Inspired by botflies, Butler describes “Bloodchild” as her “pregnant man story.” (©1984 first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.) Against this backdrop, a boy named Gan must come to terms with his future servitude to family friend T’Gatoi, the Tlic government official in charge of the Preserve. After much warring that proved costly to both sides, the two groups reached a tenuous peace agreement: the humans would be given a home on the Preserve, but in exchange some settlers – men, primarily – would be “adopted” by Tlic families, ultimately required to carry and birth their young in a gruesome and sometimes fatal process. “Bloodchild” – Faced with a dying planet and crumbling society, a group of humans fled earth, only to arrive on a planet already occupied: by the Tlics, an intelligent species of giant, segmented, worm-like creatures. Each piece is followed by a brief (but enlightening) Afterward penned by the author herself. While the essays offer advice to aspiring writers as well as insights into Butler’s childhood (“Shyness is s***.” might be the realest, rawest sentence in the whole damn book), the stories are that wonderfully creepy, complex, unsettling, and ultimately deeply profound brand of SF/F that I’ve come to associate with Butler: earth-based worlds characterized by rapidly crumbling dystopias, or alien societies in which the human survivors are forced into untenable compromises with their extraterrestrial saviors/overlords. The second edition of BLOODVHILD AND OTHER STORIES includes seven short stories (five previously published, two brand spanking new) and two essays (both reprints). (…although I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t also love to see several of the stories fleshed out into full-length novels “Bloodchild,” “Speech Sounds,” and “Amnesty,” I’m looking at you!) You come up with an idea, then ten, twenty, perhaps thirty pages later, you’ve got a finished story.ĭon’t let Butler’s apparent distaste for short stories fool you many of the stories collected here are shiny little masterpieces in their own right. Yet there is something seductive about writing short stories. Trying to do it has taught me much more about frustration and despair than I ever wanted to know. The truth is, I hate short story writing. (Trigger warning for rape and sexual/reproductive exploitation.)
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