At A UNIVERSE IN WORDS, Juli Witte discovers Nalo Hopkinson through the fascinating FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS is truly a magical collection of short stories which brings the reader completely different and new worlds to explore. What I found delightful about FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS as a whole was the way in which Hopkinson works with Fantasy and Science Fiction. She discusses it in her Introduction as well, that Science Fiction and Fantasy are exactly the types of genres which can be used to explore the everyday through the extraordinary or out of the ordinary. Quite often Sci-Fi authors are surprisingly lazy in how adventurous they try to be, not just with their stories but with their writing styles as well. Personally I a, a fan of authors who take a risk, who demand something of their reader as well. Whether it is having different narrators, switching between Creole and Standard English or unreliable narrators, each story in FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS is always refreshing. At the heart of Hopkinson’s collection lie the hominids of her title, the Great Apes, the humans. Each story has a character at the core which Hopkinson explores with delicacy, which means that no matter how fantastical the story gets, it remains true. 

I give this collection…

5 Universes!

I absolutely loved FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS. Almost every single story was a hit with me and I have become a definite fan of Hopkinson’s writing. Each story was original and held something that fascinated me. I’d recommend this to fans of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Women’s Fiction.

Nalo Hopkinson is the educator for TED-ED Lesson Series Club original program, How to write descriptively.

For more information on FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Chuma Hill

Design by Elizabeth Story