Report from Planet Midnight

by Nalo Hopkinson

  “Wait; you’re a what?”

  “I’m a curator, Greg. I’m trying to tell you, our national gallery is having a giant retrospective; tens of thousands of works of art from all over the world, and all over the world’s history. They sent us back to retrieve some of the pieces that had been destroyed. Expensive enough to send living biomaterial back; they couldn’t afford to send us forward too, back to our time. So we’re going to grow our way there. Those of us that survive.”

  There are more cars out on the road, more brakes squealing, more horns honking. “I’m not going to miss mass transit when I finally get home,” she says. “Your world stinks.”

  Yeah, it does. We’re nearly to her parents’ place. From my side, I lock her door. Of course she notices. She just glances at the sound. She looks like she’s being taken to her death.

  “I didn’t know it until yesterday,” she tells me, “but it was you I came for. That installation.”

  And now the too-clever bloody child has me where I live. Even though I know it’s all air pie and Kamla is as nutty as a fruitcake, my heart’s performing a tympanum of joy. “My installation’s going to be in the retrospective?” I ask. Even as the words come out of my mouth, I’m embarrassed at how eager I sound, at how this little girl has dug her way into my psyche and found the thing which will make me respond to her.

  She gasps and puts her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Greg! I’m so sorry; not you, the shell!”

  My heart suicides, the brief, hallucinatory hope dashed. “The shell?”

  “Yes. In the culture where I live, speciesism has become a defining concept through which we understand what it means to be human animals. Not every culture or subculture ascribes to it, but the art world of my culture certainly does.” She’s got her teacher voice on again. She does sound like a bloody curator.

  “Human beings aren’t the only ones who make art,” she says.

  All right. Familiar territory. “Okay, perhaps. Bower birds make pretty nests to attract a mate. Cetaceans sing to each other. But we’re the only ones who make art mean; who make it comment on our everyday reality.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see her shake her ugly head. “No. We don’t always know what they’re saying, we can’t always know the reality on which they’re commenting. Who knows what a sea cucumber thinks of the conditions of its particular stretch of ocean floor?”

  A sea cucumber? We’ve just turned onto her relatives’ street. She’ll be out of my hands soon. Poor Babette.

  “Every shell is different,” she says. My perverse brain instantly puts it to the tune of “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”

  “Every shell is a life journal,” Kamla continues, “made out of the very substance of its creator, and left as a record of what it thought, even if we can’t understand exactly what it thought. Sometimes interpretation is a trap. Sometimes we need to simply observe.”

  “And you’ve come all this way to take that … shell back?” I can see it sticking out of the chest pocket of her fleece shirt.

  “It’s difficult to explain to you, because you don’t have the background, and I don’t have the time to teach you. I specialise in shell formations. I mean, that’s Vanda’s specialty. She’s the curator whose memories I’m carrying. Of its kind, the mollusc that made this shell is a genius. The unique conformation of the whorls of its shell expresses a set of concepts that haven’t been explored before by the other artists of its species. After this one, all the others will draw on and riff off its expression of its world. They’re the derivatives, but this is the original. In our world, it was lost.”

  Barmy. Loony. “So how did you know that it even existed, then? Did the snail or slug that lived inside it take pictures or something?” I’ve descended into cruelty. I’m still smarting that Kamla hasn’t picked me, my work. My legacy doesn’t get to go to the future.

  She gives me a wry smile, as though she understands. I pull up outside the house, start leaning on the horn. “The creature didn’t take a picture,” she shouts over the noise. “You did.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. With my precious video camera. The shell wasn’t an interactive part of the exhibition, but I recorded every artifact with which I seeded the soil that went onto the gallery floor. I didn’t tell her that. But she knew.

  She nods. “Not all the tape survived, so we didn’t know who had recorded it, or where the shell had come from. But we had an idea where the recording had come from.”

  Lights are coming on in the house. Kamla looks over there, sighs. “I haven’t entirely convinced you, have I?”

  “No,” I say regretfully. But damn it, a part of me still hopes that it’s all true.

  “They’re probably going to institutionalise me. All of us.”

  The door opens. Sunil is running out to the car, a gravid Babette following more slowly.

  “You have to help me, Greg. Please? I’m going to outlive them all. I will get out. But in the meantime …” She pulls the shell out of her pocket, offers it to me on her tiny palm. “Please keep it safe for me?”

  She opens the car door. “It’s your ticket to the future,” she says, and gets out of the car to greet her parents.

  I lied. I fucking hate kids.

  REPORT FROM

  PLANET MIDNIGHT

  IN 2009 I WAS A GUEST AUTHOR at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, which takes place each spring in Florida, USA. The conference theme that year was “Race in the Literature of the Fantastic. “ Other invited guests included Native American writer Owl Goingback, Chinese-American writer Laurence Yep, and Japanese science fiction scholar Takayuki Tatsumi. It was also the first year that more than a handful of the conference attendees were people of colour.

  I’d known since 2008 that I was going to be a Guest Author, and that I would have to speak to the conference theme during one the luncheons. And I’d been dreading it. Talking about difference and marginalisation in active science fiction community is rarely easy.1 Although some of us are people of colour and some of us non-Western, the community is dominated by white, middle-class people from the more “developed” nations of the Western world. Many of us are of an egalitarian bent, at least in principle. We are an intelligent, opinionated, and outspoken bunch. Many of us are geeks. We know too much about too many things that other people don’t care about. Many of us are socially awkward observers who often don’t quite get the hang of mainstream status signalling vis-à-vis dress codes, slanguage, mating rituals, and material possessions. We are often ridiculed by people who do understand those complex codes. We have created an active, passionate community centred on our love for science fiction and fantasy and devoted to the principle that no one should be singled out for being “different.“

  But principled does not de facto mean politicised. In practice, people in our community who try to talk about marginalisation are often seen as fomenting divisiveness. We become the problem. In this community, many of us will firmly call bullshit when we see it. But that doesn’t mean that our analysis is always informed, rigorous, or honest. Many of us come from backgrounds of relative privilege that we don’t perceive, and are ignorant of what daily life is like for those with less of that privilege (even keeping in mind that relative privilege is always contextual). Many of us don’t think beyond simplistic analyses of power that ignore systemic power imbalances in order to lay the blame on the victim. Just as much as the mainstream world, we are hierarchical. We can be dazzled by fame. Some of us are the cool kids and some are not.

  I’m told that when I originally gave this speech, some of the academics in the audience were offended that I used my time at the podium to discuss what they saw as an issue from the “fans” and therefore beneath them. In 2009, one of the most far-reaching, paradigm-shifting (I fervently hope) community debates was burning up communications networks right beneath their noses, and they were proud of having been ignorant of it, and indignant that I would lump them in with fans.

  Active fannish community not
only constitutes a significant and enthusiastic portion of our audience for science fiction and fantasy in all media, it is the community that organises, for love of the genre, the many annual conventions throughout the SF/F world which bring together artists and audiences to celebrate, share, debate, and critique the narratives of social and technological evolution in science fiction and fantasy stories.

  I love the science fiction community fiercely and I will call you to task if you ridicule it or dismiss it lightly. I have found friends, allies, and fellow travellers here, of many racial, class, and cultural backgrounds. I have found stories that entertained me, made me marvel, made me hopeful. But it is not a haven for the perfect meeting of like minds (thank heaven, because how dull would that be? Not to mention impossible). I speak not to belittle my community but to participate in it.

  It is common for science fiction and fantasy writers, most of whom are white, to say that they don’t write about people of colour because they don’t know anything about us; or don’t know what it’s like to live as a racialised person; or, perhaps more honestly, because they don’t want to piss us off. It is common for science fiction and fantasy writers to say that they set their stories in imaginary worlds among imaginary beings because that allows them to deal with fraught issues such as power and marginalisation divorced from the real-world effects of such issues. But there are also many writers who see it differently.

  In 2009, white science fiction writer Elizabeth Bear published a blog post in which she challenged her fellow authors to include racialised and otherwise marginalised people in their stories. That post ignited an Internet firestorm of discussion and argument about race, racism, and representation in science fiction/fantasy literature and community. Fans, major editors and writers in the field, and emerging writers took part. Some people of colour expressed their frustration, pain, and rage at the field’s ongoing racism. Some white people engaged thoughtfully, with understanding and respect. But many others responded quite negatively. They were indignant that we dared express rage in rageful ways.2 Some of them loudly denied the existence of racism in the field, in ways that demonstrated their lack of understanding of how systemic racism operates. For a time, some of them appeared to be policing the Internet posts of politicised black women writers in the genre and attempting to verbally intimidate, berate, and belittle us. A couple of the major editors in the field, perhaps understandably upset at how some of the rage was being expressed, made statements of the ilk that they would never again allow communication from any of those they considered guilty of offence.

  Among the angry people of colour were unpublished and barely published writers. Our field is quite small. There’s only a handful of large professional houses. They currently only publish a handful of people of colour. To their credit, many of them want to publish more of us. But from my perspective, when key representatives of one of the most powerful houses in our genre say that they never again want to hear from people who could be the future SF/F writers, editors, illustrators, and publicists of colour, and who are the current SF/F readers of colour, that’s a pretty clear expression of both the power and the will to actively keep the genre as white as possible.

  I do not believe I overstate. I do believe that is not how they meant it; they are well-meaning people. But that is how it would have been heard by those who have been implicitly and explicitly, through ignorance or wilfulness, largely rendered invisible for decades. When you’re historically the one with the power relative to another, if you really want to correct the imbalance, you have to be willing to hear pent-up rage and not retaliate. You have to be willing to acknowledge your actions that make you complicit. You have to be willing to apologise and then take visible, effective steps towards righting the imbalance.3

  Some of the editors who made that type of statement have since been taking a little extra effort to be seen to be supportive of people of colour in the genre; but they have not, to my knowledge, acknowledged why they are doing so. And they have not, to my knowledge, acknowledged fault and apologised. You can’t bring about reconciliation by doing little or nothing. You can’t make change that way. So at some level, perhaps the will really isn’t there. I know some of these editors and I respect the good books they’ve made happen. But at the moment I have no reason to trust them and I do not wish to be published by them.

  I believe it was a clueful white person who coined the phrase “RaceFail ‘09” to signify the more vehemently recalcitrant white voices in the debate. A couple of those voices have adopted the nomenclature “failfandom” as a pejorative to denote people in the community, especially people of colour, who unapologetically name the racism we perceive. RaceFail ‘09 generated thousands of Internet postings, links to many of which have been archived on the Web.4

  So that is the context in which I attended ICFA in 2009. It took me a long time to get over being so scared and angry that I couldn’t write my speech. I actually completed the bulk of it at the conference the day before, when I had a bolt of inspiration about an angle from which to tackle it. I decided to make the first half of my address somewhat performative. It is a culture-jamming of references from fantasy, science fiction, and linguistic and cultural references from the American and Caribbean parts of the African diaspora. I’ve footnoted some of them here. Because the first half of the speech was in effect a script, there were a few performance notes in it that I’d written to myself. These are between square brackets, in capitals. There is also an afterword about an exchange I had minutes after finishing my speech.

  A RELUCTANT AMBASSADOR FROM THE PLANET OF MIDNIGHT

  Good afternoon. I’d like to thank the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for dedicating this year’s ICFA to the theme of race in the literature of the fantastic, and for inviting Mr. Tatsumi, Mr. Yep, me, and many others to address the topic.

  The first thing I’d like to say is …

  [BE LIGHT-HEADED. THEN BECOME THE HORSE5]

  Uh—oh my. It worked. I’m here. [LOOK AT HANDS, THEN AT AUDIENCE]

  Dear people, please don’t be alarmed. I mean no harm. I really don’t. I’m riding on the head of this horse only for a short time, I promise you. Please don’t hurt me. This was an extreme measure. There seemed to be no other way to communicate directly with you.

  I come from another planet. For decades now, we have been receiving broadcasts from your planet that seem to be intended for us. We are delighted, and honoured, and also puzzled. We have teams of our best translators working to decipher your messages, and we cannot honestly tell whether they are gestures of friendship, or of aggression. As you might imagine, it’s quite important for us to know which. If it is indeed friendship, we would be delighted to reciprocate. If of aggression, well, as one of our ethnocultural groups might say, “Don’t start none, there won’t be none.”

  I should be very clear: I do not represent my whole planet. Neither do I represent my whole ethnocultural group. Or even all of the translators assigned to this project; try to get any two of us to agree to the same thing … There was vehement disagreement among us about whether I should attempt this dire method of direct communication. So, frankly, I snuck away when no one was looking.

  [FIDDLE WITH CLOTHING]

  My, this horse does dress most uncomfortably, doesn’t she?

  [TAKE TOP SHIRT OFF TO REVEAL T-SHIRT THAT READS “SPEAKER TO WHITE FOLKS”]

  This? This is merely my name, dear friends. Or my title, if you will. I hope I may indeed call you friends. But to help ensure my safety, or at least to create a record of what happens this day, I am accompanied by my companion, Dances With White People, and his recording device. [INDICATE DAVID FINDLAY, WHO’S VIDEOTAPING6] Again, please don’t be alarmed. It is not a weapon of any kind.

  So. To the business at hand. It is my hope that if I repeat to you some of the most vexing phrases we’ve received from your peoples, that you might be able to clarify their meanings. I decided to address this conference because, as you mig
ht imagine, we, as a different race of beings than you are, are very interested in the stories you tell each other about interracial relations. We have had bad experiences with the collision of cultures. Some of them even between groups on our own planet. So I’m sure you can understand why we are concerned.

  Our first sign that perhaps our responses to you were going awry was when we released this document into your world:

  [SLIDE: ORIGINAL COVER OF NOVEL MIDNIGHT ROBBER ACCURATELY DEPICTING THE PROTAGONIST, WHO IS A BROWN-SKINNED LITTLE GIRL WITH BLACK AFRICAN FEATURES]

  When one of the cultures of your world reconfigured it, this was the result:

  [SLIDE: COVER OF ITALIAN TRANSLATION OF MIDNIGHT ROBBER (II FIANETA DI MEZZANOTTE) SHOWING PROTAGONIST AS A BLUE-SKINNED YOUNG WOMAN WITH EUROPEAN FEATURES AND STRAIGHT HAIR, WEARING A BRA TOP AND FRINGED MINISKIRT]

  As far as our translators can tell, the title of this version can be rendered as The Planet of Midnight, which, according to your understanding, seems to be where the blue people live. We have noticed a preponderance of wistful references in your literature to magical people with blue skin.

  [SLIDES: NIGHTCRAWLER; MYSTIQUE; THE BEAST (ALL FROM THE X-MEN); KALI; KRISHNA; DR. MANHATTAN; PAPA SMURF; SMURFETTE; THE COOKIE MONSTER; ETC. BUT NONE OF THE BEINGS FROM AVATAR, CUZ I’M ORNERY THAT WAY AND DON’T WANT TO INVOKE THAT PARTICULAR FARCE IN THIS SPACE TODAY. BESIDES, THE CONNECTION SHOULD BE SELF-EVIDENT]

  Since none of the images of real people from your world show such blue-skinned beings, we can only theorise about what these images symbolise or eulogise. Perhaps a race of yours that has gone extinct, or that has self-destructed. Perhaps it is a race that has gone into voluntary seclusion, maybe as an attempt at self-protection. The more pessimistic among us fear that this is a race being kept in isolation, for what horrendous planet-wide crime we shudder to imagine; or that it is a race of earlier sentient beings that you have exterminated. Whatever the truth of the matter, we’re sure you realise why it is of extreme importance to us to learn whether imprisonment, extinction, and mythologizing are your only methods of dealing with interspecies conflict.