Butler, Octavia E. Books

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, George R. R. Martin, Octavia E. Butler, Jonathan Lethem, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Jack McDevitt, Tobias S. Buckell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A few really good...and a lot of so-so 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This was a collection of short stories all somehow themed around an apocalpyse - something has gone horribly wrong with the world. I picked it up after enjoying "Earth Abides" by George Stewart so much.

Overall some of the stories were good, some not so good, but on the whole I definitely like longer books as opposed to short stories. I'd rather really get to know characters and see a story unfold than the short stereotypes that are given in this type of collection with the "catchy" endings. I'd certainly prefer to read a good 5-book series as opposed to a collection like this. However it should give me some good ideas for future reading.

Here are my thoughts on each individual story:

Stephen King - The End of the Whole Mess - I liked it, good story, well done, etc... But I've always liked Stephen King so this was sort of a gimme.

Orson Scott Card - Salvage - This story did nothing for me. It's funny, Orson Scott Card is so highly regarded, yet I read "Ender's Game" and didn't love it like so many people do. This story did nothing at all for me.

Paolo Bacigalupi - The People of Sand and Slag - Good one. Deep apocalpyse stuff, and really thought provoking about some of our assumptions about the world. One of the best in the book I'd say.

M. Rickert - Bread and Bombs - This story was "Ok", not the best nor the worst. Interesting twist ending.

Jonathan Letham - How We Got In Town and Out Again - Very entertaining - not the deepest story but a good tale that really kept moving. I liked it.

George R. R. Martin - Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels - My favorite story in the collection. Thought provoking, tense, interesting. Brutal ending. Just really well done and I'll definitely check out something else by him based on this.

Tobias S. Buckell - Waiting for the Zephyr - Good one, not great. Short story (even within the collection) and more hopeful than many.

Jack McDevitt - Never Despair - So-so. Interesting use of a real historical figure, but I felt like the story gave me more questions than answers.

Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - You know, being a programmer you'd think I'd have liked this more, but I didn't. I found it rather boring. Not one of my favorites. But I may check out some of his other stuff simply because of his knowledge on the topic of technology.

James Van Pelt - The Last of the O-Forms - Wow I don't even remember this one, after flipping through it. Clearly didn't make much of an impact on me.

Richard Kadrey - Still Life with Apocalypse - Short, but interesting. But only 3 pages.

Catherine Wells - Artie's Angels - Again, so-so. Painted a good picture and good imagry, but the story didn't really compel me. Still I liked the writing.

Jerry Oltion - Judgment Passed - Very, very good. Of course I like the questioning of the Rapture that's implied here, it meets with my own personal religious beliefs. So I really enjoyed this one.

Gene Wolfe - Mute - Didn't like it at all. Just didn't do anything for me.

Nancy Kress - Inertia - This one was pretty good, interesting. Definitely made you think a bit. She even tried to do some characterization in addition to just moving the story along.

Elizabeth Bear - And the Deep Blue Sea - I think this was a good story, but it was a bit hard for me to understand eactly what was going on all the same. I'd check out more by her though, it was that compelling at least.

Octavia E. Butler - Speech Sounds - Very good one, really made you think, and a good, hopeful ending. Also an author I'd check out more from.

Carol Emshwiller - Killers - Did nothing for me. Sort of interesting start but then got really flat.

Neal Barrett, Jr. - Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - This was a good story, interesting and compelling, though it felt a bit like a deux ex machina ending.

Dale Bailey - The End of the World As We Know It - Another very good one - it really in its own way made fun of the apocalypse genre, which was entertaining near the end of this book. I liked the tone and style.

David Grigg - A Song Before Sunset - Another good one - thought provoking and deep while still a bit soft on the surface. Well done.

John Langan - Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers - By the time I started this story I was bored with the collection, and this story reads sort of like one long run-on paragraph, and it just didn't do anything for me. I stopped reading it, though it maybe would have been more interesting to me had it been earlier in the book, I don't know. I probably judged this one a bit unfairly.

And that's it. I'll take some notes on future reading based on authors I liked and some of the "for further reading" listed in the book.

Editorial Review:

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

Kindred (Bluestreak Black Women Writers)

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 173 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the classic novel that has sold over 250,000 copies

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back again and again for Rufus, yet each time the stay grows longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun.

"In Kindred Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible, and a balm for the unbearable. It is everything the literature of science fiction can be."
—Walter Mosley

"[Kindred] is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery and racial dilemmas, then and now."
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner

"Truly terrifying. . . . A book you'll find hard to put down."
¯Essence

"Butler's books are exceptional. . . . She is a realist, writing the most detailed social criticism and creating some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre . . . real women caught in impossible situations."
¯The Village Voice

"Butler's literary craftsmanship is superb."—The Washington Post Book World

Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 107 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Must Read 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This was an excellent book. Not only was the scenario peppered with realism, but Butler has a way of pulling her reader into the story with the characters. It is a wonderfully heart-wrenching tale of community and survival.

The story is set in an economically destitute America. As the reader, you will travel with a young woman as she struggles to survive, understand what has happened, accept the reality of her situation, and build a future for herself and those she comes to call friends.

A very thought-provoking book and entertaining read.

Editorial Review:

Octavia E. Butler, the grande dame of science fiction, writes extraordinary, inspirational stories of ordinary people. Parable of the Sower is a hopeful tale set in a dystopian future United States of walled cities, disease, fires, and madness. Lauren Olamina is an 18-year-old woman with hyperempathy syndrome--if she sees another in pain, she feels their pain as acutely as if it were real. When her relatively safe neighborhood enclave is inevitably destroyed, along with her family and dreams for the future, Lauren grabs a backpack full of supplies and begins a journey north. Along the way, she recruits fellow refugees to her embryonic faith, Earthseed, the prime tenet of which is that "God is change." This is a great book--simple and elegant, with enough message to make you think, but not so much that you feel preached to.

Fledgling

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Octavia E. Butler is one of the finest voices in fiction--period. . . . A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature."-The Washington Post Book World

"Readers familiar with . . . Parable of the Sower and Bloodchild will recall that [Butler] never asks easy questions or settles for easy answers."-Gerald Jonas in The New York Times

Fledgling, Octavia Butler's first new novel in seven years, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.

Octavia E. Butler is the author of 11 novels, including Kindred, Dawn, and Parable of the Sower. Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and numerous other literary awards, she has been acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations that range from the distant past to the far future.

Parable of the Talents

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Octavia Butler tackles the creation of a new religion, the making of a god, and the ultimate fate of humanity in her Earthseed series, which began with Parable of the Sower, and now continues with Parable of the Talents. The saga began with the near-future dystopian tale of Sower, in which young Lauren Olamina began to realize her destiny as a leader of people dispossessed and destroyed by the crumbling of society. The basic principles of Lauren's faith, Earthseed, were contained in a collection of deceptively simple proverbs that Lauren used to recruit followers. She teaches that "God is change" and that humanity's ultimate destiny is among the stars.

In Parable of the Talents, the seeds of change that Lauren planted begin to bear fruit, but in unpredictable and brutal ways. Her small community is destroyed, her child is kidnapped, and she is imprisoned by sadistic zealots. She must find a way to escape and begin again, without family or friends. Her single-mindedness in teaching Earthseed may be her only chance to survive, but paradoxically, may cause the ultimate estrangement of her beloved daughter. Parable of the Talents is told from both mother's and daughter's perspectives, but it is the narrative of Lauren's grown daughter, who has seen her mother made into a deity of sorts, that is the most compelling. Butler's writing is simple and elegant, and her storytelling skills are superb, as usual. Fans will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in what promises to be a moving and adventurous saga. --Therese Littleton

Lilith's Brood

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Friendly but Invasive Aliens 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The way she writes is as if I'm watching events unfold on CNN, its real feeling and spooky. The set up is great and the plot unfortunately all to believeable. Humans mess up in foriegn affairs and get into a thermo nuclear war while aliens watch from orbit. They haul us out of the flames but now there's a price to pay and its a biggie. I got into this book and I think anyone who likes books about aliens and human interaction will really enjoy this. Its complicated and at times depressing. But all in all a good book, it will stay with you long after you're done reading.

Editorial Review:

Dawn: After nuclear war destroys the world, Earths survivors are rescued by the miraculously powerful Oankali aliens- who survive by merging genetically with primitive peoples without their permission. Adulthood Rites: Desperate to regain their world, childless humans seek to cleanse the alien taint by kidnapping hybrid children. But the raiders are blind to the truth of Earths new children. Imago: The futures of both humans and aliens rest in one young beings successful metamorphosis into adulthood.

Seed to Harvest

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Seed to Harvest by Octavia E. Butler 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Collected for the first time are all four of Octavia E. Butler's Patternist novels: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster. Now you get to see this whole unique world from its beginnings hundreds of years ago to its conclusion hundreds and thousands of years in the future. Seed to Harvest will delight and terrify you in a way only Butler can.

Our main character and quasi hero is Doro, who is more like a god or perhaps a devil in a way, instead of a human. He has a special power: he's immortal, only to continue living forever he has to consume other people's souls and become that person, inhabiting that body. He has been doing this for a thousand years, and lives his life as he does until one day he meets a woman, Anyanwu, in Africa, in the seventeenth century. She is a shapeshifter and has unique powers of her own, such as the ability to heal by a kiss, and with an incredible strength, she can defend herself against anything. Wild Seed is their story, as they meet and get to know each other, fall in love, and travel to New Amsterdam, where they will start their own family of gifted children. Along the way they find other characters with special abilities, which Doro believes is somehow linked to his history and his own powers. But Doro is also creating this family for his own personal survival, so he will have more victims to keep him alive and immortal. Wild Seed ends with the family now quite large, and Anyanwu unable to live with Doro anymore, leaving him.

Mind of My Mind is close to the present day, Anyanwu has changed her name to Emma, wanting to separate herself from her past, but unable to. Doro now lives in Forsyth, California, where his family continues to grow with new individuals and their unique powers. It is here that the Pattern begins to emerge of this large family that is all interrelated, and that is in constant struggle with the paternal master, Doro. The book ends with the final death of Doro, who is sealed in his current body, cremated and no longer able to take another, ending the line. But the Pattern is not finished.

Clay's Ark is set in the twenty-third century and it is here that the spaceship, known as Clay's Ark, returns to Earth with an alien and a sickness that begins to infect everyone. But at the same time a new race is formed out of the sickness, out of those on the spaceship, who become known as "Clayarcs." And as time passes, they establish themselves as a formidable force on the planet.

Patternmaster is the mighty conclusion to the long series, where the Patternists and Clayarcs fight against each other in a distant future time where evolution has made them look barely human. This is a hostile and tough world, where only one race can triumph, the question is which one will it be?

While Seed to Harvest can be boiled down to a simple summary, Butler has weaved many emotions and issues that are ever present in the current world, on the subject of race and evolution, on what it means to be human. The book merely continues to prove that Octavia E. Butler was one of the best science fiction writers of her time.

For more book reviews, and other writings, go to www.alexctelander.com

Wild Seed

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Remarkable Writer of Speculative Fiction 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Octavia Butler has a gift for story-telling. Anyone interested in speculative fiction should give "Wild Seed" a read. I promise, you won't put it down. Her characters are engaging, and even provocative. Creative, clever, and well-written, this book will remain in my library until it becomes ragged with use.

Will Someone PLEASE Make a Movie Outta This Great Story 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is awesome. My favorite Octavia Butler book. I finally bought the hardcover after re-reading to death my old paperback.

What makes this book so good, is simple - the story. Doro, a man/spirit who can not die and Anyanwu, a woman who can not be killed, in a struggle that mixes sci-fi, with African slave trade, to early America, with an Ike and Tina Tuner type love story.

Unmatched story that is ripe for cinematic gold.

Editorial Review:

Doro is an entity who changes bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflex--or design. He fears no one--until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu has also died many times. She can absorb bullets and make medicine with a kiss, give birth to tribes, nurture and heal, and savage anyone who threatens those she loves. She fears no one--until she meets Doro. From African jungles to the colonies of America, Doro and Anyanwu weave together a pattern of destiny that not even immortals can imagine.

Bloodchild and Other Stories: Second Edition

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"An outstanding short story collection . . . [Butler] is an impressive writer whose work displays how science fiction readily transcends the perceived stylistic limitations of the genre."-St. Petersburg Times

"Bloodchild is a compelling and horrifying novella . . . [by an] exceptionally talented writer."-Publishers Weekly

"The title story is justly famous . . . splendid pieces, set forth in calm, lucid prose with never a word wasted."-Kirkus Reviews

"Butler graces new mansions of thought with her eloquent, distinguished, and poignant prose. Although this book is little in size, its ideas and aims are splendidly large."-Booklist

This New York Times Notable Book of the Year includes the Hugo and Nebula awards-winner Bloodchild and the Hugo Award-winner Speech Sounds.

Octavia E. Butler is the author of 11 novels, including Kindred, Dawn, and Parable of the Sower. Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and numerous other literary awards, she has been acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations that range from the distant past to the far future.

Dawn (Xenogenesis, Bk. 1)

Octavia E. Butler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Good Series Opener 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Lilith is a young woman saved by an alien race known as the Oankali after the superpowers of the time (US/USSR)nuked the world. The Oankali mix their genes with those of other races to evolve, and they have decided that what is left of humanity should be used for this purpose. Lilith is used by the Oankali as a messenger, an ambassador of sorts, to introduce other rescued humans to the Oankali and share the Oankali's intentions for the remainder of mankind.

This book addresses many moral complexities of man. Butler uses the setting of her novel to focus on issues of human sexuality (the ooloi and manner of Oankali reproduction), the "human conflict" (in spite of their plight, the humans still exhibit hierarchical behavior when they should be uniting), and the self-destructive nature of man (a man-made war destroys civilation and mankind continues on a smaller-scale self-destructive path). On the surface, Dawn is a book about the rebirth of Earth and the meeting between humans and aliens after an apocalyptic event. Beneath the surface, Butler addresses deeper issues about mankind. Although this book is wonderfully written and thoroughly entertaining, I had a couple of issues with it:
1. Lilith gave in too easily in some areas. After reading it, I could not understand her easy acceptance of Nikanj - even though he was a child. Butler adequately explains it, but her response, given the circumstances, does not feel authentic.
2. Lilith could have done more to let the other humans know where she stood on the issues. Her position was clear, but only in her thoughts. It seemed that she would have done more to let those close to her know what she believe and wanted.
3. Several editing errors were somewhat distracting.

Overall, the book was well worth the read and I recommend it.

Editorial Review:

In a world devastated by nuclear war with humanity on the edge of extinction, aliens finally make contact. They rescue those humans they can, keeping most survivors in suspended animation while the aliens begin the slow process of rehabilitating the planet. When Lilith Iyapo is "awakened," she finds that she has been chosen to revive her fellow humans in small groups by first preparing them to meet the utterly terrifying aliens, then training them to survive on the wilderness that the planet has become. But the aliens cannot help humanity without altering it forever. Bonded to the aliens in ways no human has ever known, Lilith tries to fight them even as her own species comes to fear and loathe her. A stunning story of invasion and alien contact by one of science fiction's finest writers.