#1: Dawn, Octavia Butler

[b-writes.livejournal.com]

Dawn is the first volume in a trilogy by Octavia Butler named first Xenogenesis and later Lilith's Brood, the second name being something of a spoiler.

Lilith Iyapo wakes, again and again, in a cold, featureless room. She is interrogated by unseen beings who ask her questions. Eventually, she learns that-- as she had feared-- the Earth has been made uninhabitable by nuclear war, and that-- as she had never suspect-- alien beings have take in the Earth's few survivors. They plan to repopulate the Earth with the few humans left. But they also have other desires, which only become clear as the novel continues.



The aliens want to blend their genetic materials with the humans; it is, they explain, the only way their species can continue. Lilith's confusion and mixed feelings, and her eventual willingness to work with the aliens (Oankali), become the focus of most of the book. The second third or so has Lilith training a small group of humans to inhabit the Earth to come. Things, as they so often do, don't go well, and the book concludes with a pregnant Lilith vowing to do better with the next group she trains.



There are some really nice details here; the multicultural cast, the way the humans initially react to Oankali with horror and revulsion because of their utter strangeness, the way the (never explicit) sexuality is expressed. Oankali have three genders: male, female, and ooloi, and none are dispensable, emotionally or for reproductive reasons.

There are bits that date the book too; rape comes up more often than I think it would had the book been written in 2007 rather than 1987, and homosexuality is only mentioned a few times, generally obliquely. (I am not quite sure what the Oankali would have done with homosexuals; maybe ignored them, maybe incorporated them somehow? But the question is never addressed; the few times homosexuality comes up is in the context of homophobia.)

Overall, it was excellent, but I want a break before I read the next book. Rebuilding humanity always exhausts me.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is a great review, but the last line made me giggle ever so.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

I am ignorant -- can you explain the difference between how rape was handled in 1987 and in 2007?

I read this book myself some years back and I enjoyed the review, but I don't understand that one sentence you wrote. Thank you, whatever you decide!

homosexuality in Xenogenesis

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I adore Octavia Butler and I find the Xenogenesis books endlessly fascinating (especially the complexity of the decisions Lilith has to make), but the rigidity of the sexuality in them always feels off to me. Everyone seems to take same-sex desire as a horrifying prospect, and the Oankali and Oankali-human sexuality is so completely biological it leaves no space for desire that isn't connected to reproduction. I've read a lot of commentary about how queer the books are with the third gender and alien sex, but despite that the biologism always makes it feel kind of heteronormative to me. I've been thinking maybe I should read the books again, since it's been a few years, and see if I still have that impression...