Prowling up and down the aisles of a Manhattan bookstore for a new read back in 1998, my attention was drawn to an illustration of a young Black woman with dreadlocks practicing what looked like Vodoun. As I reached to pull the book off the shelf, my eyes fell on the following line centered on the bottom half of the cover, I`ve been telling people about Nalo Hopkinson`s book...it is great. -Octavia E. Butler. Now on general principle, I am not a fan. That the word is at the root of fanatic coupled with images of hysterical girls fainting away over pop idols is reason enough for me. However, when it comes to Octavia Butler, all deals are off and I am the closest thing to a fan a self-described anti-fan can get.

On the strength of the illustration and Butler`s praise, I bought Nalo Hopkinson`s debut novel Brown Girl in the Ring on the spot and happily added her name to my growing list of black sci-fi writers. The novel`s strengths derive from its incorporation of Caribbean mythology and folklore and a clear and rich cultural dialect. Furthermore, it pushed the door open just a bit wider to accommodate all of the stories we wish to tell. I was proud of homegirl but I found Brown Girl somewhat tepid and the characters slight. So when two years later, Hopkinson released a second book, entitled Midnight Robber, I stayed away. But curiosity soon got the better of me and I picked up Hopkinson`s second book with an open mind and soon found I could not put the book down.

In Midnight Robber, Hopkinson spins an imaginative tale about a young woman named Tan-Tan who lives on a Caribbean colonized planet named Toussaint. Tan-Tan`s world is embellished so completely with technology that manual labor is practically unheard of and each citizen of Toussaint is connected to a central computer system that operates somewhat like a matriarch Orwellian Big Brother network. To escape persecution, Tan-Tan and her father travel to New Half-Way Tree, a co-existing dimension where technology is null and the creatures of mythology and bed time cautionary tales are real. In this rugged world, Tan-Tan matures into a self assured and powerful young woman despite the mistrust many of the people of New Half-Way Tree feel for her and her father, difficulties negotiating unfamiliar territories and cultures, and unwanted sexual advances.

Hopkinson story telling had developed beautifully. Her strength and talent as a writer shine in Midnight Robber. As in Brown Girl, Hopkinson writes once again in a Patois peppered Caribbean dialect that reads effortlessly and sounds like music if you try to read it aloud. The characters she creates are thick and full-blooded. Tan-Tan is a shero in she own right and the planet, people and creatures of Toussaint and New Half-Way Tree will keep your fingers turning page after page after page.

As a kid, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy: Madeleine L`Engle`s, C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Leguin, Ray Bradbury, Piers Anthony, Issac Asimov and Choose Your Own Adventure novels. However, up until a few years ago, I did not know of any people of color writing science fiction. But my list has grown. There is of course Octavia E. Butler. Other sci-fi writers include Jewel Gomez, Samuel Delaney, Tananarive Due, Phyllis Alesia Perry and Steven Barnes. Too, the recent anthology, Dark Matter edited by Sheree Thomas offers a wide array of Black speculative fiction writers whose work spans decades. So if you thought Star Trek`s Luitenent Uhuru and Mr. Sulu were about it as far as colored folks in space and beyond, rest assured you`re dead wrong.