Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
249 pages
Published 1987
Read from September 26 to September 29
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
I kept delaying this one because it begins my final trilogy of Octavia E. Butler novels. Once I finish Adulthood Rites and Imago sometime next month, I'll only have the short story collection Bloodchild, and then I'll have read every book Butler ever wrote. (Aside from Survivor, which apparently so dissatisfied Butler that she kept it out of print, and now costs $90 used on Amazon.) Which is a sad milestone I'd like to put off if I could. But it's also kind of silly to avoid reading a major chunk of an author's career out of sentimental reasons. So here we are.
My thoughts on Dawn are ambiguous and conflicting, as I'm sure Butler intended. I was repulsed less by the ostensible body horror of aliens manipulating one's brain chemistry and genotype, which sounded pretty cool if I'm being honest (I don't have a single "Keep my humanity intact!" bone in my body), but the iffy way Butler portrays how the aliens ignore verbal consent. There are two scenes of near-rape between human survivors, which are unequivocally presented as Bad Things people should not do to one another. But when the ooloi step in with their neural manipulators and sensory organs and override verbal refusals because human characters' bodies say something else, in literal "I know what you really want" interactions, I'm not sure how to interpret the scenes, or for that matter how Butler intended the scenes to be read. I'm pretty sure some measure of discomfort is intended, with the two attempted sexual assaults a consciously placed point of comparison, but unlike human-on-human dominance and aggression, it feels like the manipulations of the Oankali are meant to be seen as both good and bad, neither wholly positive nor entirely negative.
The rest of the book is quite good, as far as alien contact scenarios go -- in other words, this is far from my favorite subgenre (which is why, of all Butler's novels, I'm reading these last), but Butler makes it interesting and somewhat fresh.
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