I finished Octavia Butler’s Dawn this week. I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction lately and I chose Dawn specifically to interrupt the overwhelmingly male run of reading material. I was not disappointed.
I’m steadily working my way through Butler’s work. My first introduction to her short story, “Bloodchild,” which was recommended to me by a professor. When I finished it, I walked straight down to her office to ask, “Why didn’t you warn me??!” I cannot recommend it enough.
I’ve read a handful of her novels but since they rarely turn up at secondhand bookstores, it’s slow progress. Dawn is my favorite so far, even beating out Parable of the Sower.
Besides being well-written—Butler’s delightfully punchy prose, straightforward and articulate, makes you think, did she really just say what I think she just said?? She definitely did—Dawn is a fantastic genre story.
I read a lot of sci-fi and see a fair number of aliens but the Oankali are the best I’ve come across. They are fascinatingly inhuman: they use living tissue rather than metals and machinery, a lot like the Yuuzhan Vong from the Star Wars EU. They also have a third, neutral sex (which is necessary for reproductive between male and female and has the pronoun “it”) called ooloi. The Oankali are intergalactic traders who deal in genetic information and they are absolutely fascinated with post-nuclear apocalypse humanity. They want to mix genetic material through reproduction between species in order to improve both.
The narrator and protagonist is Lilith Iyapo and she is our portal to the world of Dawn. Through her, we piece together the time and place. Through her, we discover the alien world of the Oankali ship on which Lilith is being held. Through her, we learn about the Oankali. Through her, we bond with her ooloi, Nikanj. Through her, we struggle for and against the other humans in the story.
She literally builds Butler’s world for us. The gaps in Lilith’s knowledge are our gaps, her fear is our fear, her resiliency too belongs to us.
As we follow along with Lilith’s discovery and interpretation of her new world, we learn that she has been tasked with creating a world for a group of human beings who will be wakened from their stasis by her choice as part of a genetic experiment to reseed the earth with new and improved human-Oankali hybrids. Lilith struggles between her desire to defend the sanctity of the human genome and her bond with her ooloi, Nikanj.
In a really nice parallel, she also acts as the narrator and world-builder for the other humans in the story! I love when the narrative matches the narrative form!
Here’s where I should put a conclusion, but I’m not in school so I’m not going to! Read the book! 🙂
Lindsey Grundyson 