Bloodchild

This story (which is so short it's a free download for the Kindle) is super cringe. Octavia Butler seems to have been fascinated by the concept of reproduction between humans and aliens. She wrote many, many books about it.

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The set-up of this story is laid out in a three paragraph introduction: humans were lucky to have found a planet to settle on, but it was already inhabited.

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From there we’re immediately thrust into prose that makes the skin crawl. Like with every Octavia Butler story, I’m constantly asking myself what I would do in that situation. In this one, I definitely wouldn’t cooperate with the aliens, regardless of the fact that their secretions and eggs are like psychedelics and very nice sedatives.

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T’Gatoi whipped her three meters of body off her couch, toward the door, and out at full speed. She had bones—ribs, a long spine, a skull, four sets of limb bones per segment. But when she moved that way, twisting, hurling herself into controlled falls, landing running, she seemed not only boneless, but aquatic—something swimming through the air as though it were water. I loved watching her move.

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In the afterward, Ms. Butler says that everyone thinks this story is about slavery but it isn’t. She says that when something scares her (like when JFK got shot) she has to write about it.

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She said this story came about when she learned about bot-flies while doing research for her Lilith's Brood series. The shock of the new-found bot-fly knowledge merged with a long-standing desire she had to create a story in which men, not women, were the carriers of new life.

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Lomas’s entire body stiffened under T’Gatoi’s claw, though she merely rested it against him as she wound the rear section of her body around his legs. He might break my grip, but he would not break hers. He wept helplessly as she used his pants to tie his hands, then pushed his hands above his head so that I could kneel on the cloth between them and pin them in place. She rolled up his shirt and gave it to him to bite down on. And she opened him.

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This story deals with coercion, captivity, consent, survival and, I would say, slavery. It’s uncomfortable in the way that good science-fiction is. It’s a book that can be read in less than an hour and would make a great beach read.

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Totally recommended.

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