Bloodchild and Other Stories: Second Edition [Paperback]

Besides her exceptional novels, Octavia Butler has published a collection of her short fiction entitled Bloodchild and Other Stories. The opening story in the collection is her Hugo and Nebula award winning story, the title story, "Bloodchild". This is what she has called her "male pregnancy story" and it features an Earth which has been taken over by some sort of alien creatures who form symbiotic relationships with humans, but who also use humans to breed their young and usually males because impregnating females means fewer humans will be born which means fewer young of their own kind. It was an interesting story.

My favorite of the collection, however, is her Hugo winning story "Speech Sounds". Some sort of cataclysm has hit our planet, one which has robbed humanity of the ability to speak and in some cases regressed the mental development of humanity to a more base level. Set in Los Angeles, "Speech Sounds" shows the loss of communication and what that does to society and we see it through the eyes of one woman who was on a bus when an incident occurred.

"The Evening and the Morning of the Night" is a story which sticks with the reader, though with me it was for the wrong reason I believe. This story features a hereditary disease which causes some people to lose their mind and try to dig their way out of their own skin and it is that image of people trying to do that to themselves that sickened me a bit, even though all that action occurred off camera, if you will. Interesting as a concept and well written, it is also one I would rather forget.

"Near of Kin" is Butler's one non-science fiction story and it is a story about family and perceived family. Quite good, but it would belong more in another collection than in a genre collection like this.

I did not remember "Crossover" two minutes after I finished.

Bloodchild and Other Stories also includes two essays on writing and being a writer and for all their brevity, they are interesting as a mini biography of Butler and also for the glimpse of her publishing career. The glimpse I was most struck by was that after selling two stories at Clarion, she then went five years before selling another piece of work. Five years! For an author of Butler's talent! This explains, of course, Butler's mantra of: Persist.

Each story or essay is followed by an Afterword written by Butler giving a little bit of context or explanation as needed to the piece of fiction (or non fiction).

The edition of Bloodchild and Other Stories I was able to read was not the expanded edition which featured two more short stories. This edition, succinct as it is, is worth reading for fans of the genre and especially for fans of Octavia Butler.

-Joe Sherry

Some years ago I've read for the first time a book from Ms Butler. I was captivated by her amazing imagination and quality of her prose and became instantly a fan of the author. This first impression was corroborated as I read more of her writings.
Unfortunately for us, her fans, Ms. Butler has recently passed leaving the "Parable" trilogy unfinished and I'm sure many delightful stories unwritten.

She was highly talented writer and win Sci-Fi Hugo and Nebula awards.
All her books showed a rich mixture of imagination, complex and interesting characters and conflictive situations to test their mettle.

Here the reader is presented with Octavia's short stories. She proves to be as good as with her novels, even if she states she is not a "short story writer".
There are five tales and two essays.
The essays provide good hints for "would be writers".

The multi-awarded "Bloodchild" is a typically Butler's product.
She explores in depth, in a quite short text, the intricacies of symbiosis between human and alien specie.
I think that from this story, Octavia has derived her amazing trilogy "Xenogenesis". Both stories refer to symbiosis and how this affects human mind producing very different attitudes from rejection to uncensored adhesion.

The other remarkable tale is "Speech Sounds" that shows a post apocalyptic world where humanity is deprived of speech or the ability of read and write.
She focuses on the strain survivors suffer to adapt to these conditions. The inner suffering and the will to survive are shown without respite.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" reflects the anguish endured by a woman that knows she will be devastated by a new disease.

This book is a very good introduction to Ms. Butler's universe.

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

"What good is science fiction to Black people?" If you have ever wondered this, or if you've ever thought that the future was limited to shiny, cybernetic miracles, you need to read Bloodchild and Other Stories. A collection of five short stories and two wonderfully spare essays on the art of writing, this book serves as a fine introduction to the works of Octavia Butler.

Butler's novels have won the most prestigious awards in the science fiction world, even though they often deal with questions of race and culture that have not always captured the attention of science fiction writers, or the interest of science fiction readers. Her protagonists are frequently strong Black women - think Celie by way of Ellen Ripley. The stories in this volume include everything from synthetic diseases that rob people of their basic humanity to the subtleties of interpersonal relations in difficult circumstances. The title story is an SF exploration of the relationship between two unequal species that stands as a mind-bending discourse on slavery and human bondage. There are no laser swords or starships here - only a series of meditations on the possibilities of being human.

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