Octavia E Butler - Dawn (Lilith's Brood - Book One)
And we are back to the Readlongs after a short absence (I was so close to getting this in last month!) so we have competed the Patternist series and Kindred. What comes next. As well as a voyage of discovery for me one thing I am interested in this project is exploring how authors change over time. As we have seen in the Discworld readalong themes are often constant with authors but how they are then approached and explored in a sequence of novels is the real delight. Here I am going cold into the Lilith’s Brood other wise known as Xenogenesis trilogy (suspect some US versus UK debates here). After publication in 1987 the following year this won the Locus award for Best SF novel so let’s see what it is like now!
Publisher – Headline
Published – Out Now
Price - £4.99 Kindle eBook
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 and 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 Oankali, then training them to survive on the wilderness that the planet has become.
But the Oankali 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.
Growing up in the 80’s was weird for many things, but I remember once being incredibly freaked out as a young child by a Tomorrow’s World episode that talked about nuclear war. How in a few moments everything would be gone and very little remain? Science Fiction often looks at the end of the world from plague, pollution, radiation, and monsters. I often think while what causes the event is fascinating what we are really doing is stripping everything back from humanity and asking the question – who are we really and are we worth surviving? Octavia E Butler was already playing with this theme in the Patternist series, but I think it is refined and sharpened in the excellent Dawn where humanity has to confront its fears of everything to survive.
Lilith wakes up in room and yet again has a strange, disembodied voice asking her questions. This has continued for some unknown period. She has seen no one else in all this time eventually it transpires that she is one of the few survivors of a huge nuclear war that has wiped out most of the population; destroyed most of the wildlife and most importantly a long time has passed. Lilith was found by the advanced travelling aliens known as the Oankali. Humanoid but covered in sensory tentacles that bring to mind Medusa they weave through space ‘trading’ genetics to evolve further. They are fascinated by humanity and have found as many survivors as they could and have been slowly working out both how to use human’s interesting genetic traits for themselves but also create a new group of humans to settle and rebuild the earth. They deem Lilith as the one to pull that group together, but they warn her humans sill have both heir amazing intelligence but also a troubling desire for hierarchy that makes them destroy each other. Lilith finds herself between the two groups who she is both suspicious of and this sets in motion a struggle for power and tragedy that reminds us humans still have a long way to go.
I will start with just saying I found this relatively short novel of less than 250 pages rather brilliant and Butler pours so many interesting ideas and scenarios that you could spend pages exploring this and how it echoes themes we’ve already talked about. One of the most interesting areas for me is exploring our fear of the other. The Oankali is described in such a way to really push our boundaries of what an acceptable alien is. They don’t look that humanoid; they don’t share our family structures and as we discover have a morality that seems sometimes cold – leaving the remaining humans selected to fend from themselves rather than give them brand new technology. Their concept of sexuality is more fluid and complicated than humans. The concept of an alien can sometimes be as the old joke about star trek just being humans with bumps on their faces. Here we have to explore a culture that doesn’t align immediately with certainly US/UK conventions. Starkly and coldly Butler describes some as It rather than the more usual They and I wonder if that again was a deliberate choice to make us see these aliens as people in spite of everything thrown at us. And yet this book is about finding a common ground, and this is where Lilith becomes central.
Lilith is the standout character. Initially confused and angry as well as grieving the earlier loss of her family. She finds the Oankali’s treatment of her awful and part of me wonders if Butler was in describing a woman cut off from her family, her culture, forced to learn another language and being often treated by some as either a child or a piece of property does in the early section of the book put the reader to explore what slavery/imprisonment looks like from the inside. The early scenes also feature that interesting double act of two people in a relationship of balance imbalance. In this case Lilith as initial prisoner and Jdahya her initial inquisitor and then mentor. But importantly that relationship evolves differently and that leads to the real heart of the book – exploring humanity itself.
The Oankali find humanity fascinating and ultimately want us to survive but they spot two incompatible traits in our design. We are endlessly creative and intelligent, but we also love social hierarchy – this they feel could be our destruction. At the macro level we see this as WW3 ended in nuclear war wiping out most of the planet – the key question is if the Oankali release all their humans will this cycle repeat itself. Lilith makes the Oankali learn about humans and also shows that inventive side - she starts to see the potential for a way forward and forms a close bond with a younger Oankali Nikanj. Slowly Lilith finds herself boosted by Oankali science – greater strength and healing and she begins to awaken various humans to create the group that will seed earth again. But then the conflict takes place. Some humans don’t want anything to do with the aliens, some refuse to see Lilith as a leader – notably a woman of colour versus some white men and women. In one scene Lilith’s human partner finds himself troubled at the idea of a alien human poly relationship developing. The conservative social hierarchy of the group gets into bloody conflict with fatal results. This comes back to the sobering question is this chasing for power and dominance always going to haunt us? It ends on a question mark and yet potentially hope for the future.
An excellent read and feels much more mature and confident in itself than the Patternist series and I love the ambition the novel calmly aims for and in my view succeeds. I will be returning to this trilogy again very soon. But trust me this is one of those science fiction novels you’ll read and be thinking about forever after reading it.
