Octavia E Butler - Wild Seed (Patternist 1)

And for this part of the readalong dear reader I know as much as you about this book. Octavia E Butler is a name I’ve regularly heard about in SF, but I’ve never read to my shame any of her work. It should be noted that Butler is an african american writer and I have heard she has some great insights on racism as well as a wider range of sf subjects. I thought for one readalong having a brand-new author who wrote around the same time as the others and reading their output would make a change.

I should point out that Wild Seed is viewed as the first book in her patternist series but actually written second in 1980. But for this experiment I thought considering how this book has changed in series order subsequently I’d stick to this order and we can see next month how they compare.

It would be fair to make a content warning that Wild Seed deals with some extremely hard topics which I will warn reader about upfront. There is a very hard look at racism, slavery, sexual abuse and rape and how this affects characters.

Please note this series was very hard to track down in the UK so I’m using an eBook omnibus that contains all the novels for this series.

Publisher – Headline

Published – Out Now

Published - £3.99

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 is a shapeshifter who can absorb bullets and heal with a kiss and savage anyone who threatens her. She fears no one until she meets Doro. Together they weave a pattern of destiny (from Africa to the New World) unimaginable to mortals

A lot of science fiction is about power struggles. A hobbit defeats a Dark Lord; a planet gets freed of advanced invaders and often this is a metaphor for the imbalances we see in life itself. This often feels representative for how people feel with those who rule them but often the consequences of oppression have already happened – we rarely feel it. We rarely explore what drive for some people to own and break those they see as weaker or inferior to them looks like from both aspects of the oppressed and the oppressor. I was stunned that Wild Seed by Octavia E Butler does just that taking me very much into a centuries-long tale of control, ownership, and abuse. While not at all one of my easiest reads it was one of my compelling.

The story starts in an unknown part of Africa where two immortals with amazing powers finally meet in 1590. Doro has been around for thousands of years and exists as an entity that swaps bodies at will. Each time in the process killing the mind of the host as they swap from one to another. Anyanwu has complete control over her body at a cellular level. She can change form into animals, she can heal wounds and stop poisons, she can change her appearance into anyone be they male or female, old or young and black or white. These two initially passionately click but Doro reveals he is building a settlement of people with unusual talents where more can be bred and he offers, then threatens, Anyanwu to come with him to the Americas. Anyanwu however finds out that Doro is not seeing her as future partner but just breeding stock and finds that Doro has made hundreds of people now subservient to his whims and desires. A battle of wills commences over 300 hundred years, but freedom may never be an option.

The perspectives of these two leads are absolutely key to the book. Let’s deal with the oppressor first because I think Doro becomes one of the most disturbing characters, I’ve ever read about but serves such an important purpose in the story. For Doro humans are breeding stock. He wanders the populations of the world looking for those with talents be they telekinesis, empathy, telepathy etc and he slowly forces people to live together, have sexual intercourse (even when they are related) – people are stock. Generally, any that disobey, or he feels are no longer valuable he will kill by taking over their bodies. The most disturbing part of this – the people of his settlements accept it out of a mixture of love and fear. While Doro makes pains to show that unlike some others, he is not doing this on grounds of race as Anyanwu points out he is still in reality still no different to any other type of slave master – he views everyone else as inferior to him and creating conditions where people do what he wishes and resistance is quashed often murdered. Very fittingly for a mental energy spirit he is the force of control.

Anyanwu when we first meet her has been living under various guises in one village. She has already loved and lost many husbands, children and friends but she crucially enjoys life and the variety she can experience in it. Over hundreds of years her offspring is now throughout Africa carrying genes that also share interesting talents. A threat to her children plus curiosity over and attraction with Doro take her across the ocean. She however sees that Doro has already chosen one of favoured offspring Isaac to be her partner and he intends her to sire children for himself and through Isaac to feed that desire for him to create new more powerful offspring. Anyanwu is well thought of in the community known for her compassion and desire to help those going through the painful transition or awakening of their powers. But she no longer respects Doro at all; she cannot easily flee the body swapper and his threats to those she cares about compels her to stay but he continually seeks to break her will.

It’s a book dealing with very hard topics indeed. In Doro Butler is positing that anyone who starts to see others as less than human will seek to control and abuse them. Generally both characters are people of colour so while there is an obvious link to how itself slavery took place in the US Butler is making a wider point that this is never just skin colour it’s when you decide you are superior and they are not. Anyanwu’s stance is the healer someone using their immense power and importantly their compassion to help people improve. So even while trapped in a settlement under threat of death to her loved ones she helps people develop. For Doro its biological stock breeding farms but for Anyanwu its helping people reach their potential.

The troubling aspect of all this is the sexual abuse that takes place unchallenged, but it is made clear Doro will kill any that put up a fight. But Anyanwu is learning and starts to look for an opportunity to flee and become her own woman once again However, the most troubling aspect of the book is that Doro and Anyanwu despite all of this are shown as having some of passionate relationship despite all of this. They are two parts of the same coin in being two immortals who understand the passage of time and the losses that time will bring. They are both interested in what their offspring can accomplish. At times Butler tries to explain that Doro’s long life has led to their loss of humanity but some of the things we see him do in particular to punish Anyanwu for disobedience I think crosses the line making him irredeemable. I want Anyanwu to make a much cleaner break (but this is a multiple book series so who knows where it is going). I think with a 2020 perspective this element has dated the most.

Despite that concern and the fact this often can be a disturbing read I have to praise Butler’s writing and ability to interrogate these ideas so succinctly. It’s a very economical and character focused novel where each scene makes a point. But passages are great giving you insights into character’s inner behaviours and feelings. It has some interesting thoughts on gender as both immortals can change their sex and their sexuality becomes more fluid. I in particular like the latter half of the book where Anyanwu and Doro are meeting now as equals trying to find a way to co-exist; even share their differing views of humanity; even despite some of the horrors we see his ‘children’ can now do when untrained but Doro death and misery usually seem to arrive too.

Unsurprisingly the story doesn’t feel completed this is clearly now part of a series (and was the case on publication) so there is not yet an immediate resolution to the conflict that starts here but I’m really impressed by what is being debated even if sometimes the answers feel dated. I will be looking forward to more next month.

Next Month – Mind of My Mind