"Bloodchild and Other Stories" by Octavia Butler (short fiction; collected 2005)

 **A fantastic collection by, and great introduction to, simply put one of the greatest to ever put pen to paper**

So, to start with.  Octavia Butler is a true master.  Not just of science fiction (and in general, she seems to have made the jump from the "SciFi/Fantasy shelves to the "Literature" shelves in a lot of stores), but of writing in general.  Her insight into the nature of humanity and human society is incredible, she pairs it with razor-sharp prose . . . like I said, she's a master

Although I've not written about Ursula K. Le Guin on this blog yet (saving it for a special occasion!), she's one of my all-time favorite authors.  I consider Butler to be her closest successor, the heir to her throne.  While some authors of science fiction like to speculate about what kind of technology we can invent . . . Le Guin, Butler and a select few others choose instead to use the medium to speculate on what kind of people we can become.  And for me, wow, when done right that is truly special

If you've heard of Butler, it's probably either "Kindred" or "Parable of the Sower".  Those two are absolutely incredible, and while "Sower" has gotten a lot more well-known lately due to its shockingly plausible depiction of an near-future America torn apart by war and shortages (yeah . . . awkward), to me "Kindred" is her best novel.  This story of a modern black woman slipping back in time to the Antebellum South, living on the plantation and realizing that one of the other slaves is her ancestor, still reads as fresh and haunting and fast-paced as it did when it was published back in 1979.  Her description of her ancestor's white owners is stark and unflinching, and by extension her depiction of that entire society we fostered:

His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.

But I didn't want to highlight her novel work here (although I did sneak in a mini-review, not sorry).  I want to talk about her short fiction.  As Gibson (look at that, managed to sneak in mentions of three of my favorite authors into this post!) has said, the the short story might be the most perfect expression of science fiction, "It requires a very peculiar sort of literary musculature to write a very short piece of science fiction that really works."  In the stories in this collection, Butler flexes that musculature outrageously, creating whole new fantastic worlds in just a few pages

Read this collection for the title story, "Bloodchild", which is a gorgeous little piece of fiction set on a planet far, far away on which humans are the guests, the immigrants.  It's a love story between a human and another species, and a question of what that love would look like between two beings so incredibly different.  It's also, as she mentions in the Afterword, a story about paying the rent.  As humans spread across the galaxy, what would we have to offer?  What would other cultures want of us, wht would we have to give?  What sacrifices would we be willing to make?

It starts with the line, "My last night of childhood began with a visit home"

(oh, and also she quite cheekily sneaks in a male pregnancy story here, good for her, hah!  If any men reading that are uncomfortable . . . well . . . think about that)

Make sure you get a copy of the 2005 edition, as it has a pair of new stories including the absolutely stellar "Amnesty".  Legitimately one of my favorite science fiction stories ever (and I'm not just saying that because of the name of the main character).  This is a story of aliens that have landed on Earth, and is told from the perspective of one of the humans that has worked to establish contact with them

This is one of the biggest themes in all of Butler's work, especially her more "out-there" science fiction.  How can we make connection with others?  She dreams up fantastic aliens with physiology and society and even methods of communication so different from ours, she sets up the world so that war seems almost inevitable because of how different we are . . . and then she and her characters do everything they can to forge a connection anyways

These characters, like so many of Butler's, do everything they can to understand each other.  It's quite shameful, then, that here in the real world, we let such minor differences divide us

Read this collection for "Positive Obsession"--or hey, just read it online here--her deeply personal essay about her journey as an artist, her upbringing and her path to getting published.  A path that was of course made doubly hard as a woman, triply hard as a Black American, and sextuply hard as both of those things while trying to write science fiction, of all things

Who was I anyway?  Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say?  Did I have anything to say?  I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God's sake.  At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men.  As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing?

Well, whatever it was, I couldn't stop.  Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts.  Positive obsession is dangerous.  It's about not being able to stop at all. 

I loved this collection for so many reasons, but chief among is always going to be Butler's voice.  She looks into the future, looks and wonders and imagines what humanity can be.  The ways we can be better, the ways we can be worse, the ways we can explore the unknown.  Every single "what if?" that every occurred to her got pinned down to a page and answered in the best way she knew how

If you've heard of Octavia Butler, heard of some of her work, heard of her reputation . . . I'm here to say that yes, she was as good as all of that.  She was fantastic and talented and wise and caring and intelligent and everything.  And her books are monuments to all of those things, and monuments to what science fiction as a genre is capable of

And this collection is a great place to start!

I loved this book

I write science fiction and fantasy for a living. As far as I know I’m still the only Black woman who does this. When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the questions I heard most often was, “What good is science fiction to Black people?” I was usually asked this by a Black person. I gave bits and pieces of answers that didn’t satisfy me and that probably didn’t satisfy my questioners. I resented the question. Why should I have to justify my profession to anyone?

 

But the answer to that was obvious. There was exactly one other Black science-fiction writer working successfully when I sold my first novel: Samuel R. Delany, Jr. Now there are four of us. Delany, Steven Barnes, Charles R. Saunders, and me. So few. Why? Lack of interest? Lack of confidence? A young Black woman once said to me, “I always wanted to write science fiction, but I didn’t think there were any Black women doing it.” Doubts show themselves in all sorts of ways. But still I’m asked, what good is science fiction to Black people?

What good is any form of literature to Black people? 

 

What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking —whoever “everyone” happens to be this year.

 And what good is all this to Black people?