Perseids and other stories by Robert Charles Wilson

This collection of stories (published in 2000) has a science fiction/horror blend that makes it a discomfiting read. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here, and Wilson's grasp on my attention didn't flag. The stories included are:

The Fields of Abraham
The Perseids
The inner inner city
The observer
Protocols of consumption
Ulysses sees the moon in the bedroom window
Plato's mirror
Divided by infinity
Pearl baby

There is some interconnection between the stories. Characters in one story may show up in another. Several characters work or visit a used bookstore called Finders. Most of the stories take place in Toronto.

I particularly enjoyed the Fields of Abraham, the story of a young man who earns his living (just after the turn of the 19th century) teaching English and playing the occasional game of chess. He has a sister who seems to be descending into madness for whom he serves as caretaker. There is an old man in a book store (Finders) who gives him books in exchange for chess games.

The Observer is an alien abduction story with a difference, and a pleasant 12-year-old girl for a heroine.

Divided by Infinity is another story connected to Finders bookstore. This one tells of a man who so terribly misses his dead wife that he seeks to join her in death, only to find his death increasingly unlikely.

Overall, this books is worth finding, and I liked Wilson's comments at the end.

http://www.geocities.com/canadian_SF/wilson/

Lillith's Brood by Octavia Butler

Lillith's Brood (c. 1990 (compilation) c. 1987, 1988, 1989 for individual books) is a compilation volume containing three novels in the Xenogenesis series: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. Although I knew I was reading a volume containing three novels while reading Lillith's Brood, the novels are so interconnected and the layout is so consistent that I really don't know which book made up which sections of the compilation.

With the book in hand, I can see that Dawn is the section that makes up the story of Lillith's awakening on the Oankali ship. The Oankali are an alien species that lives to "trade" with new species on new worlds. What makes them unusual (in science fiction that is--in the real world everything about them would be unusual) is that they trade genetic material. The Oankali have come to Earth after a major, worldwide disaster of manmade origin has left nearly everyone on the planet dead and the planet a smoking ruin. The Oankali salvage the living humans and seed the Earth with regenerative plants and animals.

Lillith Iyapo was a widow who had lost her husband and child to a car accident a year or two before the war that destroyed the Earth. In Dawn, Lillith awakes in an alien place and undergoes many unpleasant experiences before she is brought into contact with one of the Oankali. The Oankali are so frighteningly strange that Lillith can barely stand to be in the same room with her Oankali contact, and yet Lillith has been selected from among the salvaged humans as the most likely to be able to accept the Oankali. Lillith learns that she has been living on an Oankali spaceship since being salvaged. She also learns that the spaceship is alive, and that it is one of the many Oankali genetic creations.

Eventually, Lillith does come to accept the Oankali and is selected to be the human responsible for "awakening" 40 humans who will reseed the Earth. The catch is that they will be allowed to reseed the Earth only if they accept Oankali mates. The Oankali mate differently from humans. They mate for life and in groups of at least three--one male, one female, and one ooloi. Ooloi are neither male nor female, but they are the sex responsible for the genetic mixing between the males and females. They are capable of healing and of other forms of genetic manipulation, all of which is beneficial, according to Oankali understanding. The humans don't like the idea of Oankali genetic manipulation, even though some of them come to accept Oankali mates. Many humans reject Oankali manipulation of the human gene pool. They learn to hate Lillith, believing her to be a kind of Judas goat.

Adulthood Rites takes up Lillith's story and the story of the humans and the Oankali on Earth a few years after the end of Dawn. Lillith has joined with a group of Oankali and human families in a village called Lo. In fact, Lo is a village and also an immature space ship. The Oankali live in close connection to Lo, sharing genetic material with Lo and taking shelter and nutrition from Lo.

In Adulthood Rites, we see how Lillith and her human counterparts have come to live with and in opposition to the Oankali. The Oankali have made all of their salvaged human foundlings sterile, unless they mate with the help of an ooloi. Many groups of humans have left the shelter and assistance of Oankali family groups to make their own communities of resistors. The resistors can build homes and communities, but they cannot have children, so they have taken to raiding Human-Oankali villages and stealing children. Even though the children they steel are partly Oankali, they still look like children and are very valuable to the Resistors.

Akin is a male-looking child of Lillith and her mates Tino and Nikanj. Although Akin looks male, he is in fact a sub-adult, Human-Oankali construct, and as such won't become either sex until he reaches metamorphosis. Akin is, in fact, a male construct. The Oankali have been very careful to construct almost no male-leaning children to be born of Human females, because they consider the Human males to be too dangerously violent and hierarchical. What they come to learn, however, is that Akin was the hybrid they needed to fully understand the Humans. Akin convinces the Oankali to allow the Humans a place to develop a society where they can remain human and have human children. With his help, the Oankali come to understand that this outlet is necessary to the success of their plans. Akin starts a human outpost on Mars, with Oankali assistance, so that Resistors can have a place of their own and a hope for the future of the human race.

What neither the humans nor the Oankali and constructs realized was that the outlet of Mars allowed even the Oankali-mated humans, like Lillith, to let go of their anger towards the Oankali.

Imago takes up the story many years after the end of Adulthood Rites. Imago is the story of another of Lillith's children, Jodahs. Jodahs is the first ooloi born as a Human-Oankali construct. Imago is the story of what happens to Jodahs as he reaches metamorphosis and takes Human mates. Jodahs has 5 parents, a male and female Human, a male and female Oankali, and an ooloi, as is standard for Constructs. He also has a sibling Aaor, who has not yet reached metamorphosis.

As with Adulthood Rites, Imago is the story of how the Construct ooloi was necessary to bring the Human and Oankali species into peaceful coexistence.

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Wild Seed (c. 1980) is one of Octavia Butler's Patternist novels. It tells the story of Anyanwu, the wild seed of the title. Wild seed is the name Doro has given to people with the sort of mental powers he has been seeding among his human descendents. Doro calls them wild seed, because they have the powers without having Doro as a progenitor.

Doro is a character in some of the other Patternist novels, particularly Mind of My Mind. He is an immortal spirit/being, who lives in the bodies of his conquests. He has other strong mental powers, but his greatest power is the ability to kill people by mentally consuming them. Their bodies don't die; Doro moves into their bodies.

Anyanwu was the first wild seed that Doro encountered who was a challenge to him. She had already been living for about 300 years when Doro found her. She was living as a village elder and witch among her descendents in an African village. Doro convinced Anyanwu to leave her village as his wife.

Anyanwu traveled with Doro to the coast of Africa, where Doro had a slave trader working to collect interesting humans for his gene pool. Doro would take the humans he collected to the New World, where he was building a community of his descendents.

Anyanwu struggled against Doro as she learned more of his nature, and she eventually escaped his control, while in the shape of an animal. After many years of estrangement, Doro and Anyanwu were finally reconciled to each other's existence. As the novel ends, Anyanwu has adopted the name Emma (which means grandmother) and moved with her extended family to California.

Some time after the establishment of Emma's family in California, the story is continued in Mind of My Mind.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Bel Canto is a multi-award-winning novel set in an un-named South American country. The characters in the novel are the people attending a party held in honor of the Japanese owner of an electronics company, Mr. Hosokowa. Mr. Hosokowa was lured to attend the party by promised presence (and performance by) the presence of opera diva Roxane Coss. In addition to Mr. Hosokowa and Roxane Coss, the characters in the novel include the un-named country's Vice President, a multi-national group of party guests, Mr. Hosokowa's multi-lingual translator and assistant, and a group of terrorists who have entered the Vice-President's house stealthily to take the President of the un-named country hostage.

Unfortunately, the President skipped out on the party (because his favorite soap opera was at a climactic point on the evening of the party), so the terrorists decide to take the guests hostage instead. On the second day of the hostage-taking, all of the female guests are released, except Roxane Coss. Some men are allowed to leave as well (the laborers among the household and party staff, and the infirm and the priests among the guests.)

The remainder of the novel tells the story of the relationships that develop among the guests and hostages for the more than two months that the hostage situation endures. The characters are well-evoked, and the situations described are both outrageous and natural. The denouement is both inevitable and somewhat of a let-down--and also pretty much perfect.

Survivor by Octavia Butler -- book review

Survivor (c. 1978) is only the third novel published by Butler, and it has not been reprinted (by Butler's choice--apparently she wasn't satisfied with it.) It is listed as a book in the Patternist series, but has little in common with the other books in the series. Survivor is not about Patternists or Clayarks; it is about a the interactions among the residents of an off-world planet and a group of humans who are Missionaries, and who live apart from the Patternists and Clayarks.

Survivor begins a little confusingly, but once underway, it tells a compelling story. As the book opens, Alanna is returning to the Missionaries after two years as a prisoner of the Tehkohn. Alanna is half-Asian, half-Black and had been surviving alone among the wild humans inhabiting the Earth during the years of the Clayark plague. Alanna is a "wild human" who was adopted as a young teen by Missionaries. The Missionaries who adopted Alanna were waiting to emigrate from Earth to carry humanity to the stars, and to escape the Clayark disease. The Missionaries are humans with strong religious beliefs (similar to fundamentalist Christians). They lived in a kind of compound, where they defended themselves against Clayarks and wild humans. Their emigration off-world was funded by Patternists, anxious to keep the human gene pool alive.

The Missionaries have traveled to a world with two "species" of sentient beings. The Tehkohn and the Garkohn. It is not clear that these are really two separate species. They may in fact be two races of the same species or two tribes of the same species. They have many things in common, but one major difference. The Garkohn are addicted to a kind of fruit--meklah--that grows in the valley where the Missionaries settled after their ship landed there. The Tehkohn consider meklah addiction both a weakness and a kind of weapon (used by Garkohn against Tehkohn prisoners of war.) Both the Tehkohn and the Garkohn are covered in fur that can change colors, much like a salamander. Additionally, the color changes are used in communication and to "classify" members of the tribes. The more blue there is in the base color of a Tehkohn or Garkohn, the higher their status. The rarest and highest status of all is the pure blue Hao, considered by both groups to be natural leaders and bringers of good luck.

When Alanna was taken prisoner, the Missionaries still believed the Garkohn to be their friends, but during her absence the Missionary leader (Verrick, Alanna's adoptive father) discovered the problems inherent to meklah addiction and became suspicious of the Garkohn. Alanna, meanwhile, had become a member of the Tehkohn tribe since her capture, and seeks to set the Missionaries free from their Garkohn/meklah thrall. She also wants to return to the Tehkohn tribe and her husband, Diut, the Tehkohn Hao. The story is told in alternating (Alanna, Diut, & Verrick) voices and through flashbacks.

I'm not sure what Octavia Butler had against this book, but I think it's well worth reading, and one of her more compelling narratives. Survivor is out of print, and it's difficult/expensive to find a copy to purchase, but hundreds of public libraries own copies, so it is relatively easy to borrow a copy by interlibrary loan, if none are available at your local library.

Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler

Clay's Ark (c. 1984) is one of Butler's Patternist novels. Like Mind of My Mind, it is chronologically one of the first of the Patternist novels, though written later sequentially. Clay's Ark tells the story of the origin of the Clayarks (mutant humans who are enemies of the Patternists in Patternmaster.)

Clay's Ark is a spaceship that has crash-landed on earth. All of the astronauts from the ship are killed on impact or have died from a virus/micro-organism picked up off-world, except one. One astronaut, Eli, has survived. The micro-organisms he picked up off-world are controlling his behavior in several ways: he is compelled to pass on the disease, his dietary needs have changed, he is compelled to mate with ovulating females, and his offspring will be mutants.

Eli crash-landed in a remote, desert area where he stumbled onto a farm and infected the people living there. They are trying to remain self-sufficient and avoid contaminating others, but they occasionally go on "raids" to find mates for the remaining residents of the farm. In one such raid, they encounter a father (Blake Maslin) and his two daughters (Keira and Rane.) Blake is a doctor, Keira is dying of untreatable leukemia, and the Rane is a healthy and nubile female.

Clay's Ark tells the story of the struggle between the farm family and the Maslin family. The farm family believes that they must contain the Maslins, who have surely been infected. The Maslins believe they must escape--especially Blake, who wants to notify the authorities about the virus/micro-organism, before it becomes a pandemic. Meanwhile, life in America has degenerated such that driving on the highway is unsafe. People with money live in walled compounds. People on the road are likely to be either roving bands of criminals or their victims.

Along with Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark provides the backstory for Patternmaster. The mutant offspring of people infected with the off-world virus/micro-organism are the Clayarks.

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Fledgling is Octavia Butler's last published novel. Butler died shortly after its publication. Fledgling is a vampire novel, though it shares themes with Butler's other fiction.

Fledgling opens as a horribly wounded vampire is awakening in a cave. The vampire is so badly wounded that she has lost her memory in addition to being badly burned and beaten. The vampire is apparently a young black girl, and she begins trying to piece together her life, once she has overcome the worst of her injuries. She is picked up while walking along the road by a young man who finds her requests strangely irresistible. The young man's name is Wright, and he soon gives the young vampire the name Renee, which he tells her means reborn.

Renee asks Wright to help her find out what happened to her, so they begin their investigations by searching the area near the cave where Renee awakened. From their investigations, Renee learns that she is a genetically altered member of a matriarchal society called the Ina. The Ina are not vampires like Dracula; they are a separate species from humans. Renee also learns her real name, which is Shori. Each Ina gathers around themselves a group of human symbionts, which Shori had unwittingly been doing when she joined with Wright and then sought out other "blood donors" from among his neighbors.

The Ina and their human symbionts live in family compounds, usually in somewhat remote areas. They live in groups, segregated by Ina gender, because Ina females and males can't live together peacefully. Shori seeks out an Ina family group, so that she can work with them to find out what happened to her family.

The last half of Fledgling is a kind of detective story, in which Shori tries to find out who has been trying to destroy her (she determines that she was the real focus of the attacks) and seeks justice through an Ina "Council." A council is a kind of judicial proceeding, used by the Ina to prevent internecine feuds that includes both a trial and punishment.

Fledgling is an interesting vampire novel that is somewhat reminiscent of Whitley Streiber's The Hunger (and it's sequels.) It is also somewhat similar to Butler's Patternist novels, although the themes are worked out differently. Overall, it is a compelling book to read that has the strong characterization typical of Butler's work.

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

Mind of My Mind is one of Butler's Patternist novels. Though not the first of the Patternist novels to be written, it is chronologically the first in the series.

Mind of My Mind is the story of Doro, an immortal being who is working on creating a race of telepaths. He is creating his race through selectively breeding with human women, then breeding with their more telepathic offspring.

Doro's children don't live well among humans, and although they are compelled to live near their families, they can't really live with their families. This problem has caused Doro to foster his offspring with non-telepathic families. Some of his stronger telepathic offspring have been able to control humans and create human families. They also sometimes use their telepathic abilities to control humans who work for them (as servants but also to make money.)

Doro's children go through a period of transition when they are coming into their telepathic power, during which time they need help and support, because they will suddenly begin receiving unfiltered thoughts from everyone around them. Mary is an important child to Doro, because he believes she will be a particularly strong telepath. Doro takes Mary to Karl, another strong telepath, for help during her transition.

Mary turns out to be the first "Patternmaster", and her struggles to build the Pattern and to survive Doro's manipulations make up the story of Mind of My Mind.

Blood Child & Other Stories by Octavia Butler

Blood Child & Other Stories (2nd edition) by Octavia Butler was published in 2005, and includes two stories not in the original edition along with comments on the stories by Butler. The first story in the collection is "Bloodchild".

"Bloodchild" is the story of a young boy who is a member of a family of humans living on a kind of reservation for humans. The humans live on a planet largely populated by more powerful beings, who have formed a symbiotic relationship with their human wards. Gan (the boy telling the story) is writing about his last night of childhood--the last night before he will become linked to his symbiont/protector. There are some interesting echoes of this story in Butler's vampire novel, Fledgeling.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" is the story of two college-aged people who are latent inheritors of a genetic disease and their visit to a retreat/asylum for people who have developed the full-blown disease.

In "Near of Kin" a young woman is sorting through the belongings of her recently deceased mother, from whom she was estranged, in the company of a beloved uncle.

"Speech Sounds" is a post-apocalyptic story that begins with a woman riding on a bus.

"Crossover" tells the story of a woman whose unfortunate appearance colors her perception of the world.

"Positive Obsession" is an essay on writing, as is "Furor Scribendi."

"Amnesty" is a story about learning to understand aliens.

"Martha" is a what-if story about a woman allowed the power of God.