Announcing the August 2018 Topic Challenge: Nalo Hopkinson

Question

This summer is hot, and I hope the same for this month's topic challenge:

the works of Nalo Hopkinson

suggested by user111 (who has since left this site).

Hopkinson (Twitter handle @Nalo_Hopkinson) is a Jamaican-born Canadian author of speculative fiction. According to Wikipedia, she "could read Kurt Vonnegut’s works by the age of six". Her novels so far are

• Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)
• Midnight Robber (2000)
• The Salt Roads (2003)
• The New Moon's Arms (2007)
• The Chaos (2012) (Young adult fiction)
• Sister Mine (2013)

A few of her short stories can be read online:

• Shift (in Nightmare Magazine, August 2017),
• Ally (in Nightmare Magazine, May 2018),
• Can’t Beat ‘Em (in Uncanny Magazine),
• Old Habits (in Uncanny Magazine),
• The Glass Bottle Trick (in Fantasy Magazine,
• A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog (Apex Magazine),
• Soul Case (Lightspeed Magazine, December 2014),
• Jamaica Ginger (Lightspeed Magazine, February 2018),
• Snow Day,
• The Easthound,
• Left Foot, Right Foot (in Strange Horizons),
• The Reverse Cheshire Cat (SFMOMA's Open Space, December 2017).

What is a topic challenge?

The topic challenges were started to acquaint the users with literature they may not have been familiar with otherwise. During this month we read the book(s), and try to post questions about it (or them).

How does the topic challenge work?

If you have a question about the book, simply post it and tag it with a tag for the book's title and the author tag nalo-hopkinson.

Participation is not obligatory, but those who participate will be listed right here. Needless to say, questions on other books are always welcome as well - they just don't count as a part of this topic challenge.

What's next?

Read the book, and ask questions about it! Also, don't forget to vote for the next challenge, or propose your own!

Answer 1

List of all questions posted as part of the August 2018 Topic Challenge

1. Why are pronouns used in this way in Nalo Hopkinson's "Shift"? by Rand al'Thor
2. Why is the colour of Caliban's girls important? by Rand al'Thor
3. Significance of 'There was a time they called porridge “gruel.”' by Christophe Strobbe
4. What does "nuh" mean here in "Shift" by Nalo Hopkinson? by Mithrandir
5. What is the relevance of the title of Nalo Hopkinson's "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog"? by Rand al'Thor
6. When is "fe" used in Nalo Hopkinson's "Shift"? by Mithrandir
7. What does the last line of Nalo Hopkinson's "Shift" mean? by Mithrandir
8. Meaning of the /ʌ/ sounds in Nalo Hopkinson's story Can’t Beat ‘Em by Christophe Strobbe
9. What's the significance of the name Loyola? by Rand al'Thor
10. What's with the reference to "Alice in Wonderland" in Nalo Hopkinson's "The Reverse Cheshire Cat"? by Mithrandir
11. Relevance of Findlay's poem 'Stolen' to Hopkinson's novel Midnight Robber by Christophe Strobbe
12. Has Nalo Hopkinson had pets which influenced her writing? by Rand al'Thor
13. Origin of Dry Bone in Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber by Christophe Strobbe
14. Relevance of the cloud chariot story to the rest of Midnight Robber? by Christophe Strobbe

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The highest-voted of these is Why is the colour of Caliban's girls important? by Rand al'Thor, with a score of 7 at the end of the month.

The most viewed is What does the last line of Nalo Hopkinson's "Shift" mean? by Mithrandir, with approximately 375 views during the month.

Based on the number of questions - 14 -, this was the most successful topic challenge so far. However, these questions were submitted by only three persons. For comparison, the first topic challenge in April 2017 had 12 questions, submitted by five different participants.

Twelve answers were submitted during the topic challenge, which is the highest number since the first topic challenge, which also got twelve.

The question with the highest number of views reached HNQ.

The fact that several of the authors short stories are available online contributed to the success of this challenge. Nalo Hopkinson also retweeted our tweet about the reading challenge.