Customer Reviews

Bloodchild and Other Stories

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Octavia Butler is the best sci fi writer I've ever read. Better than Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, et al. "Bloodchild" was the first piece I read by her. Got me hooked. Take a read and you'll be hooked, too.

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.

Once again, a great book. The one thing that always impesses me about Octavia...she really makes you think about things, and most of what she makes you think about has nothing to do with what she writes. It is HOW she writes.

Bloodchild is a collection of short stories by the famous science-fiction writer Octavia Butler. The problem with short story collections is that they are usually a mixed bag, populated with mostly mediocre stories speckled with a few stinkers and a few gems. Well, I am happy to report to you that Bloodchild is not like that at all. Every single story in this collection is captivating, intelligent, and written in a style that is clear and accessible without losing any of its sophistication.

What really struck me about Bloodchild was the sheer emotional impact of each story. Because each story is such a perfect little world, and because the characters are so well realized, every story really packs a punch. I put down the book between each story, incapable of doing any real thinking because I was so blown away by what I had just read. I think the effectiveness of the stories comes from a mix of excellent writing and characterization and the way Butler uses those characters to explore complex ideas. One of Butler's strengths is in never letting her work become preachy or one-sided. Butler's ideas are as complex as her characters, and that makes her stories resonate in a very real and powerful way.

Usually, this would be the part of the review where I would tell you which stories were my favorite and which ones to skip, but I can't really do that with this collection, because they are all absolutely worth reading. I believe that Butler's most famous stories are Bloodchild and Speech Sounds, both of which are in this collection and both of which are absolutely mind-blowing. Bloodchild actually left me speechless and shaking by the time I finished it. Her other stories are more subtle, but are still incredibly well-written. There are also two essays included in the book, my favorite of which was Positive Obsession. Since I bought the updated version of the book, I got an extra two stories on top of the original five stories and two essays. If you are going to get it, I recommend getting the updated version, because the two added stories are both very good, especially Amnesty. In all of the stories Butler's characters are absolutely convincing, and her story-telling is so smooth that you never need time to get adjusted to the story, even when you are dropped right in the middle of the action. That is, to me, a sign of a great writer.

I know this review is vague, but that is only because Butler's stories are so good. I don't feel like I need to speak for them, and I'm not sure that I could even if I wanted to. If you want intelligent stories with concise yet vivid writing and realistic characters, then Octavia Butler is absolutely the writer for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Vivid writing, engaging plot, convincing characters, and intelligent world building. Highly recommended.

I've wanted to try out Octavia Butler for several years and so I took this opportunity to read some of her short stories as a primer. I really enjoyed this quick book and especially the author's comments about what she was thinking as she wrote them. Her style is both densely layered and open at the same time. I found myself filling in a lot of the areas that she left open to my imagination. While she is writing about particular events she opens your mind up to the whole world surrounding those events. I'm looking forward to reading her novels now and lament that she is already gone much too soon.

The 2005 expanded edition of Butler's only collection of short fiction contains the original five stories and two essays, plus two additional stories published in 2003. Each story is remarkable for its succinct, raw power, and the collection, while slight, is impressive for its variety. There's more going on here in seven stories than many more prolific writers offer in a lifetime. Two of the earlier stories are not science fiction; one is a "sympathetic [that is, non-judgmental] story of incest" inspired by various biblical examples; the other is a story about a working woman "turning to alcohol." And Butler wrote an afterword for each selection, explaining its inspiration, meaning, and place in her oeuvre. In one of the two essays, she recalls how an exasperated writing teacher asked her, "Can't you write anything normal?" The answer, happily, is no.

Although the most famous piece is "Bloodchild" (Butler's "pregnant man story"), for my money the gem of the book is "Speech Sounds," about a woman who has mysteriously retained her functions of speech after a deadly disease has robbed nearly all of the surviving population of the ability to communicate. (The basic set-up reminds me a little of Saramago's "Blindness," which was of course written much later.) The mute survivors attack the healthy for their "superiority" and so even those who can speak are forced to be silent and armed. The woman struggles to survive in the anarchic violence of a world "where the only likely common language was body language."

The final selection, "The Book of Martha" (one of the stories written in 2003), also shows why, five years after her death, Butler continues to be regarded as one of the best of science fiction writers. An extended dialogue between a woman and God, it is Butler's "utopia story," but her take on the perfect world explains much about why the ironies in her fiction still resonate: "I don't like most utopia stories because I don't believe them for a moment. It seems inevitable that my utopia would be someone else's hell." There is some version of heaven or hell for every reader in each one of these stories, but all of them are immaculately rendered.

This collection of short stories is (mostly) intriguing - pretty good speculative fiction. Honestly I have yet to find a Butler work I didn't enjoy and while a few stories in here are <less> good than the rest, all are worth reading. Dip in.

"Bloodchild" is a short book of short stories. Each story is completely its own. Octavia Butler describes in the prologue how she hated writing short stories. Yet, I find these to be very well written, and thought provoking. After each story is a page or so from the author detailing why she wrote the story and describing the themes contained within.