anagramofbrat | The Blue Ghost of Octavia E. Butler

I finished reading Seed to Harvest last night, which is the new omnibus edition of the Patternmaster series. I randomly ran across it in the library on my last trip down and thought what the hell, it's been long enough since I read these, and I need a break from the Giant Brick of Amber.

I've always loved Wild Seed. I still have my copy downstairs, signed by Ms. Butler herself in 2004 when she came to Smith to give a guest lecture on writing science fiction. I'm normally pretty meh about meeting famous people, but I remember going up to ask for her autograph that year and nearly peeing myself with frightened fangirl excitement. I think I blurted out not was she my hero, but that she was the second author ever to give me nightmares. (It's true. Kindred, which incidentally I can't find my ancient-ass copy of *RAGE* still scares the ever living crap out of me whenever I reread it.) She laughed. :)

I digress though. I loved the first half of the series (Wild Seed/Mind of my Mind) the first time around. I was less enthused about Clay's Ark and Patternmaster, I think because I couldn't relate to them the same way. They were both much better this go 'round. I probably had to grow up a bit more to appreciate them properly.

I was trying to explain to

cell23 last night why I liked her writing so much, and I think my main argument was that her books are not comfortable reads. They are never happy fluffy tales of sunshine and roses; generally her main characters start at fucked and end up in oh shit!superfucked and what makes the story interesting is how they deal with their circumstances, either by fighting or accepting them. I can't think of a single story of hers that has a true happy ending beyond the protagonists finding some kind of inner peace, or victory or something, though the victories are often pyhrric. The other thing is when she writes about aliens interacting with humans (and a lot of her books do indeed deal with that) the aliens are ALIEN. They don't think like us, they are not driven by the same motivations, they are pretty much rational, talking monsters with their own agendas, and many of her novels end up exploring how humanity changes, adapts or stuggles to stay the same in the face of that. All pretty awesome things, I think.

I'm still upset that she died when she did. Aside from the weird irrational grief that happens when your idols die, it always felt like Fledgling was the start of something rather than a stand-alone story, and I was interested in seeing what further spins she'd put on the vampire genre. Of course, maybe that's a blessing in disguise, considering the ascension of the Sparklevampire.

Anyway. I'm still going through Amber, but I have also picked up Parable of the Sower to reread. It's another one I didn't particularly care for the first time around, I'm gonna see if my opinion has changed in the interim. And I need to make a mental note to pick up copies of the Xenogenesis series, which I don't have. Probably not the Lilith's Brood edition, as I liked having them in separate books. A perverse part of me wants to see if I can get my hands on the first editions of them with the horrible 1980s! Science! Fiction! typesetting and that insanely WTF cover for Dawn. Because there are so many white women with Farrah Fawcett hair named Lilith Iyapo. *giggle* Man. I would have loved to ask Ms. Butler what she thought of that after I read it. Alas I didn't get to that series until after she'd died. Oh, whitewashing.

But yeah... Butler's novels make me uncomfortable in another way that has nothing to do with her style or her stories. I get the same feeling of discomfort when I read Nalo Hopkinton or Tananarive Due, just this sense of "There aren't enough of us out there. Join Us. Write something. You can you know, you're just lazy." Seriously, it's sorta like Luke being constantly hounded by the blue ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi whenever he feels like whining about his life. Except I'm being haunted by the blue ghosts of black female science fiction/fantasy writers. No mean feat considering only one of the ones I've mentioned is actually dead, and the other two are on my twitter feed. Between that and Stanley basically telling me for the umpteenth time to get up off my proverbial ass and write stuff other than my constant "this is my life" drivel... yeah about that.

In other news, oh hey what's up snow. Also: Love me, love me, say that you love me.