1/19/2024 0 Comments Octavia e butler occupationI am three books down of Octavia Butler’s now. I was impressed with this icing on the cake of a thriller yarn.Īlright. The book seems to question whether our humanity lies more with our emotional or out rational selves. Whereas these others deal with the threat of beings with telepathic powers, here the threat is closer to home in that the organisms seem in a sense to be bringing the conflict down to an individual’s limbic system versus higher brain systems. The others (of which I have read one) deal in various ways with alien-modified humans trying to take over Earth. The book is the last in the set of four books (and second in chronology) termed the Patternist series, which started with The Patternmaster in 1976. I can’t spoil the story with any details, but I can share that it puts the family in the position of having to choose whether to resign themselves to living with the altered human enclave or to escape and risk creating an uncontrollable epidemic. For the subset of humans who survive the infection, the alien invaders act symbiotically to change the host in certain ways to enhance their survival and the hosts. A doctor and his two 16 year old daughters end up being kidnapped by a community of people infected by microscopic organisms brought back by an astronaut returning from Alpha Centauri. The haves live in gated compounds and the have nots live in “sewers”, vast regions dominated by lawless gangs. The projection is of a dystopic future in which civilization is on the bleeding edge. Written in 1984, the tale is set in the California Mojave Desert in 2021, close to our present, but 40 years from then. What makes this book stand out is its use of the story as a doorway to larger themes of what it means to be human and to be part of a community. The terrible choices they must make put it over the line into the territory of psychological horror. In this short novel of less than 200 pages, we are subjected to an intense story of survival of a single family with the fate of the human race at stake. I enjoyed the purity of this science fiction tale on the theme of alien possession. I took a quick peek at the first few pages of Patternmaster and I see the results of Clay's Ark may play a part in that story, but for now, it is an odd addition to the series that perhaps was not intended to be part of the series at all (considering it was created several years after Patternmaster.) In fact, Clay Dana's involvement is not mentioned until more than half way through the book. Beyond that and the name, there is very little that relates it to the Patternists created by Mary in Mind of My Mind or the superhumans created by Doro, beginning in Wild Seed. My dislike comes, perhaps from a bias regarding its place as part of the Seed to Harvest collection.Ĭlay's Ark carries the similar theme of a community of humans, mutated both physically and psychologically, who must fight against outward and inward forces to maintain their humanity - a theme that dominates just about every book I've read from this author. However, I did not dislike this book because of this. The ending, certainly, is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps it was the violence against young children that has me troubled. Her concepts are fascinating, even when as disturbing as this one. Butler that I have read yet, further inspiring my desire to have a conversation with her to find out just how that brain worked. This was the most disturbing book by Octavia E. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.Īfter her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.
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