Report from Planet Midnight

Starred review from September 10, 2012
This too-brief collection for PM’s Outspoken Authors series assembles four diverse works by Jamaican-born, Canada-dwelling author Hopkinson (The Chaos). The short stories “Shift” and “Message in a Bottle” are striking, especially the latter, in which an artist is granted the rare gift of knowing just how much his work will affect the people of the future. “Reluctant Ambassador from the Planet of Midnight” is a “somewhat performative” keynote speech for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, written in the context of the heated 2009 “RaceFail” discussion of race and related matters in the SF blogosphere. “Correcting the Balance” is a long interview with Hopkinson by series editor Terry Bisson. Insightful and engaging, the scant pages of this volume will leave the reader wishing for a more comprehensive collection that further showcases Hopkinson’s broad talents, vital insights, and scathing frankness about sociocultural matters that too many genre writers refuse to tackle.