people will love each other, no matter what circumstances they are in. - Nalo Hopkinson

(Are you consciously taking a new look at the future?) NH: No. I'm drawing pretty heavily on the science fiction and fantasy I read growing up. I also come out of a very strong Caribbean literary tradition. In that sense I'm kind of marrying the two, but not in a way of "trying to go out there and do something new." I'm like any other writer. There are a handful of us, if we're talking about solely Caribbean writers -- there's Claude Michel Prevost…Tobias Buckell. I've found that science fiction reviewers tend to react most strongly to the Caribbean-flavored stuff, and some of them identify that as being new and over-focus on it. I'm starting to feel I might be getting typecast. (with Indiebound)

Throughout the Caribbean, under different names, you'll find stories about people who aren't what they seem. Skin gives these skin folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. They may be owls. They may be vampiric balls of fire. And always, whatever the burden their skins bear, once they remove them once they get under their own skins-they can fly. It seemed an apt metaphor to use for these stories collectively.

I like imagining that Lovecraft is spinning in his grave as he's forced to view the world through the eyes of his statuettes placed in the homes and offices of the likes of Nnedimma Okorafor, Kinuko Y. Craft, S. P. Somtow, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, and me.