Entry #5: "Blood Child"

"Truth is, I hate short story writing...Yet there is something seductive about writing short stories..." -- Octavia E. Butler

Butler, Octavia E. Blood Child and Other Stories. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995.

Genre: Science Fiction

Author's Website: http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler/

Butler's Obituary: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/260959_butlerobit26ww.html

Subjects & Themes: death & decay; chaos & control; dystopia; catastrophe; mutants; illness, genetic disease, & heredity; women & men/women vs. men; pregnancy; family; aging; loss; hopeless; drudgery; sense (or lack there of) of community; and, the ever present threat of annhilation.

Reading Reaction: A glimmer of intrigue, yet overall, pure displeasure (a fact about which I feel a little guilty, having only recently learned of the author's demise). For, try as I might, it seems inevitable that I will never acquire a taste for the realm of science fiction. I find it confusing & I simply can't muster enough inertia to decipher the message. Don't deny the author's talent--but I'll take a raw dose reality

Read a Likes (if bleak otherworldliness be your thing):

1. The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg (1998).
2. The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (1989).
3. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (1961).
4. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950).
5. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1992)
6. The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood (1985).

Related Reads (more infamous sci fi)

1. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965).
2. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895).
3. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864).
4. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1985).
5. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959).
6. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey (1968).

Suggested Tunes: soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Repeat only if necessary.