Bloodchild - Octavia E Butler

 Bloodchild - Octavia E Butler

Octavia E Butler was a rarity, a pioneer, in science fiction in the 1970s and 1980s. She was the first African American woman to achieve major success in the genre. Her novels Wild Seed and Kindred were nominated for awards in 1979 and 1980. However, it was this short story that really confirmed her status as one of the great SF writers of her time.

Bloodchild was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in June 1984. It won the SF Chronicle, Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards for best novelette in 1985. It is no surprise, then, that it was chosen for Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection, Arthur W Saha & Donald A Wollheim’s The 1985 Annual World’s Best SF, Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year 14 and, of course, George Zebrowski’s Nebula Awards 20. It has continued to feature in anthologies of science fiction and horror well into the 21st century, notably in Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s The Weird.

A major theme in Butler’s work is the exploration of survivor mentality, with reference to the history of slavery. The horrific relationship between the Terrans and the Tlic is a powerful metaphor in this context.

The note in the Vandermeer anthology tells us that Butler wrote the story as a way of processing her fear of botflies. By the end of the story, the reader may well have realised that there is another, more potent, metaphor at play, one capable of disturbing every reader. As the New York Times obituary on Ms Butler notes, she left ‘no immediate survivors’.

There is much to admire in Ms Butler’s work. Bloodchild is a good example of her skill in using science fiction to explore past and present social ills.