Book Log 07/2015 - Octavia Butler: Dawn - Exogenesis #1

[jacey]

I've been aware of Octavia Butler's writing for some time, but somehow never managed to get round to reading one of her books. My loss. This won't be my last Butler book..

A devastating nuclear war all but wipes out humanity and the few scattered survivors are rescued by extraterrestrials, the Oankali, a species driven to blend their genes (fairly indiscriminately, it seems) with other intelligent species, changing both species permanently. The first book serves as a first contact book. Lilith wakes from a centuries-long sleep and is gradually introduced to her saviours. At first she finds them terrifying and repulsive. They look like ugly sea-slugs with sensory tentacles all over their bodies instead of eyes/ears/noses. Gradually she gets used to them and comes to understand them a little.

The Oankali have three genders, male, female and the strange ooloi, genderless individuals with the power to manipulate genes, and also with consciousness sharing powers which include mental sexual stimulation between male and female partners of any species. (Threesomes being fun in this case.) After initial tests and acclimatisation to the Oankali, Lilith is charged with the task of waking forty human adults and training them to return to Earth to a rain-forest environment..

What she doesn't tell them at first, because she can hardly bear to think about it herself, is that the Oankali intend the next generation of human children to be Oankali-Human hybrids - a 'better' organism for survival on the recovering Earth.

This book contains a mixture of interesting ideas, weird sex and a deep examination of alienation and 'the other'. The conflict comes between Lilith's desire to remain human and preserve humanity in its original form, and her need to survive. The Oankali believe that humans, left to themselves, will self-destruct. Their controlling, paternalistic, Oankali-know-best attitude gives the humans little choice in the matter, so, of course, they rebel, leaving Lilith caught between her own species and the Oankali who have become her family.

There are several points to make about this book being a product of its time. Octavia Butler was the pioneering American black female writer who wrote about black female characters and paved the way for other writers of colour. Also, this book, published in 1987 was written before Stockholm[*1] Syndrome was a widely recognised phenomenon, but Lilith certainly develops sympathy for the Oankali whom she first sees as her captors, while they see themselves as her rescuers. It's a post-apocalyptic version of Beauty and the Beast, maybe.

[*1] The incident Stockholm Syndrome was eventually named after took place in 1973, but originally went under the catchy name of Norrmalmstorgssyndromet, only later becoming Stockholm Syndrome.