{"id":14747,"date":"2014-12-19T00:09:06","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T00:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nalo-hopkinsons-report-from-midnight\/"},"modified":"2014-12-19T00:09:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T00:09:06","slug":"nalo-hopkinsons-report-from-midnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/nalo-hopkinsons-report-from-midnight\/","title":{"rendered":"Nalo Hopkinson’s Report from Midnight"},"content":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

PM Press\u2019s Outspoken Authors<\/em> series is a wonderful line of chapbooks introducing the work of radical science fiction authors; each book is a short mix of essays, interviews and novellas and short-stories (they honored me by producing The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow<\/a>, based on my work).<\/p>\n

The newest volume is Report from Midnight<\/a>, by Nalo Hopkinson, an absolutely wonderful Canadian-Caribbean writer whom I\u2019ve known \u2014 and read! \u2014 since we were both teenagers working for the North York Public Library system in Toronto. Tor.com\u2019s Brit Mandelo has a great writeup<\/a> of the book:<\/p>\n

\n

Report from Planet Midnight Plus\u2026 reprints two stories, \u201cMessage in a Bottle\u201d and \u201cShift,\u201d as well as a transcript of Hopkinson\u2019s 2010 speech to the audience at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, \u201cReport from Planet Midnight.\u201d The volume closes with the quintessential long interview and a detailed bibliography (one of my favorite parts of these volumes, actually!).<\/p>\n

The two stories in this little book form an intriguing duet. The first is science fictional in premise and intimate in focus; the second is a riff on Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest that explores issues of race, identity, and family. \u201cMessage in a Bottle\u201d struck me as eerie\u2014primarily because of Hopkinson\u2019s vibrant, realistic use of narrative voice. Though the thought of a child with the mind of an adult, sent back in time to curate artifacts lost to their own world, is discomfiting on its own, it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be so much so without the narrator\u2019s perceptions coloring our initial encounter with the child. The opening scene, where the young Kamla has crushed a hermit crab while collecting shells, is uncomfortable primarily because the narrator finds it so uncomfortable: his voice guides the reader\u2019s own reaction to the fragility of life in the hands of a child who doesn\u2019t know any better.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Report from Midnight<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents: PM Press\u2019s Outspoken Authors series is a wonderful line of chapbooks introducing the work of radical science fiction authors; each book is a short mix of essays, interviews and novellas and short-stories (they honored me by producing The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, based on my work). The newest volume is Report from Midnight, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3PR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}