived. The story's crescendo with the protagonist's expression of love through fractals is beautiful, heartwarming and bittersweet.

The author effectively juxtaposes the familiar and unfamiliar, creating a sense of cognitive estrangement. Yet, irrespective of these science-fiction genre tropes of "otherness", this coming-of-age story remains deeply rooted in universal human experiences. 

It is always exciting for me to discover new authors working within the aesthetic movement of black speculative fiction. The term "Afrofuturism" is often thrown around haphazardly to describe any work by a black artist that depicts black people in a futuristic setting. Within a literary context, black representation is only one aspect of a much larger and complex aesthetic that is constantly being redefined, evolving and pushing the boundaries of genre fiction through a racialized lens.