50books_poc | #1: Dawn, Octavia Butler

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.