Book excerpt: Where does the journey of wanting to become an android begin? Going beyond the state of being a human is the only chance that some of the Afrofuturists believe they have. This is the result of struggling for equality for so many years yet not achieving much. Is this a new phenomenon that has its roots the modern age, though? This book argues that it is not. Even though Afrofuturism is a newly formed term, the ideas related to it have roots that go back more than a hundred years. The book will not only help readers to trace back to Afrofuturism’s roots but also help them to compare and contrast some proto-Afrofuturistic authors such as Zora N. Hurston and Ralph Ellison with the Afrofuturist writer Octavia Butler.