Tag: Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler & the Freedom of SFF

It is just over a week ago that I returned from the International Science Fiction Convention, Worldcon 2024 in Glasgow, and what a magnificent few days it was. I have lots to catch up on and share, the sights and inspirations, but first I want to begin with a few thoughts on my latest read, a woman who kept me company for the convention, whose words have been ringing in my ears for many years, the wise and deeply human, Octavia Butler, whose ‘The Last Interview’ was a joy to read.

Octavia Butler was a survivor, a dreamer and a loner. She was painfully shy as an adolescent, dyslexic, and ‘probably’ gay was her literal answer to a direct question. Bloodchild was about male pregnancy. She enjoys working in SF for the freedom it offers, the ability to go into any technological or sociological problem and extrapolate from there. Her work is underpinned by concepts of power, told in worlds of different races, sexes and cultures, with interest in powerless people gaining power. A theme I very much identify with as a context for my own work.

I first read Octavia Butler when I was a young teen, starting with Kindred. Dana Frankin, a Black woman from an interracial marriage in LA in 1976, is mysteriously and repeatedly plucked back in time to 1824 Maryland and to a moral dilemma involving her white ancestor. The author describes how it was purposeful to give Dana a white husband, to complicate her life, and it was purposeful to make her lose her arm, to demonstrate that she could not come back whole from those experiences. The perspective is told from the viewpoint of not what it might have been like for her ancestors, but rather what it might be like for her, how slavery might reshape her emotionally, whether the compromises and capitulations she would have to make might destroy her, and if not, why not?

Octavia Butler speaks of striving to tell a good story, to take the reader to a world they haven’t seen before, one she has enjoyed creating. She subverts expectations about race, gender, and power, incorporating strong women, multiracial societies and aliens who challenge humanity’s penchant for destruction. In Bloodchild, she wanted to subvert expectation of the invasion story, often represented as humans colonising other planets and either facing aliens who resist, or who submit and become good servants. The author created another possibility in the Oankali, a centipede-like creature that you’re not supposed to regard as evil. It is a species that do not force or rush humans into mating but rather try to bring them in gradually. And in Adulthood Rites, the Oankali become convinced that they cannot destroy the humans who participate, and that humans deserve an untouched world of their own, even if it is Mars.

Octavia Butler advocated for write what you care about, rather than write what you know, (or what you think you know, which is often just regurgitating ideas you have been told, ideas you might tell yourself you believe, when in fact you don’t). Writing can push back against human laziness that is prone to stereotyping as a form of shorthand, that might be a way to deal more with the things we care about and less with the other, but it is reductive and can prevent us from discovering things we could want to know.

Last word:

“Feminism is freedom. It’s the freedom to be who you are and not who someone else wants you to be. And science fiction? Science fiction is wide open. You can go anywhere your imagination can go.”

xxx

For the Love of Books #29

With cool blue skies and frost on the horizon, I’m warming up with a deep dive into SFF collections; short stories that spin the unexpected, pack a punch and make you think, all while flexing the bounds of imagination. I bring you two titles by two extraordinarily inspiring authors…

Danged Black Thing; by Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon is an exceptional writer and I was honoured to receive a review copy of Danged Black Thing ahead of its much-anticipated release. Traversing the west and Africa, this unique collection of shorts is both dreamlike and lyrical, while delivered with the sharpness of cut glass. It is speculative and mythical inexplicably wrapped in the mundane.

It begins with Simbiyu, amid the colours of forest laced with the sweet scent of crushed guavas and the intermittent whiff of soured yams. Childhood against a rural backdrop brought alive on the page is told in textured layers of family amid the brusque contrast of loss. A boy longing for the comfort of his once pillow-soft mother, forges his way in the world, winning a scholarship that will take him to Australia. But roots cannot be shaken, and while the heady colours of home are a welcome memory, shadows of the past tighten their embrace. When the story came to an end, I found myself wanting to stay, to know more of the character that had revealed worlds in just a few pages.

This is a remarkable collection of voices exploring migration, gender and class, patriarchy and womanhood; a collection that pushes the boundaries of creativity and science, delving into family, love and loss across time and space, speaking to the future with detailed imaginings of a landscape filled with warnings to heed, and questions about what it means to be human. And that is just the first two stories.

There are tales of revenge, aliens and fantastical beasts, explorations touching each phase of life, drawing on the power of ancestors, tradition, and vivid descriptions of both modern and fantastical worlds. The prose is soaked in truth, empathy and invention, transporting you deep into physical place and breathless mental imaginings. Each word leaves you hanging in this collection that feels like a colourful celebration of life, complete with flaws, scars, magic and beauty.

Bloodchild; by Octavia Butler

Bloodchild is an innovative collection of shorts, inventive parables to the contemporary world, small in size and huge in reach. In true Octavia Butler style, the protagonists are strong and complex, and the themes astute and challenging to the status quo. The collection begins with Bloodchild, the story of a colony of humans in an extrasolar world, forced to make startling accommodations with their hosts. A perfectly weird, unsettling and memorable story that asks the question, what would you be prepared to accommodate to pay the rent?

Another story, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, explores life with a disease that causes the sufferer to feel trapped and imprisoned within their own flesh. In a world with woefully inadequate institutions and devastating consequences, the question is raised: what can we do, what can we become, what are we in relation to undeniable genetics?

Rooted in the mundane, shining a light on the bleak, brought to life with inventive experimentation, the stories transcend through alien invasions that give a whole new meaning to community, moments of tenderness shining in an apocalypse, to the big question – what would you do if you met God? Plus two essays which give great insight into the author’s journey as a writer, and her resulting advice to those of us following in her footsteps. A thought-provoking read. Highly recommend.

What are you reading?

 

For the Love of Books #7

Change is afoot as Kate and I take our first tentative steps to consider moving house. It is no mean feat after 8-ish yrs of growing lovingly attached to these four walls. But change can be good, and when it is it is worth the effort.

There is another reason for this train of thought about change: it is the central premise to the books I am reading – Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series. In my opinion the books are many things, including brilliant.