bloodchild and other stories octavia butler

Yes, the story does involve “male pregnancy” which if you’ve been in fanfiction circles too long may cause a sort of gross nostalgia I don’t have a term for.

When I read something like this, I think “bleep yeah!” I feel alienated from a lot of my writer friends because my interests tend to skew more…say, Junji Ito. So, at some point you just say forget it and live your life. “Bloodchild” makes me grin from ear to ear because of how gloriously bizarre it is it feels like it was written just for me, a weird black person who loves fantasy, but can’t seem to do or write anything normal to save their life.

Weird to an off-putting degree from what I’d heard, and when I read a synopsis of it I just had to try it. Secondly, the main novella itself is just plain weird. At this point I already had a grasp of Butler’s style, but I was looking for something transitional to gel it all together. I decided on “Bloodchild” (as part of the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories) because my usual method of easing into a new author is to find their short stories first, if any are available, to get a feel for their style. Specifically, I wanted to look at one of the Butler recs I came onto myself after being intrigued further by Kindred, and it’s something a few people like, but a lot more…don’t.

And hopefully we are reading & not just the short paragraphs on Wikipedia. You and I can only come from our personal reading tastes. It got to the point where I couldn’t even enjoy those recs as much as I thought I should be, not because I didn’t like them after all, but because they were so over-hyped.Īt the end of the day, I realized I’m not that miffed about this because at least it gives me somewhere to go from there. Butler, specifically Kindred & Fledgling. My friends heaped me with Ursula K Le Guin and Octavia E. I had people telling me to read the same books over & over, by the same revered figures that Everyone Worshipped without any concern with how it fit into my life’s narrative or even if the content inside would harm me (we won’t get into details with names, but let’s say it was all outdated regardless of age, and…problematic).Īfter a while I started asking myself, “are these people even reading this literature or are they just telling me to read it because they heard I should? Where’s the critical thinking?” A similar thing happened when I (hesitantly) looked for fiction recs. I’ll tell you, back when I was looking for social justice & political works before I moved back into the fictional world, it was…interesting. It sounds like a good trait on the surface, but I say that because at some point I hated reviews!

I think about the pitfalls of “reviews” all the time.

Bloodchild and other stories octavia butler