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Science Fiction And More

Photo by Miriam Berkley

Rites Writer: Octavia E. Butler

Novelist and short-story writer Octavia Butler defies categories

By J. Douglas Allen Taylor

I saw Octavia Butler at a book-reading and question-and-answer session in San Francisco a few years ago. This was after the success of the Xenogenesis trilogy (Dawn, Imago and Adulthood Rites) and her winning of some of science-fiction's top writing awards but before her receipt of the MacArthur "genius" grant helped introduce the author's work to a larger audience.

In those middle years, Butler was feeling more than a little pigeonholed. She did not really think of herself as a science-fiction writer, she explained, but more as a chronicler of the human heart using science fiction as a tool of revelation. The publishers and the reading public had no trouble looking at Margaret Atwood in that way. Why not Octavia Butler?

She was being a little disingenuous, I think. Judging from the type of questions Butler got that night, many of her readers are less science-fiction fans and more feminists, with a strong African American contingent (not surprising, considering the fact many of Butler's heroines are strong, African American women). So she was already bridging many less-traveled gaps. And, after all, Butler did start out her career submitting to all those Weird Science and Isaac Asimov magazines.

Still, after reading Bloodchild, a fine little collection of Butler's short stories and short essays, one is led to the conclusion that the author is called a science-fiction writer only because the booksellers need a location on the shelf to put her in. She defies categories.

Bloodchild is compact and to the point: five previously published stories (only three of which can be classified as science fiction) and two essays. The title story was awarded both of science-fiction's highest awards, the Hugo and the Nebula; another story won the Hugo. If the choice was to keep this book small rather than include work of a lesser quality, it was a good choice. Like a small diamond with any imperfections chiseled away, Bloodchild sparkles brilliantly.

Two of the three science-fiction stories in this collection deal with disease; longtime Butler fans should not be surprised--it's an old fascination of hers. Dissatisfied with the thousands of known diseases on the planet--as if AIDS or cancer or leukemia were not horrific enough--she invents her own. Butler makes you glad that the Great Disease Creator didn't hire her as a consultant.

In "Speech Sounds," a worldwide epidemic has robbed humanity of various social attributes, but not everyone loses the same thing. Some can no longer recognize writing, others can no longer speak or recognize speech. Those that can must hide their abilities from those that cannot, for fear of bringing down violent, vengeful wrath. Opening into this world of noncommunication, Butler describes one woman's bus ride across Los Angeles:

Two young men were involved in a disagreement of some kind, or, more likely, a misunderstanding. They stood in the aisle, grunting and gesturing at each other, each in his own uncertain T stance as the bus lurched over the potholes. The driver seemed to be putting some effort into keeping them off balance. Still, their gestures stopped just short of contact--mock punches, hand games of intimidation to replace lost curses. People watched the pair, then looked at one another and made small anxious sounds. Two children whimpered.

And then, after the inevitable fight occurs:

People screamed or squawked in fear. Those nearby scrambled to get out of the way. Three more young men roared in excitement and gestured wildly. Then, somehow, a second dispute broke out between two of these three--probably because one inadvertently touched or hit the other.

If Butler comes out of any tradition it might be that of Johnathan Swift in her use of fantasy to highlight the absurdity-slipping-into-horror of human society. Eliminate the lost-speech disease and the above passage might easily describe the fear and miscommunication and underlying potential for violence involved in, well, taking a bus ride across today's Los Angeles.

The title story illustrates the operation of Butler's restless imagination. She starts out with a fairly common fantasy theme--what would happen if a man could get pregnant? But perhaps only Butler would ponder such a question while worrying about an upcoming trip to Peru, where she learned that the botfly lays its eggs in wounds left by the bites of other insects.

Butler confesses she "found the idea of a maggot living and growing under my skin, eating my flesh as it grew, to be so intolerable, so terrifying, that I didn't know how I could stand it if it happened to me." So, of course, she writes a story making it happen to a man by impregnating him. And then, doubling back upon herself, she makes it a love story. If that appears an improbable feat, Butler pulls it off fluidly, easily.

Simplicity, in fact, is the key to her writing. Unlike the work of, say, Philip Dick or Edgar Allan Poe or Swift, you won't find many quotable passages in Butler's stories. She builds her narrative with simple, unadorned bricks--spare descriptions and dialogue--counting on the weight of her ideas to hold the narrative form in place. It does.

In at least two of her stories I found myself reading with tears running down my cheeks, and yet I'd be a little embarrassed to quote the lines that caused the flow. There'd be too much to explain. Just read the stories. That's all I can say.

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Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler; Four Walls Eight Windows; 144 pages; $18.


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