So we’re in the middle of an Octavia Butler roundtable, I thought it’d be fun (maybe) for people to talk about which of her works are their favorites and which are their least favorites.
My favorite book of hers is Dawn, from her Xenogenesis series (which I’ve written about here among other places.) I just love the way it presents a standard aliens-as-colonizers narrative in such a way that the colonizers are both repulsive and sympathetic. The flatness of her prose here feels like it both conceals and accentuates the complexity of what she’s doing with empathy. It’s an interesting comparison with Gwyneth Jones, who touches on many of the same themes and ideas in a more knowing, ironized, and deliberately academic way. I love Jones, but there’s a lot to be said for Butler’s approach too, which presents everything almost transparently; it feels almost like a YA novel about growing up to be a tentacled sex monstrosity.
As for my least favorite….I read “Wild Seed” a long while back, but I found its presentation of gender difference (male, bad! female good!) to be pretty irritating. I just read Butler’s short story collection “Bloodchild”; the last story, “Martha”, in which a black female sci-fi writer is asked by God to save the world through vivid dreaming seemed both overly cute and nakedly self-aggrandizing.
For the rest of her books I’ve read, I quite like Kindred, didn’t like Fledgling much, and I think that’s all I’ve read.
So what about you all? What’s your favorite and least favorite Butler?
Kindred is the work that I know the best and like the most. My fascination with Butler has always been rooted in her role as signifier of a wider cultural dialogue. Kindred speaks to the intersection of race, politics, history, and power that draws the fans to her work and inspires scholars to discuss its merits.
To my best knowledge, I have read every published work by Butler except for Unexpected Stories, which I am very much looking forward to reading. My absolute favorite is the Xenogenesis/Lilith’s Brood trilogy (I can’t choose one of the three). Wild Seed is a close second, and while I agree that there is a disparate treatment of men and women, I think the portrayals of Isaac and Stephen suggest that there is more to it than that women are good and men are bad. After that, I enjoyed Fledgling very much. I suppose that I enjoyed Kindred and Parable of the Sower the least, and yet, I think that those two are still very interesting works and have many teaching applications.
I adore Imago with Adulthood Rites a close second. I found the Seed to Harvest series fascinating in their differences but also in the common threads. Butler had such a wide scope in everything she wrote. Fledgling for me had the least impact so far perhaps because it is the start of something unfinished. But the same could be said of the parable novels and I found them much more compelling. I guess I love all her work but there are definitely some that ascend beyond fiction to become endlessly resonant for me.
I’ve always been drawn to Butler’s Parable series, and like others, I’ve read all of Butler’s work. Wild Seed comes in a close second. I’m drawn to both because of Butler’s strong character development. I’ve turned Lauren, Doro, and Anyanwu around in my head so many times. My least favorite would have to be Fledgling because it feels unfinished.