Octavia Butler : Xenogenesis 9781847600363

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Humanities-Ebooks

Running Head  

Genre Fiction Sightlines

Octavia E. Butler Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood Dawn Adulthood Rites Imago

by John Lennard

Publication Data Text © John Lennard, 2007 The Author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Copyright in quoted text or images reproduced in this work remains with the acknowledged source. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. Owners of text or images not credited should contact the author who will be pleased to make the appropriate arrangements. Published in 2007 by Humanities-Ebooks.co.uk Tirril Hall, Tirril, Penrith CA10 2JE

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ISBN 978-1-84760-036-3

Octavia E. Butler: Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood John Lennard

Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks 2007

A Note on the Author John Lennard took his B.A. and D.Phil. at Oxford University, and his M.A. at Washington University in St Louis. He has taught in the Universities of London, Cambridge, and Notre Dame, and for the Open University, and is now Professor of British & American Literature at the University of the West Indies—Mona. His publications include But I Digress: The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse (Clarendon Press, 1991), The Poetry Handbook (1996; 2/e, OUP, 2005), with Mary Luckhurst The Drama Handbook (OUP, 2002), and the Literature Insights Hamlet (2007). He is the general editor of the Genre Fiction Sightlines and Monographs series, and has written Sightlines on works by Reginald Hill, Walter Mosley, Tamora Pierce and Ian McDonald. His critical collection Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (2007), published simultaneously with this e-book, launches the Monographs Series.

The author wishes especially to thank Roger Luckhurst, an outstanding reader and critic of Science Fiction, for introducing him (many years ago) to Xenogenesis and the other remarkable worlds of Octavia Butler. Marvellous.

Contents 1. Notes 1.1 Octavia E. Butler 1.2 The Xenogenesis Trilogy 1.2.1 Name and Background 1.2.2 Structure 1.3 (Black) Science Fiction and Race 1.3.1 The Colour of Aliens 1.3.2 The Colour of Writers and Readers 1.4 (Black) Science Fiction and Gender 1.5 Science Fiction and Dystopias 1.6 DNA and Human Genetics 2. Annotations 2.1 Dawn (1987) 2.1.1 Book One: Womb 2.1.2 Book Two: Family 2.1.3 Book Three: Nursery 2.1.4 Book Four: The Training Floor 2.2 Adulthood Rites (1988) 2.2.1 Book One: Lo 2.2.2 Book Two: Phoenix 2.2.3 Book Three: Chkahichdahk 2.2.4 Book Four: Home 2.3 Imago (1989) 2.3.1 Book One: Metamorphosis 2.3.2 Book Two: Exile 2.3.3 Book Three: Imago 3. Essay: The Strange Determination of Octavia Butler 4. Bibliography

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1. Notes 1.1 Octavia E. Butler Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, on 22 June 1947, only child of Laurice & Octavia Butler. Her father, a shoe-shiner, died while she was a baby, and she was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother, who worked as a maid. Butler grew up strictly Baptist in a poor, mixedrace neighbourhood. Shy, later diagnosed as dyslexic, and isolated by height in every age-group (as an adult she was over six feet), she began writing at age 10 to escape what she called “loneliness and boredom”. At 12 she saw a schlock B-movie, Devil Girl from Mars (1954), thought she could do better, and began a lifelong interest in reading, watching, & writing SF. Butler graduated from Pasadena City College in 1968, and took courses at California State University in Los Angeles and via UCLA extension programmes 1968–70. Her major influences, however, came from a spectacular public obsession and two workshops. The obsession was the ‘Space Race’, culminating in the intense excitement of Apollo 11’s first manned moon-landing in July 1969, followed by Apollo 12 (Nov. 1969). After the aborted Apollo 13 mission (April 1970), there were successful landings by Apollos 14–17 (Feb. 1971–Nov. 1972). The first workshop, in 1969–70, was the Screenwriters’ Guild of America, West, Open Door Program, designed to mentor poor Black and Latino writers, where Butler met established SF writer Harlan Ellison (b. 1934). The second, in 1970, was the newlyfounded Clarion SF Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University, where she met Samuel R. Delaney (b. 1942)—the first recognised African-American SF writer, and an acknowledged star of the later 1960s. Butler’s first publication, ‘Crossover’, appeared in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Ellison bought another story for an anthology that never appeared, but she found it hard to establish herself, partly because overtly racial and gendered concerns in her writing went against perceived SF norms, and her own gender and race made her unusual as an SF writer. Her first novel, Patternmaster, completed by 1974, appeared in 1976, followed by four further novels in the same series: Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), & Clay’s Ark (1984). The novel that made her name, especially among African-Americans, interrupted

8 this series. Kindred (1979) has sold more than 250,000 copies but is often rejected as SF; Butler herself called it a “grim fantasy”. A modern African-American Californian time-travels to an ante-Bellum South where she meets her ancestors, a Black slave-woman who was born free and her White owner. Though often shelved and taught as ‘African-American Literature’ without reference to SF, time-travel is outside the ‘mainstream’ realist tradition, and Butler’s SF identity began to be celebrated in 1984, with a Hugo Award for Best Short Story (‘Speech Sounds’), and the 1984 Nebula/1985 Hugo Awards for Best Novelette (‘Bloodchild’). Her next work was the Xenogenesis trilogy—Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), & Imago (1989)—followed by the Parable series: Parable of the Sower (1993), nominated for Best Novel Nebula, and Parable of the Talents (1998), which won the 1999 Nebula. A remarkable, harrowing collection, Bloodchild and other stories, appeared in 1995 (enlarged ed. 2006), but though planning Parable of the Trickster Butler suffered for nearly a decade from acute writer’s block. This was perhaps connected to the easing of lifelong poverty by a $295,000 MacArthur Foundation Award (the ‘Genius Program’) in 1995, which enabled her to buy a house. Medication for high blood-pressure made her drowsy and depressed, and after the death of her mother in 1998 she moved to Seattle. A reclusive nondriver, Butler became an important participant in Clarion Workshops, encouraging other Black SF writers including Steven Barnes (b. 1952), Tananarive Due (b. 1966), and Nalo Hopkinson (b. 1960). Writer’s block eased in 2004, and she completed her last novel, Fledgling (2005), radically reimagining with racial and gendered consciousness the vampire tales that are presently so popular. Octavia Butler died on 24th February, 2006, outside her Seattle house, either from a stroke or from falling and striking her head on a cobbled walkway. Her premature loss is widely lamented, and the Carl Brandon Society, an SF organisation concerned with writing by and representations of “people of color”, has established an annual Memorial Scholarship in her name to enable a young writer “of color” to attend one of the Clarion Workshops where Butler got her own start.

1.2 The Xenogenesis Trilogy 1.2.1 Name and Background The novels of the trilogy appeared individually—Dawn in 1987, Adulthood Rites in 1988, and Imago in 1989. From 1989–2000 they were boxed as Xenogenesis, a

9 coinage from Greek xenos, ‘a stranger’ (cf. xenophobia) + genesis, ‘beginning’, to mean ‘the initial evolution of an alien race’. The prefix xeno- is used in SF in terms like xenobiology, study of alien life, or xenology, study of alien cultures, so while unfamiliar the term was intriguing rather than off-putting to SF readers. In 2000 the umbrella-title was changed to Lilith’s Brood for the omnibus edition, religious rather than scientific, and the trilogy remains available under that name and as individual volumes. The significance of the change is considered in the Essay. The world in the mid-1980s was very different from the world in which we now live. Global politics was dominated by the Cold-War standoff between USA & USSR (Soviet Russia) mediated through ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD)— the certainty that no ‘first strike’ nuclear attack could avoid reciprocal destruction. Imagination of a post-nuclear-holocaust world was a major theme in SF and Western culture at large from the later 1940s, disseminating ideas of ‘nuclear winter’ and mutation. If threats of nuclear catastrophe have receded, there is a close equivalent in fears of eco-catastrophe through runaway Global Warming, pollution, and destruction of the environment (all of which feature in Butler’s Parable series). The double-helix structure of human DNA had been discovered by Crick & Watson in the 1950s (see Note 1.6), but ‘genetic engineering’ was still in its infancy, little known to the public. Home computers had taken off as a market-sector in the later 1970s, and developed mightily in the 1980s, but the Web was before 1991 a limited construct to which only a handful of scientists had access. AIDS was beginning to be recognised as a global threat, and was still a death sentence even for the rich who could afford palliative care. Cancers were also far less treatable, though genetic bases of predisposition to cancer were beginning to be understood. Feminist and racial awareness (see Notes 1.3–4) were dominant cultural themes, but while Civil Rights and Affirmative Action in the USA secured some changes, sexism and bigotry in the workplace were even worse than they remain today. Awareness of how grim the situation remained was slowly disseminating among men and majority populations. The racial and sexual themes of Xenogenesis were therefore somewhat more surprising and radical in the late 1980s than they may on first reading now seem, especially to younger readers. 1.2.2 Structure The aliens Butler created to rescue human survivors of nuclear holocaust, the Oankali, have three sexes—male, female, and the neuter, gene-manipulating ooloi—

10 and her trilogy is structured to match. Dawn deals with Lilith Iyapo, an AfricanAmerican woman who chooses (in so far as she has any choice) to accept what Oankali offer. Adulthood Rites deals with her son Akin, the first male HumanOankali ‘construct’ (or miscegenate offspring). Imago deals with another child, Jodahs, the first ooloi ‘construct’. Each novel is divided into books whose titles provide an additional map: Dawn Womb

Family

Nursery

The Training Floor

Adulthood Rites Lo Phoenix Chkahichdahk Home Imago

Metamorphosis

Exile

Imago

The books of Dawn follow Lilith’s rebirth in partnership with Oankali. Those of Adulthood Rites name places (for the Oankali living things) that contrast human names and ideas (Phoenix, Home) with Oankali ones (Lo, Chkahichdahk). The first and third books of Imago invoke insect development: an imago (plural ‘imagos’ or ‘imagines’ [im-á-gin-és]) is an adult insect after metamorphosis (for example, a butterfly that has already been a caterpillar and a pupa). The second book posits ‘Exile’ in contrasts to ‘Home’. The trilogy as a whole drives from foetal development to post-metamorphic adulthood, and from that which is wholly human to the greatest possible state of human-alien miscegenation (Latin miscēre, ‘to mix’ + genus, ‘race’): the genesis of a post-Human race, Homo oankali, from H. sapiens.

1.3 (Black) SF and Race 1.3.1 The Colour of Aliens Arguably, at least, all SF that encounters alien life is in some measure concerned with human race relations. By mapping intra-human relations onto inter-species relations in an SF narrative, both typically fearful human reactions to whatever is different and general or individual assumptions about our own and others’ rights are interrogatively foregrounded. At the same time, vulnerability of space-ships and astronauts (or exploring parties) in hostile environments, or some terrible threat from aliens to all humankind, provide a necessity for human unity that for most readers transcends (in the name of survival) whatever racial, cultural, sexual, and religious

11 differences might otherwise be paramount. Many narratives of alien encounter have been written, with aliens ranging from primitive to incomprehensibly advanced and from monstrosity to benignity, but the central encounter of human with alien makes representation of difference a core topos, and reactions to otherness the determining trope. The first TV series of Star Trek (80 episodes with William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock), transmitted in the US 1966–9, offers a good example. There are, reductively, two basic plots to one or both of which episodes conform. The first is the Federation Navy (represented by the USS Enterprise) versus the ‘Evil Empire’ of the Klingons—which allegorises the Cold War conflict between the USA & USSR, and to some extent the conflicts of market capitalist and planned communist philosophies of economics. The second involves a new member of the crew with distinctive costume and make-up, of whom some established roles are suspicious but who proves valuable and loyal in a crisis—which endorses the Civil Rights movement and urges federated unity in racial diversity. Though in terms of dialogue only a bit part, the frequent screen-presence as communications officer of Lieutenant Uhura (played by African-American Nichelle Nichols) was a significant step in Black TV representation; Asian-American actor George Takei (Lieutenant Sulu) was also a regular. Uhura later shared with Kirk the first broadcast interracial kiss on US TV—albeit under alien compulsion, a factoid that seems ironically diagnostic of the deep racism still possessing much Western culture. In later Star Trek TV series and films, made after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, individual Klingons (once Russians) were incorporated into the Federated family, overcoming established prejudices against them as ‘the enemy’. Almost all have been (and are) played by African-American actors, but Klingon culture, once given Japanese Samurai trappings, has become more Amerindian—a strangely parallel valorisation of another internal other. SF works in all media have since used similar plot-structures, often with the same, broadly left-wing aim of endorsing multiculturalism, but occasionally, in politically right-wing writers, to argue (or assert) a ‘need’ for species (and so racial) segregation. 1.3.2 The Colour of Writers and Readers Concern with race and ‘otherness’ points questions about the historic scarcity of Black SF writers. Older surveys of the genre rarely mention more than three, all post-1960—Delaney, Butler, & Barnes—but recent ones indicate a notable increase in numbers, citing (among others) Walter Mosley (b.1952), Nalo Hopkinson, &

12 Tananarive Due, as well as excavating some older names. Explaining this, some are happy to posit SF as intrinsically ‘white’. They reasonably point to its largely European–North-American origins, and the rarity of explicit treatments of human race. Much less reasonably, they then extrapolate a general ‘lack of appeal’ for people of colour, ignoring, for example, the problem with generic labelling—that very similar works by African, South American, and European writers are likely to be differentiated in sales and criticism as, respectively, Fabulism, Magic Realism, and Science Fiction. One must therefore ask questions about the label ‘SF’, and its connotations as well as denotations. Additionally, assertions about the number of non-white readers of SF are almost all speculative, and to be taken sceptically. It was for years a cliché that women did not write or read SF, let alone participate in fandom (clearly for ‘geeky’ young men), but research on Star Trek and Doctor Who fans reveals extensive organisation and participation by women.1 One can say only that a perception of SF as lacking non-white writers and readers is under scrutiny, especially from younger Black writers. There is also the issue of scientific work, an area from which Black (as distinct from Asian) minorities in First World countries have also been variously excluded, and that supplies SF with far more than a name. Despite its fantasy elements, SF has always valorised science, and substantial overlaps between professional scientific and SF communities may also conceal or discourage Black participation in SF. It is, however, clear that in SF marketing, and the blockbuster films that have for 20 years dominated Hollywood production, there is a serious problem with bigotry. Black characters, for example, used to be as rare in SF as in other mainstream film and print genres (Westerns or Romances, say), and writers who did create nonWhite characters, like Ursula Le Guin (b. 1929) in her bestselling Earthsea books, found publishers imposed cover-illustrations and screen-adaptation imposed casting that re-bleached all skins. Xenogenesis suffered badly from this in early paperbacks, Dawn showing Lilith as white, and the current yellow-green cover of Lilith’s Brood does not (despite featuring a Black woman) clearly signal a protagonist of colour. In an excellent essay on such bleaching in the 2004 SciFi Channel adaptation of Le Guin’s books,2 Pam Noles explores the difficulties with parents and self-identity such bigotry caused her as a young African-American fan of SF, and sharply indicts 1

2

See John Tulloch & Henry Jenkins, Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek (London & New York: Routledge, 1995). See Πhttp://www.infinitematrix.net/faq/essays/noles.html.

13 both mentality and the misunderstandings it generates. Links to an essay by Le Guin detailing her lack of control over the adaptation and angry dismay at what was done, with additional responses to her and Noles’s essays, are given in the Bibliography, and show how complex the situation becomes when children of colour attracted to SF (or narratives with SF trappings) become aware of the racial implications of how ‘humanity’ and ‘aliens’ are represented. These complexities have no simple resolution, but there is clarity in the paradox articulated by Butler and Hopkinson—that a genre so fantastically concerned with otherness, compulsively staging racial issues, should be problematic for writers and readers of colour. The concern of female writers with gender and race highlights a necessity to read SF as potentially radical and conservative, advancing one agenda over another, or pretending via trappings of a futuristic genre to false radicalism. If an entirely patriarchal, over-muscled hero, after his ray-gun triumph on Mars, scoops up some princess, nothing can disguise a rigid gender conservatism. A large argument-cum-explanation has tempted some—that White SF writers, sending White protagonists to defeat (Black) aliens, stage the meeting of difference only to reassert White superiority, so the genre’s compulsive re-enactment of racial supremacies and suppressions makes it hostile to Black liberation. Some readings along those lines make limited sense, especially where old ‘Pulp’ magazines and new film-merchandising are concerned. As a generalisation, though, it ignores the deliberate use of SF to re-imagine the imperial encounter differently, and substantive questions raised when, as in Butler, humans of more than one colour confront aliens (and potentially aliens of colour). When any writer of SF manages in whatever way to force readers’ imaginations of otherness (or alterity), the intrinsic capacity of the genre to address race is there for a writer to harness as they will—and it isn’t the ray-gun trappings of SF, but precisely our variant understandings of Human essence, that are Butler’s concern. 1.4 (Black) SF and Women Gender often intrudes into discussion of SF and race, and the connection is intrinsic. Just as SF, in representing (reactions to) otherness, is all but designed to show racial interaction, so it is a site of gender representation, including female and/or queer writers, protagonists, and readers. It also often interrogates representations of white male heterosexuality and the patriarchal nuclear family as norms, by contrasting them with very different alien ways of breeding and living. And as aliens are racially

14 other, so they may be of variant genders, reversing or transcending human valorisations of heterosexuality as guarantor of the romantic sublime and basis of the nuclear family. The book that established SF as a locus of gender debate was Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which presents a Black male human as ambassador to a race that is humanoid but unsexed. Individuals are neuter save in regular periods of kemmer, when they are sexually potentiated and seek mates. In each pairing one will become male, one female, but which cannot be predicted, and both revert neuter afterwards; one becoming pregnant stays female throughout gestation, then reverts neuter, so the same person may be both a mother and father. A thought experiment, asking what the world might be like with different gender identities, The Left Hand of Darkness showed that a compelling SF adventure could also be philosophically, politically, and literarily serious. In parallel, from the 1960s–80s, Andre Norton (1912–2005), Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930–99), Marge Piercy (b.1936), and Joanna Russ (b.1937) bought other female perspectives to SF. Some feminists deplored this as a sell-out, but a second wave of writers, spearheaded by Butler (deploying her three-sexed Oankali in direct line from Le Guin) took the debate beyond them, using gendered racial awareness to criticise hierarchies within Black as much as any other human culture, and highlighting new complexities. Cinema has also been important. Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films, Linda Hamilton in the Terminator films, and Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil series all potently valorise women—but as Weaver shows, eventually blending with the Alien queen, such valorisations can slide into very conservative constructions of the female as demonic alien other. The fantastical can also revive old demonisations of women as siren-songed above and toothed below, embodying a violent, fearfully imaginative ignorance of women characteristic of adolescents and immature men. The period of these blockbuster franchises has also seen such popular pseudofeminisms as ‘girl power’ that claim empowerment while buying in to materialisms that are patriarchal. For some feminists militarised women in SF films were especially unwelcome, endorsing values of warfare and brute force, but for others guns and future hardware are gender-levellers, and rather more reliable than the bling and sassiness of girl power. Butler also raises questions about the compatibility of female and coloured otherness. The issue has been open since Freud described female sexuality as un continent noir (‘black continent’), invoking the mysterious tropical depths of Africa as a metaphor for all feminine sexuality; following his lead in the 1960s, the

15 Mouvement de Libérations des Femmes (Women’s Liberation Movement) sang Nous sommes le continent noir (‘we are the black continent’), claiming their own Africas. Unsurprisingly, Black feminists (and many others) have real difficulty with this, and the problem is acute for any female writer of colour who wishes to represent intra-racial or intra-gender bigotry as well as inter-racial sexism and intergender racism. But SF can profitably raise the stakes through embodiments of the alien that specifically estrange human racial or sexual characteristics. Biology, sexuality, mentation, and identity may all in SF be divorced through tropes including digitised or disembodied minds, genetic engineering, and time-travel or slippage, and the results will in some way pressure assumptions or ‘facts’ about current human gender and identity. But a broadly ‘feminist’ plot that drives to resolution of gender differences may erase ‘racial’ identity, or vice versa. SF thus tends to enact political difficulties in competition for time, attention, and identity generated by racial and gendered liberation movements—explaining the common hostility of Black critics to Black, and feminist to female, writers. The female body as the site of reproduction and object of patriarchal control can also become central to SF, as in Xenogenesis—an aspect the variant title, Lilith’s Brood, highlights. Aliens tend to abduct, constrain, and biologically or mechanically penetrate human bodies of both sexes, figuring feminisation and rape. SF narratives also have a strong interface with ‘recovered memories’ of child abuse by (familial) adults, and humans in alien clutches may be infantilised as well as feminised.1 Hightech examination by aliens figures patriarchal objectification of the female body (and in surgery of all bodies). Other plots invert human gender, as when insectaliens lay larvae in male bodies, impregnating them—a notorious trope of Alien and theme of Butler’s award-winning ‘Bloodchild’. Alien bodies must also be presented, and the meanings of flesh, in any shape and function, are a continual theme—the obverse of SF’s association with robots, technology, and Artificial Intelligence. 1.5 SF and Dystopias In 1516 Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) published Utopia, a title naming an invented island where all is perfect and frailty overcome. The name was a coinage in Latin from Greek, built on a vital pun: ou-topia is ‘not-place’ or nowhere, eu-topia ‘good place’—suggesting Utopia was unreachable (as humans were in More’s very 1

See a fascinating article by Roger Luckhurst, ‘The Science-Fictionalization of Trauma: Remarks on Narratives of Alien Abduction’, in Science-Fiction Studies #74, Vol. 25.1 (March 1998): 29–52.

16 Catholic eyes unalterably Fallen from God’s Grace). A satirical parable modelled on narratives of exploration and travel, More’s idea was developed as a framework by many writers, notably Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in Gulliver’s Travels (1726). But it also generated, in opposition to the idea of ‘unreal good places’, the concept of dystopias, ‘bad places’ that can too often be understood as very real, or warnings of what might come to be so. For SF this was a ready-made invitation, and three great dystopias of the earlier twentieth century still powerfully influence both the genre and global culture. We (Russian 1920, trans. 1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) shows industrially dehumanised labour; Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) imagines scientific rationalisation of culture and breeding; and 1984 (1949) by George Orwell (Eric Blair, 1903–50) famously warned ‘Big Brother is Watching You’ in its vision of techno-surveillance and thought-control. SF also offers in the visiting alien a version of imperial satires like Oroonoko (c.1688) by Aphra Behn (1640–89), in which a ‘primitive’ slave or colonial subject, brought to the imperial centre as an object of display, exposes barbaric failings and values in the imperium—as in any alien encounter there is the possibility of embarrassing Human emotional, political, and technological inferiority. Raw, hostile planets offer arenas for harsh justice and survivalism, so right-wing and/or religious rejections of techno-futures, as well as traditional conservative scepticism about human goodness and reason, are found amid more utopian leftwing visions of progress. But since 1945 the dominant dystopian model has been post-catastrophic. Nuclear holocaust or a runaway bio-weapon were the favourite causes but asteroid impact, global warming, mass irradiation or pollution, and viral epidemics have now (via Hollywood) entered the common imaginary of speciesending disasters. Xenogenesis takes such catastrophic destruction only as a point of departure. Interested in neither the immediate politics of pushing the button nor in describing the destruction, Butler’s wasted earth is directly experienced only by Oankali who restore it biologically while allowing their organic shuttles to feed on urban debris and further human cultural erasure. As the trilogy progresses from a recreated Earthfragment on the spaceship to the western Amazon basin, values of organic living are repeatedly interrogated and valorised. The ‘Human Contradiction’ that for Oankali made our self-destruction inevitable is also deeply inscribed—a gross, fundamental explanation of the nuclear holocaust. Implicitly, the world we readers inhabit is dystopic, each of us, as much as poor Lilith, hopelessly trapped by evolved

17 intelligence in thrall to hierarchical behaviour. Read literally, Butler’s view of her present was extremely bleak, and there is deep pessimism in her thought that she acknowledged she had to be wary of. But there is also a recurrent hope, and one great counter-trope, predicated on mutual pain. Oankali ooloi cannot easily hurt Human or Oankali fe/males, because whatever pain they cause they also feel. That this does not guarantee morality is a major theme of Xenogenesis, but it does preclude cruelty, sadism, and spite, if not ignorant injury to others. In other novels Butler used mutant empaths to achieve similar feedback of suffering, invoking models of mutually beneficial symbiotic partnership in animals. For Oankali, intra-human cruelty is simply an expression of our ‘Contradiction’, but for Butler it seems a specific bane deriving from neurological isolation as individuals and limited senses. Here too, although Oankali have a genetic answer, Butler can be seen as both potently dystopian and committed to imagining answers. 1.6 DNA and Human Genetics As Xenogenesis depends on genetics it is helpful to understand what Deoxyribonucleic Acid is and how it works. DNA is present in the nuclei of all plant and animal cells, and dates to c.4 billion years ago. It encodes instructions for making amino acids and assembling them into proteins. Function and structure are closely bound together. DNA is made of roughly Tshaped nucleotides—Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, & Guanine—paired in a double helix. The crossbar ends forming the twisting ribbons will pair any which way, but in the middle, making the ‘rungs’, Adenine will only pair with Thymine (and vice versa), Cytosine with Guanine (and vice versa)—so if the helix unzips, forming two strands, each will exactly rebuild its missing pair, and the DNA sequence is copied. Groups of three paired bases form a chemical unit coding for a particular amino acid. By creating ‘messenger RNA’, a cousin of DNA which similarly demands a particular set of pairings, each set of three bases can trigger production of that amino acid, so the sequence of bases determines sequences of amino acids which (depending on sequence) form this or that protein, which (depending of sequence) ... and so on, manufacturing blood, bone, nerve, muscle, flesh, fat, hair and all we are. A cell’s DNA is in chromosomes, long folded strands, of which Homo sapiens normally has 46, in 23 pairs. Particular sections of a chromosome form a gene, controlling (say) eye colour; vast numbers of nucleotide-triplets encoding proteins

18 make up each gene, and many genes each chromosome. The Human Genome project, mapping all nucleotide sequences, has shown long stretches of DNA which do not seem to code for anything but continue to be replicated. Known as ‘junk DNA’, its function (if any) is currently one of the great mysteries—always an attraction to SF writers and readers alike.

An overview of DNA showing the double-helix structure of the twisted ribose bases and the ‘rungs’ of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine. Scales in nanometres (billionths of a metre) are given on the left and above; on the right are indicators of what are called ‘major’ and ‘minor’ grooves. Picture credit: Michael Ströck/Wikipedia.

19

2. Annotations Given the length of the trilogy complete commentary is not attempted. The first book of Dawn is heavily annotated, to guide readers unfamiliar with SF towards the questions that can be asked; thereafter annotation is more minimal. As pagination varies between editions, annotations are keyed to book/chapter divisions, but pagenumbers from the current US paperback (Aspect) edition are given to indicate relative position within a chapter. Cover If the doctored photograph, gendered female by lips and (Arabic? African?) head-covering, is supposed to be protagonist Lilith Iyapo, the yellow tint cannot conceal that the model is light-skinned, and while possibly African-American as Caucasian-looking as not. Early US editions of Dawn had a cover image of a white woman, presumably a marketing trope, and implicit bigotry seems still to flourish here. See Note 1.3. Umbrella Title Lilith’s Brood replaced Xenogenesis in 2000. Xenogenesis is a technical coinage redolent of SF, which has long used the prefix xeno- (from Greek xenos, ‘stranger’) to tag alien culture and biology. Lilith’s Brood, conversely, activates religious connotations of ‘genesis’, and in Rabbinical mythology Lilith was the first wife of Adam, rejected for refusing to lie under him and replaced by the properly compliant Eve. Lilith has thus also become a feminist icon and the name of a feminist magazine (there is also Spare Rib), and since Modernism has (as in Joyce and Nabokov) figured variously in literary allusions, usually in the context of patriarchy and the power dynamics of sex and reproduction. Within SF, and perhaps generally, Brood has negative connotations, less happily ‘broody’ mothers or hens than implications of alien nests and young who must be fed and threaten swarming destruction. See also “Lilith Iyapo” (below). 2.1 Dawn (1987) Volume Title Dawn is a self-evident first-volume title, but when it followed the classically derived Xenogenesis, its Old English root (cognate with ‘day’) was emphasised. The Romance words for ‘dawn’ (aube in French, alba in Spanish & Italian) derive from Latin albus, ‘white’ (cf. albino, albumen). A reader’s sense of what has dawned, or is dawning, expands throughout the trilogy, but the most

20 fundamental metaphorical predicate is a dawn following the ‘long night’ of the post-holocaust nuclear winter. Under the volume title Lilith’s Brood, the implicit resurrection of the sun in every dawn is more easily suggested. Dedication: Mike Hodel The host from 1972–86 of an SF magazine show on Radio KPFK in Los Angeles, renamed in his memory and kept running after his death; it webcasts at Œ http://www.hour25online.com/. The READ/SF campaign Hodel organised involved SF authors reading work, with fees and merchandising sales going to California literacy programmes. Butler’s wording of the dedication (“the pleasure and usefulness of the written word”), interesting in itself, may be read against the hostile, dismissive attitudes of Oankali to written language. 2.1.1 Book One: Womb Book Title Womb is readily understood as a time and place of development as well as a sex-specific organ but is retrospectively complicated by Oankali understandings, in which gestation is not confined to wombs or womb-analogues and human valorisation of the organ is somewhere between mistaken and meaningless. The discovery that while they have an organ of gestation Oankali females do not have a birth-canal, and instead chemically open a way through flesh wherever the infant decides to head out, also poses questions about how Womb may be understood. CHAPTER 1 Alive! (5) The most basic condition, enabling everything. The trilogy repeatedly asks what, if anything, is worse than death, and the claims by some humans that this is worse than, or that merits, death, take time to acquire potency. Several later books also begin with one-word sentences. Still alive. / Alive ... again. (5) A superbly economic confusion: the declension and explosive complication of the first three sentence-paragraphs is memorable. asphyxiation (5) Asphyxia, from Greek a-, ‘not’, + sphuxis, ‘heartbeat, pulse’, is caused by abrupt decreases in oxygen and increases in carbon dioxide bloodlevels, usually because lung-action is impaired (as in drowning, electroshock, and some poisoning). The alien physiology underlying this traumatic birth episode is only slowly revealed. Lilith Iyapo (5) A Jewish-African name with powerful implications. In early Hebrew texts, rejected from the Christian canon but accepted in Rabbinical tradition, Lilith (from either a Proto-Semitic root, ‘night’, or a Sumerian root,

21 ‘air’) was the first woman and first wife of Adam, rejected for refusing to ‘lie under him’—i.e. to accept a subordinate position as a receptacle of male seed. In demon-form she is associated with screech owls and ‘night monsters’ (Isaiah 34:14), predatory sexuality, and fecundity. In some Islamic texts she is the mother on whom Satan fathered the djinn (genies), and in some Christian ones a mother of succubi, female demons causing wet dreams and taking male seed to make demons. Iyapo is a Yoruban first and surname, connected to the idea of return and reincarnation; it may have the radical meaning ‘(mother) who has returned’, an explanation Butler may have known. Lilith takes it from her dead husband, Sam. too fast, too loud (5) By what criteria? Implications of perspective and characterisations may be species-specific. Circulation … flurries of minute, exquisite pains (5) These are typical of recovery from frostbite or when circulation is interrupted (cf. ‘pins-&-needles’). had never Awakened to (5) The capitalised form is a good instance of SF ‘estrangement’. There is simple ‘awakening’, from sleep, but also an undefined, traumatic ‘Awakening’ infused with the spiritual associations of metaphoric use. She corrected her thinking (5) An early emphasis on one of Lilith’s great capacities that other surviving humans prove wholly to lack. seemed to grow from the floor (5) Lilith rightly perceives Oankali organicism. the long scar across her abdomen (6) Alien surgical intervention is a strong trope in SF and ‘recovered memory’ narratives of ‘alien abduction’: it models human treatment of animals & children while echoing treatments of chattel slaves in the Americas and Jews at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Butler sets up the trope to signify on it. She did not own herself any longer (6) Metaphors implying or positing Lilith’s reversion to de facto enslavement are a repeated tool of investigation. Never taken or treated lightly, they are still subject to interrogation, and may (as here) embody degrees of misperception as well as aspects of truth. moments when she actually felt grateful to her mutilators (6) The ‘hostage syndrome’, hostages bonding emotionally with their captors, was drawn to public attention by hijackings and kidnappings of the 1970s–80s. It is a survival mechanism and function of enforced dependency. “mutilators” is misleading: Lilith is disfigured, as by appendicectomy, not ‘mutilated’. work … / None. … the auto accident (8) Lilith’s lack of pre-war work, and the pre-war deaths by human carelessness of her husband and son, make her at once a relatively blank and a strongly sympathetic figure.

22 A handful of people … (8) A Northern hemisphere exchange of nuclear weapons is implicit, involving the USA & USSR with one or more of Britain, France, Israel, South Africa, and China; neither India nor Pakistan had then tested nuclear weapons. From the later 1950s, SF, films, & TV regularly posited ‘rogue’ generals who insanely believe that an unanswered first strike is possible, or find nuclear destruction of their own country an acceptable price for something. Following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when nuclear war seemed very close, the sub-genre was memorably summarised and parodied in Kubrick’s influential film Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Fears of nuclear annihilation remained potent into the 1980s, but have faded following the collapse of the USSR and end of the Cold War. humanicide (8) SF has spawned various terms for species-murder, often using the –cide suffix (from Latin caedere, ‘to cut, kill’), but tends to avoid ‘genocide’— probably because of its legal politics and particular history. Punning on ‘genocide’, Orson Scott Card’s multi-award winning Ender’s Game (1985) coined xenocide, murder of an alien species, and ‘humanicide’ signifies on ‘homicide’, ‘man-killing’, as the standard US legal term for the murder of humans of both sexes. Yet she held out (9) Lilith’s will to defiance, maintenance of sanity, & identity, recurs throughout the trilogy. Can the understandable, in many ways satisfying, emotional impulse to defy be accommodated to reason and survival? Is survival enough without a guarantee of what survives? a small boy with … smoky-brown skin, paler than her own (10) One range of skin colours potentially implicit in the surname ‘Iyapo’ is confirmed, specifically in the context of comparison (skin only receives narrative attention when there is contrast) and a child whose physiognomy declares genetic inheritance. It is characteristic of Butler that this particular datum should be presented through a contrast between non-whites, rather than a non-white & a white—also Le Guin’s strategy in A Wizard of Earthsea (1968). See note 1.3. Ayre, her own son (10) Ayre has no evident Yoruban meaning, but is an old spelling of ‘air’, suggesting something free but also (on the space-‘ship’) lost. Sharad (10) A Hindu name for boys, meaning ‘season of autumn’ (‘Fall’). he learned them instantly (10) Sharad has an eidetic (vulgarly, ‘photographic’) memory; see eidetic memory (60) below. Unconcerned, her captors … (11) Yes and no: what does (not) concern Oankali, and interactions of that with human morality, are a leitmotif of the whole trilogy.

23 CHAPTER 2 androgynous (11) Indeterminately male-and-female, from Greek andro-, ‘man’, + gunē, ‘woman’. The choice of this rather than, say, ‘disembodied’, is pointed. shadowy figure of a man (11) How are gender and/or sex being inferred? Something to take off when … (11) Another assumption that fascinatingly proves in/correct, grounding Lilith’s powerlessness/enslavement/mutilation in biological femaleness but suspecting sexual gratification rather than reproduction. From a number of other worlds (12) The first of many Oankali corrections of an implicit assumption by Lilith, but followed by … who never considered … / I did consider (12) … a first correction by Lilith of a false, revealing Oankali assumption, that what was not spoken was not thought. The creature (12) A loaded word, (i) religiously, as cognate with ‘creation’ and in many discourses acknowledging divine origin, and (ii) within SF, as the word used by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein (1818) for the assembled body (Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creature), and having in Hollywood a long, disreputable history of meaning ‘bad enjoyably frightening special effects monster’ in such B-movies as The Creature from the Black Lagoon—but such associative meanings ought already to have been precluded by words ‘the creature’ speaks, so the signification is of Lilith’s fear and reaction to otherness. These things, whatever they were … (12) The pejorative, dehumanising ‘things’ (where there is one alien …) also records Lilith’s xenophobia but … Discipline or physiology? (12) … she immediately asks a very good question. Oankali patience (and whether it deserves to be credited as virtue) is a leitmotif. being frightened by “ugly” faces (12) Deformed or disfigured faces? or simply unfamiliar faces—as beauty/ugliness often figure across human racial boundaries? humanoid (13) Having ‘human’ form, but not human: robots, for example, are typically humanoid while ‘AIs’ are not. Humanoid aliens (upright, symmetrical, bipedal, bibrachial, single-headed) form a distinct subset to which many writers prefer to contribute. Others imagine profoundly alien races, with aquatic, avian, vegetable, or non-carbon based life and explore mutual difficulties of communication and understanding. Butler runs her own riff on the question, and the humanoid appearance of this individual alien is a recurrent narrative issue. gray all over (13) Despite the notoriety in early SF of ‘little green men’, typically from Mars, the related colour gray has been preferred for non-violent aliens since the later 1970s, and is their usual colour in ‘recovered memory’ ‘alien abduction’ narratives. There is a curious association with officialdom which may relate to

24 individual human powerlessness, aliens as bureaucrats, reifying negation, or be a form of control, depriving alien bodies (artefacts, habitat) of colours that might overwhelm or cannot be perceived by human senses (cf. typically high-pitched or ultrasonic speech/hearing in aliens, uninformative to or unheard by human ears). There is also an association with faceless scientist-technicians, boffins who serve political & financial power, and become metaphorically gray in their insectnumbers and carelessness of individual responsibility. tracheostomy (13) Surgical construction of a hole in the trachea (breathing-tube) to allow ventilation; the hole so made. a sex you’re familiar with (13) A memorably phrased rebuke to another assumption that Lilith (and we) must learn not to make. Medusa (13) In Greek mythology a Gorgon, a monstrous woman with snakes for hair; those who saw her were literally petrified (turned to stone). She was slain by Perseus, who used his mirrored shield to aim a blow without looking at her. Lilith’s stillness (contrasting with motion of Oankali tentacles) enacts petrification; the Oankali insists on her looking directly. The image is specifically feminine and Freudian readings of the Medusa’s monstrosity as female phalloi begins a long association of Oankali tentacles with phalloi (signs of power) and reproductive penis analogues—other than with ooloi, a serious, persistent human mistake. There are multiple ironies: (i) Medusa’s head, still potent in death, was used by Perseus and eventually given to the goddess Athena, who fixed it to her shield, (ii) Athena created Medusa, transforming a beauty into a snake-haired terror as punishment for having been raped by Poseidon in Her temple, and (iii) the name is from the feminine present participle of medein, ‘to protect, rule over’. dying night crawlers … sea slugs—nudibranchs (14) Night crawlers are any of several large species of earthworm that come aboveground at night. The name is common in the US and among fishermen who collect them for bait. Sea slugs or nudibranchs (of the Linnaean sub-order Nudibranchia) are marine gastropods (‘stomach-feet’): most species have reduced or absent shells with feeding and/or sensory tentacles; some are hermaphroditic (with male and female reproductive organs) and in copulation exchange sperm. Butler drew heavily on marine biology in imagining Oankali: the worm/slug associations of Lilith’s first reaction are repeated by many, especially ‘resisters’ in the later novels. Talk! (14) As in her opening ‘correction of her thoughts’ and posing good questions, Lilith can respond amid her fear to help herself accept what she must. You should at least have an unusual accent (14) As an alien would in Star Trek,

25 or ‘foreigners’ in Hollywood films. What it truly is doesn’t translate. (14) The untranslatable term is Chkahichdahk, introduced in Adulthood Rites. Its untranslatability is tested throughout the trilogy, because its life-cycle necessitates the eventual re-destruction of Earth. unlivable (15) Any large nuclear exchange would release massive amounts of radiation and pollutants that would spread, annihilating or sterilising large areas. It would create so much airborne debris that a ‘nuclear winter’ would follow, a global mini ice-age caused by exclusion of sunlight. big worms … small snakes (15) The declension from Medusa to “worms” produces what will become the standard Human term for ‘enemy alien Oankali’. Kaaltediinjdhaya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso (15) The significance of Oankali names is incrementally explained. In brief, it includes statements of kin-group, mates’ personal names, and destiny-group within a ‘ship’-group. Butler is careful in creating alien names—as SF writers often are, reflecting (i) the inspirational philological practice of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973), Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford 1925–45, in The Lord of the Rings (pub. 1954–5) and all his writings of ‘Middle Earth’; and (ii) the ability of a naming system to convey data relating to individuals and culture at large. All SF writers owe Tolkien, who taught writers and readers to consider language in a new way, but Butler’s practice is more socially and anthropologically than philologically informed. ‘Jdhaya’ does not seem human, but Dhaya is a Hindu name, Daja a girl’s name in Eastern Europe, and Jaya- an element in Sinhalese surnames. No species would … Mass suicide (16) The issue of species suicide is a good example of Butler’s ability to signify as an African American on an SF topos. Suicide is throughout the West a morally unstable concept with conflicting classical & Christian valorisations. Raised to species’ suicide, all stakes are heightened and altered. Many writers imagine motives for species suicide, from collective tiredness to habitat destruction, but in African-American or Caribbean perspectives the mass-suicide of Arawak groups in response to attempted colonial subjugation is a major historical referent invoking other death-before-conquest mass suicides, as at Masada. At the same time, the African-American present requires valorisation of those who, despite the horrors of slavery, survived and retained African cultural inheritances—a need seen in Lilith’s instinctive rejection of species suicide, and the whole trilogy valorises endurance-despite-all as human (not racially specific). But … It’s … alien to me. Frighteningly alien. (16) … given the nuclear death of all but

26 a handful of Homo sapiens, the alternative to deliberate consensual species suicide is mass-genocide. For any species revering life (as we often suppose ourselves to be) that is ultimate evil—and the bite of Butler’s observation is enhanced by placing it in the mouth of an Oankali. “Frighteningly alien” reverses Lilith’s fears, especially of Oankali tentacles, setting that ‘natural’, ‘normal’ fear against the infinitely greater (moral) horror of genocidal violence. They had created much of the destruction (16) A paradox expressing insanity and horror, recalling the infamous statement by a US major after the destruction of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” We’ve used them slowly … (16) Other than not letting them return to Earth, Oankali treatment of surviving human perpetrators of war isn’t punitive. Attitudes to punishment and prevention become a theme; ‘used’ also invites thought. one many-fingered hand (16) Variant digits are a common distinguishing feature among humanoid aliens, reflecting human polydactyly (a genetic disorder) and use in Linnaean classification. to kill … to touch (17) A deep paradox of hatred, attraction within repulsion, which the trilogy systematically explores. I can’t not see (18) A critical aspect of Oankali existence: privacy and individual responsibility vary from human norms. Through mental consensus Oankali cannot be ignorant, but this may give massive democratic force to calculated cruelty. Butler was preoccupied throughout her career with in/abilities to dismiss or ignore another’s suffering. About ... two hundred and fifty of your years (18) An important estrangement for readers as for Lilith: within SF time-slippage has been variously explored, but is typically voluntary and in space connected with ‘ark-ships’, transporting planetary populations across interstellar distance at sub-light speeds—so Butler signifies on Lilith’s involuntary subjugation in earth orbit. The device is old, figuring in fairy tales and given seminal form by Washington Irving (1783–1859) in ‘Rip Van Winkle’ (in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, 1819–20, also containing ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’). The problem, in almost all cases, is that time-travel is one-way, severing bonds of kinship, society, and friendship. Butler used it in rare two-way form in Kindred (1979) to contrast modern and slave experience. Isolation cost fewer lives (18) A short sentence with astonishing implications: multiple experiments, injuries, and murders; Oankali callousness through inexperience without conscious intent of cruelty, and with intent of maximal .

27 preservation; Human-on-Human violence as an unavoidable behavioural trait, even in circumstances suggesting that at least one of the last two humans alive might opt for murder and consequent solitude over tolerance and cooperation or mutuality. The discussion that follows is deeply revealing. muttonchop whiskers (19) A popular Victorian style, narrow at the temple, broad on the cheeks, and separated by a shaven chin. a foreign language (19) Lilith does not label it as an alien language. She felt … and immediately questioned … (19) As Lilith discovers, Oankali do not consciously lie but do suppress truth and leave misinterpretation uncorrected. Jdhaya’s promise of being able to “see” Sharad (kept in Book II, Ch. 2) is an example of Oankali slipperiness with literal and implicit meaning. CHAPTER 3 It would be like … knowing there was a rattlesnake … (20) Would it? Lilith understands her fear as irrational, but deeper irrationality is signalled by Butler in presenting Lilith’s reactions. Medusa leering down (20) Extending irrationality, but adding projection of sexual vulnerability that is misplaced (Jdhaya has no lust for her, nor localised gaze; the Medusa’s gaze petrified, not stripped, her victims) but at a deeper level true, in that the Oankali do want Lilith as breeding stock. ever having been so continually afraid … had done nothing (21) None of us know what Human reactions to intelligent extraterrestrial life will be. Butler suggests fear of otherness is instinctual and sub-rational but Lilith is never wholly incapacitated by fear, retaining wit and self-awareness. He ignored her. (21) Does Oankali silent waiting constitute Human ‘ignoring’? The Latin root-words mean ‘not knowing’ (cf. agnostic) and there are information gaps and barriers between species, but the social Human sense of one person ignoring another is projective and unreliable. A cancer (21) Cancer (from Latin, ‘a crab, ‘a griping pain’) is a generic term for malignant neoplasms—uncontrolled, inappropriate new growth that spreads from a point of origin to other body sites—including sarcomas and carcinomas. the family “tradition” (21) Causes of cancer vary and involve multiple factors, but heredity certainly increases susceptibility to some cancers. What did I lose … ? (21) Lilith’s fears are based on the then-best surgery, which far more than today (no keyhole surgery) caused collateral damage. But the trope of alien surgical invasion and/or mutilation is inverted, the scar showing only

28 efficient Oankali care for Lilith (though the need for there to be a scar at all has to be finessed, given Oankali medical capacities that will be revealed). The name for its sex is ooloi. It understood your body because it is ooloi (21) ‘Ooloi’ is Butler’s most important coinage, and word choice was critical. Like ‘xenogenesis’ it is Greek in form, from oon, ‘egg’, and the plural–oi (cf. phalloi, hoi polloi), but there are relevant echoes of ‘eel’, ‘ooze’, & ‘oil’. The second sentence (“It understood …”) raises issues of physical & mental (corporeal, intellectual) understanding and consent that fiercely recur as Humans (especially male) and ooloi interact. vast numbers of dead and dying humans to study (21–2) Lilith’s reaction in the next paragraph paints the worst imaginable picture but Jdhaya’s statement is simple truth. The Oankali cause no disaster. How would humans treat an alien planetary population messily dying of self-inflicted irradiation? a talent for cancer (22) The phrase beautifully suggests inverted ooloi thinking. They won’t be harming you anymore. (22) The first clear statement to Lilith of one Oankali gift to humanity, beyond search and rescue. In Oankali life cancer is not simply curable, but inconceivable. food … hungry … toward him (23) The ritual of breaking bread in peace serves its turn; food often plays a role in SF, as an emotive area of cultural difference. Daisy hand (23) Another excellent, compact metaphor. He could have been so much uglier … (23) Some SF posits similarity as a problem, suggesting more obviously different aliens would be easier to accept than humanoids, by definition as ‘distorted’ as similar. Joseph Campbell (1904– 87), who believed all human cultures diffused from a single African point of origin, suggested European perception of Inca and Aztec cultures was ‘perverted’ through a meeting of cultures with family resemblances. There is an analogy with the difficulty of learning closely related languages (Dutch/Afrikaans, Spanish/ Portuguese). Oankali. Sounds like a word in some Earth language (23) Oan was a mediaeval Japanese period of empire; Oana is an abbreviated form of Romanian Ioana (Joanna); Kali is the Hindu goddess of destruction; calli- (as in calligraphy) is from Greek kallos, ‘beautiful’. More crudely, oank is close to ‘wank’, the usual British slang for masturbation, equivalent to US ‘frig’; ‘wanker’ is a common insult. If Butler was aware of the latent pun she never makes it explicit, but ooloi behaviour raises sharp questions about values of (mutual) masturbation and penetration which for Britons makes the pun hard to ignore.

29 Traders (23) An important term in SF, as a primary motive for interstellar voyaging distinct from compulsive curiosity or intended conquest. In the work of Cold War authors it resonates with capitalist, free-trading principles rather than those of communist command economies, and figures heavily in time-slip and fantasy novels with (pseudo-)mediaeval settings. But as this conversation shows, what Oankali trade and their notion of status between traders are problematic, and the prejudices typically felt by rooted, urban cultures for nomadic peoples (as traders must be) should be remembered. “… Slaves?” / “No. We’ve never done that.” (24) An absolute statement that readers need to return to and consider—a flat rejection of chattel slavery as not possible in Oankali physiology and culture, and so a peculiarly Human behaviour. a hundred and thirteen … If she had been younger … (24) The second great Oankali gift, extended lifespan, is cleverly introduced, simultaneously presenting and limiting Oankali capacity. Aging is implicitly understood as genetic process, initiated by cell behaviours, and not as simply unavoidable passage of time—a question extended in Lilith’s self-perception as 26 or 28 and revelation of her isolation (reported in Ch. 1) as having lasted more than two years. His tentacles seemed to solidify … (24–5) The Oankali expression of ‘pleasure or amusement’ humanises in many ways (many aliens are humourless), but may be biologically understood as cognate with safety (senses muffled, tentacles withdrawn), as expression of tension or fear knots tentacles into pre-strike mode. She stared at him, shocked that he had read her so clearly (25) But she does not suppose, as many will, that telepathy or mind-reading must be involved. promises of long life, health, and lasting youth (25) A fairy-tale trilogy, realisable through truly advanced genetic engineering. And you’ve never tried to kill yourself, even then. (25) Lilith’s determination to live and worry about the “price” continues questions raised via species suicide. the human imagination … the wrong thing (26) Lilith’s dictum makes sense and has history—chimaeras bombinate in vacuums as children imagine monsters out of hints in the dark—but ignores (as Jdhaya has learned not to) the equal Human propensity for denying facts, sometimes unto death. some of my family found her so disturbing (26) A telling reversal, positing an alien flight-response to human presence as horrific. Lilith’s immediate question, “Did you leave?”, and Jdhaya’s pleasure-response indicate rising mutual consideration and courtesy. so much life and so much death … her genetic structure (26) The first real

30 intimation of Oankali perception of the ‘Human Contradiction’, rich potential bound to self-destruction. her hand held loosely in his many fingers (26) Following the first food and the first touch, the first handshake. CHAPTER 4 he was beyond stubborn (27) This extends Lilith’s question, “Discipline or physiology” (12). Patience, stubbornness, inflexibility: Oankali vices or virtues? whether he used a bathroom … (27) Almost the only mention of this question until Imago, where Oankali are declared to have such efficient digestion that they rarely require separate fluids and excrete nothing. oxygen … not as much of it as you (28) One sign of that efficient digestion and metabolism is greater energy generated from less oxidisation. Only the ooloi can sting without killing (28) A matter of importance, but raising the question of whether ooloi could arrange for fe/male Oankali to have greater control of the sting reflex, if they so wished. he turned to face her—a courtesy (29) Human need to localise perception—sight in eyes, hearing in ears etc.—is no part of Oankali understanding, and Oankali distribution of senses, perceiving in multiple ways with skin and tentacle, is problematic even for Humans with goodwill. My family … (29) An issue foregrounded in SF—why should aliens share or understand our predominant Human unit of society and reproduction?—but interestingly, here built deeply and at first unquestioningly into Oankali existence and thinking. Only in the later books, when protagonists become isolated, does the apparent absence of solitary Oankali become an issue. CHAPTER 5 little color …. Her own skin, her blood (29) A sharp contextualisation and forceful reminder for white readers of Lilith’s racial identity. Your ship is alive? (30) The organic Oankali ship is a masterwork of genetic engineering and evolved fabrication, at one level inviting profound admiration and so disparagement of the purely mechanical contrivances Humans would attempt. It also sets up problems: the ship’s appetites, and those of its young, are a critical feature of Earth’s future, while operation by chemical signals makes it a prison to non-Oankali. SF biological interstellar vessels are rarer than mechanical ones, but mechanical ones controlled by an AI may have identities that amount to

31 or surpass biological sapience. She took a step backward (30) Lilith’s agoraphobia is predictable after 2+ years in de facto solitary confinement. Correcting genes have been inserted … accepted and replicated (31) Gene therapy is a great area of current research. A human patient was first treated in 1990 so Butler was ahead of the curve and Jdhaya’s matter-of-fact “have been inserted” elides a major problem, given identification of defective and manufacture of corrective genes—delivery to the affected cells (which may be in a specific tissue, class of tissues, or all tissue) and viable incorporation. would be guinea pigs (31) South American rodents, Cavia aperea, in domesticated form C. porcellus. ‘Guinea’ has the sixteenth-century sense ‘Guyana’, from which the animals were brought to Europe; the connection with pigs is moot, but common in European languages. The earliest recorded use of the extended sense ‘subject of an experiment’ is 1920, reflecting use in vivisection from the late nineteenth century after they were discovered to be one of the few animals that, like humans, cannot synthesise Vitamin C and must consume it constantly to avoid scurvy. We know more … / Or they thought they did (32) The question of Oankali understanding, and what they do or cannot know about Humans, recurs centrally in each novel of the trilogy. Problems embodied in Oankali assumptions of superior benignity exemplify what many SF writers posit as the great moral command of space exploration ‘Thou shalt not interfere with less evolved cultures’. But Oankali gene-trading perspectives explain why they do so. strengthened your immune system (32) As Butler wrote, the immune system was the focus of intense research driven by AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) as a global threat, and by the discovery of chemical communication between the immune and central nervous systems. We used to treat animals that way (33) And still do—Lilith’s past tense is because for her humanity in its present form is extinct. Such abuse is a feature of chattel slavery, and the peculiar violence and inhumanity of the Atlantic slave trade marginalised any benignity. to live on your Earth—not just to die on it (33) Jdhaya doesn’t mean only ‘to die on Earth in war’; for Oankali, all Human existence is death-bound. There must be ruins … / There were (34) Although the Oankali have pragmatic reasons for recycling Human ruins (their shuttles feed on them), this behaviour as much as any marks them as alien, lacking values many Humans would think

32 essential to civilised being. Oankali indifference to material remains of Human culture anticipates their attitudes to writing and machinery. plant or animal? / Both, and more (35) Jdhaya is not being difficult: the genes of the ship fuse many species of plants and animal, so it is neither one or the other. symbiotic (35) A term in biology for any long-term relationship between species and a key-word for Butler. It is from Greek sumbiōsis, ‘companionship’, sumbioun, ‘to live together’, and three major forms are recognised. In commensalism one symbiont (commensal) benefits from the other (host), which is unaffected (e.g. remoras on sharks). In mutualism both symbionts benefit (e.g. bacilli living in guts), and may involve mutual dependency. In parasitism one symbiont (parasite) benefits at the expense of its host. mature asexual animals (35) Asexual reproduction (no gametes or fertilisation) typically occurs on Earth in simple animals, often unicellular, but the Cape Bee (Apis mellifera capensis) is capable of asexual reproduction, and formation of identical twins after fertilisation of a single egg is an example of human asexual reproduction embedded within the process of sexual reproduction. Dinso … Toaht … Akjai (35) A division that is extremely important, and figures in all Oankali names (Jdhaya is in full Kaaltediinjdhaya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso). All three words seem to avoid apparent meaning, but there are echoes (Dinsho is a village in Ethiopia, Ajai and Akshai are Hindu male names). Memory of a division is passed on biologically (36) Many forms of memory are distinguished. Modern life-science (which has little idea how memories are— necessarily—chemically stored) distinguishes hardwired or inherited knowledge from memory of personal experiences, and it is clear that creatures with extensive hardwiring (such as insects) lack capacity for individual learning, while creatures with high individual capacity tend to be born very helpless. For Oankali, who understand genetically, memory is manipulable, and they have mastery of what will be passed on as knowledge as well as inherited physical and mental capacity. Go back? … that’s closed to us (36) Although the fate of an Oankali homeworld is never explained, the closure Jdhaya mentions may be because so much time has passed that its star has ceased to exist (as Jdhaya suggests without interest, p. 37). Growing the first interstellar ship may also have destroyed the planet, the “it” Jdhaya mentions now being only a barren rock in space. some, alarmingly, with four (36) Indicating ooloi, the third Oankali sex. These trees … / … are not trees (36) Metaphor and identity are persistent issues in SF. Humans naturally seek analogies—but while alien thing x may resemble

33 trees, and writers/readers need a familiar comparison, using familiar words for alien things risks mistaking identity, perhaps dangerously. From Book II, Ch. 4, the term ‘pseudotrees’ is used. Samuel R. Delaney’s 1960s writing, especially Babel-17 (1966; Nebula, Best Novel) was seminally alert to the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’, that language forms thought. David Brin (b.1950), in the Uplift sequence (1980–98), also makes metaphors in Human language a major problem for aliens so advanced they have no patience with illogicality (cf. Mr Spock’s bafflement by emotion). For Butler as for Delaney the issue is charged because metaphor and other forms of analogy are central to SF rewriting the imperial encounter in alternative historical or extraplanetary terms. space was our destiny (37) Not often heard today, but in the 1950s–60s, especially after the Space Race was prioritised by John F. Kennedy’s stirring challenge to land on the moon before decade’s end, a common belief. The Stars My Destination (serialised 1956–7) by Alfred Bester (1913–87) transfers the Frontier dynamic in US literature to a new ‘High Frontier’, but there is a more pragmatic view that sees planetary exodus as a solution to overpopulation and eco-catastrophe. Current hopes of space are primarily focused on the International Space Station as a hub for commerce in micro-gravity environments, and NASA’s Martian exploration programme. intelligent (39) From Latin intelligentia, ‘understanding’, itself from inter‘between’ + legere ‘choose, pick out, read’ (cf. lecture). The distinction of un/intelligent life (often using sentience, feeling, & sapience, knowing) is important in SF, and a feature (especially in the US) of religious objections to Darwinism. Brin’s Uplift books (see last annotation but one) satirically make aliens willing to accept the evolution of life but not intelligence (which must be given by an ‘uplifting’ master-species). Butler by contrast flatly posits that ‘intelligence’ is an evolved trait still conditioned by evolution. most intelligent … life sciences … genetics (39) A moment revealing Oankali priorities and understanding: born geneticists, they rank biology, biochemistry, anthropology etc. behind genetics, and make no mention of physics. hierarchical (39) From Greek hierarchia ‘rule of a high priest’ (hieros, ‘sacred’, + archein ‘to lead, rule’) via Mediaeval Latin, hierarchia, ‘ranked division of angels’—a much rarer concern than intelligence, in SF as elsewhere, which humans take for granted and is profoundly inscribed in understandings. Concepts of society are almost all hierarchical, positing king or chief, and the famous cliché of aliens saying ‘Take me to your leader’ seamlessly extends our thinking to alien

34 mentation. One strand of SF, to which Butler’s telepathic Oankali consensus belongs, posits sufficient mind-to-mind communication, through telepathy or biocomputing, backed by sufficient material resources that hierarchy dissolves; implicitly it is the product of competition for food, space, reproductive control, and hence an expression, however disguised, of coercive power based on size and fighting capacity. This reflects mathematical analysis of hierarchical systems as one-to-many relationships, each element having more connections below than above and tending to an apex. Socio-religious conservatives endorse a need for hierarchy, ‘a place for everyone and everyone in their place’. Patriarchy, especially as a target of feminism, is thought oppressively hierarchical, but Butler is careful to make her point pan-human, determined by neither sexual nor racial identity and deeper than both. consent (39) ‘Feeling together’, from Latin com, ‘with’, + sentire, ‘to feel’. A critical concept, tracking enslavement, rape, and the situation imposed on all survivors by other humans, Oankali rescue, and inescapable dependence. We trade the essence of ourselves. Our genetic material for yours (40) From Greek einei via Latin esse, ‘to be’, essence is the usual English word, with accident, for a central concept in Platonic philosophy. A thing’s essence is what it must have, its accidents what it happens to have. Thus, for human beings, one might say a brain or hand are of the essence, but skin-, hair-, & eye-colour accidents of birth. Platonic essence is very useful—covering, for example, the many shapes and types of ‘table’ and the identity as ‘oak-tree’ of both a one-inch sapling and an 80-foot adult—but has serious limitations. Books, for example, do not have an essence, and essentialism is central to racism and sexism. Butler’s use of “essence”, and Oankali identity as ‘gene-traders’, focuses on the extent to which one might or should accept genes as determining human ‘essence’, and if so which, as determined by whom? Genetic essentialism is also problematic. organelle (41) A specialised structure in a cell, such as vacuoles, chloroplasts, and mitochondria, isolated by a membrane of lipids and proteins. The importance of the Oankali organelle is that, like Human mitochondria, it developed through symbiosis, one organism (mitochondrion) becoming an internal part of another (eukaryotic cell), and so through evolution a part of ‘us’. Are mitochondria then extinct? Or is Homo sapiens a co-operative group of species including mitochondria, a primate, various gut-bacteria etc. whose evolved intelligence labours under delusions of individuality? And how can ‘genetic essence’ (see previous annotation) deal with the presence in our cells of mitochondria with

35 their own DNA? Moreover, some genes are expressed only in utero, others only in old age, switching off or on in ways not understood. Others appear never to be expressed at all: are they equally ‘of the essence’? If not, who or what decides the hierarchy of genetic importance? Jdhaya sees a particular organelle within Oankali cells as an essence, in time definable as ‘that which is not traded/ changed’, but no human organelle has such transcendent status. Your people will change … (42) So losing status as ‘humans’? committed to the trade … / … finish what the war began (42) Oankali ‘need’ for a gene-trade, and comparison of Human commitment to breathing, are posited as genetic absolutes—imperatives of the Oankali organelle—but have political dimensions, as if imperialists pleaded genetic determination as the explanation of what they do. The trap of identity-loss-in-trade vs identity-loss-in-extinction is the issue with which Akin & Jodahs struggle in Adulthood Rites and Imago. Medusa … Snakes … Nests of night crawlers for eyes and ears (43) Alliteration signals the emotive horror-film imagery. You’ll die … / It was a gift he was offering (43) Death is viewed in several traditions as a divine gift; in Tolkien’s mythology mortality was given to men as immortality to elves. Why didn’t I do it? Why can’t I do it? (44) Lilith’s drive to survive, to face whatever must be faced, is as much a torment as a boon. 2.1.2 Book Two: Family Book Title Alien biology and culture allow any social arrangement a writer can imagine. What is striking about Oankali family structure is how absolute it is, without room for sexual variation or individual eccentricity. Within a given bodyform Oankali breeding seems always to impose a family structure, and can be read as both a feminist critique and valorisation of ideologies of the nuclear family. By comparison with Womb, Nursery, and The Training Floor there is an implication of family as place, a very Oankali idea and sometimes a Human one. CHAPTER 1 Sleep. (47) A second one-word book-opening. Tediin … Kahguyaht (47) New Oankali names clarify their system of nomenclature, notably a distinctive form of ooloi names, and informative rather than expressive architecture. Tediin and Kahguyaht appear, like Jdhaya, to be invented (though Tediin is an inflected form in Finnish), but the ooloi Kahguyaht has a

36 more obviously non-human name than fe/male Tediin & Jdhaya. The same is perhaps true of immature ooloi Nikanj, so names may anticipate Lilith’s dislike of Kahguyaht and greater tolerance of Nikanj. . your world’s twenty-four-hour day (48) Variability between planetary ‘days’ and ‘hours’, determined by orbital mechanics, has long been used in SF as a form of estrangement. smaller than the female Tediin (48) This reverses Human norms of dimorphism, females being larger than males—common among insects but rare in mammals. CHAPTER 2 they used to capture living animals (53) There are c.400 species of carnivorous plant, mostly bladderworts, pitcher plants, sundews, & fly-traps. All trap insects for nitrogen, an adaptation allowing life in boggy soils. Butler’s imagined plants are sophisticated predators but their care in extracting maximal nutrition suggests a similar evolution. She may have had in mind Ichneumonidae, flies and wasps who deposit eggs in other insects’ larvae which Ichneumon larvae consume. CHAPTER 3 How did zoo animals feel? (58) Butler may have known the story (reported by Vladimir Nabokov as his inspiration for Lolita) of the ape in a Paris zoo who produced the first drawing by a captive animal: it showed the bars of a cage. CHAPTER 4 eidetic memory (60) The proper name for ‘photographic’ memory, from Greek eidos, ‘form’ (cf. eidolon, ‘apparition’) via German eidetisch. The biochemical mechanisms of memory are not understood, but it is clear some people (including a number with autism or an equivalent genetic condition such as Asperger’s Syndrome) have complete recall of complex data within seconds of exposure to the material, lasting indefinitely. It thus seems possible, as Butler imagines, that genetic factors may, in ‘normal’ people, prevent eidetic memory, but operation of natural selection against it asks about its disadvantages. Given Oankali attitudes to writing as a substitute for memory, and Butler’s dedication mentioning the “pleasure and usefulness of the written word”, layers of meaning attach to ideas of memory and what is authorially endorsed or valorised is moot. See next note. Such small things! (63) Paper and pencil are in one sense ‘small’ things, but in

37 representing ability to write are in practical and symbolic terms immense. Control of reading and writing materials is a feature of prison-life that often figures in narratives of brutal guards, cruel or corrupt wardens, and arbitrary, dehumanising punishments—although Oankali would not understand themselves to be behaving comparably. See previous note. quatasayasha (64) The first Oankali word given; various associations can be made. ‘Quata’ is a spelling of coaita/koiata, South American monkeys of the genus Ateles; ‘queso’ is Spanish for cheese; ‘Yasha’, a diminutive of Yakov (Jacob), is in Japanese and as ‘Yaksha’ in Hindi a class of man-eating demons. Internal rhyming may be important (cf. Chkahichdahk). kaizidi (65) Given its proximate association with Fukomoto, this word for Humans may connect with Japanese kaizen, a management term meaning ‘change for the better’, and kamikaze, ‘divine wind’. a Judas goat (67) From Judas Iscariot as betrayer of Jesus, a Judas goat is one trained to lead other animals (goats, sheep, cattle) to slaughterhouse or holdingpens, its own life being spared. The term is also applied to tagged goats released to find herds of feral goats targeted for eradication. Applied to humans, the term designates someone acting as a pathfinder in dangerous or unknown conditions. The Judas Goat (1978), by US crime writer Robert B. Parker, was televised in the later 1980s. CHAPTER 5 Ooan (74) Oankali endearment-word for an ooloi parent; cf. ‘mum’, ‘dad’. rear … etymologist (75) Etymology is the study of word-origins and transfers of meaning. The disparate senses of ‘rear’ come from two roots: the sense ‘hinder part’ is from Old English rereward, ‘rear-guard of an army’; the senses ‘raise young’, ‘build’, ‘tend’, and ‘rise on hind legs’ are from OE reren, ‘to raise’. CHAPTER 6 There’s something wrong with doing it that way (79) A dynamic that becomes important, alteration of Oankali thinking by Humans. To Nikanj there is “something wrong” in acting without explicit consent; to Kahguyaht there is not. CHAPTER 7 Ahajas and Dichaan (82) ‘Ahajas’ occurs in the Latvian bible in 1 Cor. 16:15 and

38 2 Cor. 11:10 translating ‘Acha’ia, Achaea’, a Greek province on the Corinth coast of the Peloponnese; ‘Dichaan’ is the usual transliteration of a Thai feminine reflexive pronoun. CHAPTER 8 now, she remembered every day (84) The Oankali changes enable Lilith to remember and restore access to full memories already recorded but unavailable to her. This matters because the changes, evidently alien, are enabling her to be more human, more accurately herself than before. tilio (85) Tilia is a botanical genus including lime (linden) trees. In Tolkien’s mythology, Tilion is an equivalent of Phaeton, son of Phoebus, who lost control of the horses of the sun and was destroyed when they careered out of control. Paul Titus (85) Despite Lilith’s dismissive thought about the uninformative name, biblical associations of Paul (often thought misogynistic) and Shakespearean associations with rape (through Titus Andronicus) are ominous. as dark as she was (85) Skin-colour is neutralised as an issue in this episode. I saw … their bodies (87) The differing experiences surviving Humans had of the nuclear war are important. collecting party of Oankali. She was confronted (87) The full-stop and capital ‘S’ are misprints. The text should read “of Oankali, she was”. Margaret Mead (87) US anthropologist (1901–78), long-serving museum curator, and professor, whose Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) made her internationally famous as a proponent of cultural determinism—the shaping of gender roles and sexual sensibility by cultures and conditions (not genetic, divine, or otherwise fixed inheritance). Her work informed feminism, especially in the 1950s–70s. Denver … Grand Canyon (88) Denver (state capital of Colorado) is c.60 miles from NORAD (the US/Canadian Aerospace Defence Command) at Cheyenne Mountain. The Grand Canyon would not have been a target, and Titus, rafting on the Colorado, would be in the sheer inner canyon, maximally protected from radiation and fallout. Machu Picchu (88) An ancient city of the Incas in a narrow saddle of mountains above Cuzco, at 7,710 ft (2,350m). Abandoned before 1500 and unknown to Spaniards, it was found by US archaeologist Hiram Bingham (1875–1956) in 1911, and has become an important historical and tourist. Access was hampered in the 1980s–90s by Maoist guerrillas targeting tourists, but in the 1970s Lilith would have been untroubled. See picture at 2.3.3.Chapter 6.

39 the tenth grade (88) In the US, the tenth year of schooling after kindergarten. Students are 15–16, and graduate after twelfth grade. eunuchs (89) Castrated human males; testes or testes & penis may be removed. Eunuchs were used in China, Persia, Greece and elsewhere is harem-guards. It is from Greek eunē, ‘bed’, + ekhein, ‘to keep, guard’, a paramilitary function, but Titus means it as an insult (cf. ‘balls’ as a term for courage). Cassava (91) The tuberous root of an American plant, Manihot esculenta, widely cultivated as food. Titus’s dismissal is foolish, and his equation of cassava with primitivism bigoted. In seeking to reseed the biosphere a root vegetable is viable while grasses providing grain for bread (wheat, corn, rye) are not. CHAPTER 9 need to know (99, 100) The phrase is sharply revalorised from usual usage in the military-secretive ‘need to know principle’. Oankali biochemical perception alters the nature of secrecy with the nature of knowledge. He has no-one to teach him to be a man (101) See Margaret Mead (87). Oankali bio-chemistry questions cultural role-models in more than gender. CHAPTER 10 like feeling an amputated limb ... (104) ‘Phantom limb pain’ (coined in 1872 by US physician-poet-novelist Silas Weir Mitchell, 1829–1914) is common among amputees and may affect those born without a limb. It was thought damage to nerves with partial regrowth of surrounding tissues were responsible; recent work suggests brain malfunction caused by loss of sensory input and motor control. Lo (105) The habitation of Ahajas and Dichaan, in Adulthood Rites transferred to (or identical with?) the ship-seed that becomes their dwelling in Amazonia CHAPTER 11 a good trade … It’s trade (107–8) Oankali ‘trade’ includes areas, notably courtesy of guests and hosts, that if clearly behavioural exchanges would not in human culture be so analysed. Perception is involved—gene-trade is at once material and of possibilities—but so are Human class-associations of trade. CHAPTER 12 the usual bare room (108) Oankali lack of Human-perceptible art or décor is

40 repeatedly signalled. a few brittle, yellowed books (108) Earth-produced originals—but most midtwentieth century books (certainly paperbacks) would not survive 250+ years even in ideal conditions. Yellowed brittleness indicates paper containing acids that unstoppably destroy it from within. The list of books sounds like an epitome of Butler’s reading and research: certainly all genres and subjects mentioned are sharply relevant to themes and action. ethnology (108) Scientific comparison of human cultures, and study of the origins, distribution, & characteristics of racial and social groups. With archaeology and linguistics, ethnology is a branch of cultural anthropology. parent … parenting (111) The Oankali term is accurate, but to Humans more political than Kahguyaht understands. Iimplicit authority of parent over child is a persistent model in hierarchy, deeply implicated in Western imperialism: the imperial centre is mother- or fatherland, the colonies children—patronising indigenous cultures. In Mugal and British India Ma-bap, ‘[you are my] mother and father’ was used in supplication or petition to imperial overlords. 2.1.3 Book Three: Nursery Book Title Following from the revelation about ‘parenting’, Nursery foregrounds the contradictions and problems in the Oankali plan. Lilith must nurse adults, and the events in this ‘nursery’ are horrendously ironised. CHAPTER 1 how she had missed the slow change of light (116) There was much work in the 1980s on biorhythms and natural measures of time (sunrise, sunset). ‘Seasonal affective disorder’ (SAD), coined in 1985, links depression with lack of sunlight. the Amazon basin (117) Amazonia, drained by the River Amazon, amounts to at least 2m square miles (7m km2) of Brazil and its neighbours. made her spend a year … (118) A significant time-jump is indicated between Books II and III, a pattern that develops throughout the trilogy. Victor Dominic—Vidor Domonkos (118) If plausible as an Americanised birthname there are ironies (or an error) here. The Magyar boy’s name Vidor means ‘happy’, as against Latin Victor, while Domonkos is vulgarised ‘Dominikános’, a Dominican (monk) or ‘black friar’. The Christian name Domokos means ‘God’s Own’, ultimately from the Latin dominus, ‘lord’, and Dominic (‘of the Lord’) is an exact equivalent from the same root.

41 Leah Bede (119) Leah (Hebrew la’ah, ‘weary’, or Assyrian, ‘mistress, ruler’) was the first wife of Jacob and mother of seven of his children (Genesis 29–35). St Bede (the Venerable Bede, ?673–735) wrote a very important history of British conversion to Christianity, and introduced the system of dating from the birth of Christ (AD, Anno Domini, Year of our Lord). The description of Leah Bede as “religious” (p. 119) and “tired-looking” (p. 120) suggests Butler meant these associations, and may also allude to Adam Bede (1859), the first novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819–80), in which Bede is an unhappy, unacknowledged lover in a close-knit pastoral community, interfering but as blind as it wishes. Joseph Li-Chin Shing (120) Following from Leah, Joseph was the son of Jacob & Rachel, victimised by his brothers—an association that proves fatefully true. In Chinese Li means ‘strength’, Chin ‘precious’, and Shing ‘victory’. Celene Ivers (120) Selene was Goddess of the Moon, with 50 daughters by eternally sleeping Endymion. Ivers as first- and surname is from Scandinavian words for ‘archer’, associated with goddesses of the moon and purity. Gabriel Rinaldi (122) Gabriel (Hebrew Gabriyel, ‘strong man of God’) is one of seven archangels, and appears in both Testaments. In Islamic tradition he dictated the Qur’an to Mohammed. Rinaldi is a common Italian surname cognate with Reynolds, the patronymic or plural of Rinaldo, probably from Latin rex, ‘king’, or Old Norse ‘mighty’, whence ‘Ronald’. Oankali lack of theatre and bafflement by role-play are pointed out, strengthening their aversion to the arts. Beatrice Dwyer (122) Beatrice (Latin, ‘bringer of joy’, ‘she who blesses’) was Dante’s unattainable beloved. The Irish surnames Dwyer and O’Dwyer come from a Gaelic word meaning ‘wise’. Hillary Ballard (122) Unisex ‘Hil(l)ary’ (Latin, ‘cheerful, happy’; cf. hilarious) became in the mid-twentieth century associated with New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary (b. 1919), who in 1953 became with Sherpa Tensing Norgay the first men to climb Mount Everest. Ballard is probably from ‘ballad’, and may mean a dancing song in OE; in 1984 SF writer J. G. Ballard (b. 1930) became with Empire of the Sun, a realist memoir of war-torn childhood in the East, one of the few SF authors to move decisively into the literary mainstream. Conrad Loehr—called Curt (123) Conrad (German, ‘brave counsel’) invokes the great maritime novelist, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924). Loehr, (German, Löhr) is from lehren, ‘to teach or learn’; Curt is from Latin, ‘short’ (cf. curtailed). The name is ironic or misleading, the nickname more diagnostic. Derick Wolski (123) Derek (Old German, ‘ruler’) in the form ‘Derick’ summons

42 ‘derrick’, a crane or scaffolding, deriving from a notorious Elizabethan hangman, Thomas Derrick (himself pardoned from execution for rape), as executioner at Tyburn ‘turning off’ more than 3,000 offenders. Wolski (Zwolski) is a common Polish surname, probably meaning ‘from Wola’. Tate Marah (124) Tate as first and surname derives from OE ‘cheerful, talkative’. Tate in Lakota (Sioux) mythology is father of the winds. Through Henry Tate (1819–99) the surname is associated with Tate & Lyle Sugar and the Tate Galleries in London. Mara/h (Hebrew, ‘bitter, sorrowful’), is a bitter spring Moses sweetened (Ex. 15:23, Num. 33:8–9, Ruth 1:20). CHAPTER 2 a trustee (128) A trustee is a legal term for an officer in charge of entrusted funds. Tate means trusty, a convicted prisoner not regarded as an escape risk and given certain privileges in return for undertaking work. Are they ... Russians? (131) A logical (Hollywood, political) conclusion for a US citizen trying to identify post-nuclear-holocaust captors. CHAPTER 3 What have we learned if … (134) Adulthood Rites and Imago forcefully repeat the question. The Human urge to violence (hierarchy) is shown as implacable. an endangered species—almost extinct (140) The idea of an endangered species was widely disseminated in the 1980s, through conservation organisations and obvious endangerment from poaching and habitat loss of iconic mammalian and avian species, including tigers, elephants, bald eagles, and condors. CHAPTER 4 Where are we? … Who’s in charge here? (141) A perfect demonstration of ingrained hierarchy: 250 years of suspended animation, an unknown environment and circumstances, and Curt’s first words are a demand for clarification of power structure as prelude to a personal claim of authority. Cele (141) Should one hear ‘silly’? Which side? (141) Continuing Curt’s imposition of hierarchy and polarisation of ‘loyalties’; cf. ‘You are for us or against us’, or, more intelligently, ‘If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem’. eugenics ... Hitler (143) The eugenics (Greek eu-, ‘good’, + genos, ‘race’) move-

43 ment of the 1890s–1930s aimed to ‘improve’ racial health & physique through lifestyle & selective breeding. Some elements relabelled old prejudice as medical advice (‘degenerate’ masturbation, for example, was harmful to fertility), others were new. Class-prejudice was at work, but most disturbing was the ‘desirability’ of sterilising the ‘handicapped’ or ‘sub-normal’, incorporated into Nazism. Shortly after coming to power in 1933, well before the Sho’ah (‘Holocaust’), Hitler began programmes of sterilisation and ‘euthanasia’ (Greek eu-, + thanatos, ‘death’) in which up to 500,000 citizens were extra-judicially killed, including the senile, handicapped, and ill. Nazi racial theory contained much pseudogenetic theory about ‘Aryanism’ and ‘Semitism’ (i.e. non-/Jewishness) but extending to ‘inferior’ Romany and Slavic peoples. A genetic approach to nature/nurture arguments underlay the predilection for twins of the notorious Nazi experimenter at Auschwitz, Dr Josef Mengele (1911–79). CHAPTER 5 Jean Pelerin (145) In French un/e pèlerin/e is a pilgrim (and by transference a hooded cloak such as wanderers wear), and a peregrine falcon. Jean is ultimately from Hebrew Johanan, ‘God is gracious’. Van Weerden (147) Dutch weer on its own means ‘weather’, ‘again’, & ‘back’, and is a common element in words of defence or resistance—weerkatsen, ‘reflect’, weerleggen, ‘refute’, weerspannig, ‘rebellious’. CHAPTER 6 horror and beauty in rare combination (153) A phrase summing-up Butler’s and Oankali views of Humanity; her best critic, Roger Luckhurst, took it as the title of his first article on Butler. It was a consensus. I can’t exempt him (154) A first revelation of underlying reason for Oankali stubbornness and refusals. Consensual decisions, once made, are binding. Her ancestors were stronger—her nonhuman ancestors in particular (156) A similar observation underlies many Marvel superheroes, including Spiderman, who has proportionally in human form the capacities of a spider. Primate relatives of Homo sapiens, chimpanzees & gorillas, are disproportionately stronger than comparison of weight etc. suggests, or conventional bio-mechanics can explain. a slight genetic change (156) Nikanj’s specification that he hasn’t “added or subtracted anything”, only expressed “latent ability”, points to the substantial

44 presence in the Human genome of apparently inert material. It is unproven that evolutionary stages are recorded in ‘junk DNA’ but that is one hypothesis. As with mitochondria, Butler seems fascinated by genetic material compromising genetic ‘essence’, and Oankali suggest genetics to be relativistic. reproductive cells (156) That is, gametes—eggs and sperm. a faggot (159) Common UK & US term of abuse for a male homosexual, originating in the early twentieth century. Etymology is unknown but perhaps connects with earlier senses of faggot (Greek, phakelos, ‘bundle’) for a burning torch of bound sticks and subsequently heretics sentenced to death by burning. the shape of his eyes (159) An epicanthic fold indicates Sino-Japanese ancestry. the ugly, ugly elephant’s trunk of an organ (161) Unusual repetition highlights the frequency of ‘ugly’, and in conjunction with human eye-specific vision and Oankali all-round sensory perception interrogates human valorisations of beauty and demonisations of ugliness. Comparison with an elephant’s trunk, repeated elsewhere, is common is psychoanalysis as a symbol of the penis or phallus. the ooloi position (161) Like the ‘missionary position’? CHAPTER 7 “No” ... “Only through me,” (162) The paragraph sets up a puzzle in that the distinction between Nikanj ‘speaking’ to Lilith by using a ‘mouth’ to produce sound waves that her ears converts to neural impulses, and by inducing those neural impulses directly, is false, hence the “perfect hallucinations”, which are not hallucinations at all. When the same distinction applies to sexual experience, between Lilith and Joseph ‘having sex’ in a ‘normal’ Human way, and through (with?) Nikanj, stakes seem different for ‘reasons’ that do not withstand scrutiny. a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten (163) Freud (who popularised the word) associated sexual perversion with traumatically arrested development and fixation of ideas. In an older lexicon what Lilith, Nikanj, and Joseph do might be regarded as bestiality, a sin for which Human offenders and animal partners/victims were once burned. A third Human reaction is ‘sleeping with the enemy’, a term originating in military occupations when even prostitutes accepting ‘enemy’ customers may be regarded as traitors. You ... You chose him for me? / I offered you to one another (164) A version of the old theological debate about Free Will, reflecting Oankali (especially ooloi) omniscience through genetic perception.

45 CHAPTER 8 the skeptics (168) Lilith means those she Awakens who do not accept facts she tells them about their situation, but in intellectual history scepticism has a series of incarnations. Classical scepticism was concerned with fallibility of sensory perception and reason, the view that we truly ‘know’ nothing. Renaissance scepticism was used on all sides of the age’s debates, some arguing scepticism about reason was a sound basis for Christian (or Catholic) faith; others turned it against the churches to lay groundwork for the emergence of scepticism as a principle of scientific enquiry—i.e. one should only believe what one can prove. Butler makes newly Awakened humans a form of thought-experiment in the working of faith and reason under pressures of survival. CHAPTER 9 like a drug ... addicted? (170) The drugs metaphor is neither consistently used nor explored, probably because exploration would (given Oankali understanding of biochemicals) necessarily become complex. Chemical repulsions that bonding with ooloi induce in Humans and Oankali can be read as a reverse image of drug addiction, enforcing abstinence, and as an image of dependency on ooloi that subsumes chemical and sexual ‘addictions’. What difference does any self-deception make? (170) A question the trilogy answers through: wilful self-deception calls in question reason and intelligence. CHAPTER 10 Wray Ordway (171) Wray is a variant of Ray, but both elements of the name make Northern English sense: Wray is a habitation name, from Old Norse vrá, ‘corner, recess’; Ordway (German, Ort) is a topographical name meaning ‘one living at the top of a settlement’. Ordway is an important minor figure in Adulthood Rites and Imago in ways suggesting awareness of these meanings. There are people refilling those cabinets ... (171) An example of unprincipled refusals to believe (cancerous scepticism?) leading to absurd, pseudo-logical assumptions expressed as statements of fact—‘there are people ...’ meaning ‘there must (given my self-imposed limitations of thought) be people ...’. blame ... guilt ... guilty ... accusing (173) An instance of irrational, emotional projection all honest Humans can recognise in themselves but often fail to control in individual behaviour and at a cultural level. As a device it estranges readers

46 from the ‘sceptical’ Awakened, reinforcing identification with Lilith. play Americans against the Russians. Again. (174) A reminder of the nuclear war that got them into this pickle, and implicitly of MAD strategy and arguments about humanicide or species suicide. CHAPTER 11 Allison Ziegler (176) Allison is diminutive of Alice, an Old French contraction of Adelaide, from old German adal, ‘noble’, + heid, ‘kind, sort’. Ziegler is a common surname of German (often Ashkenazic Jewish) origin, meaning ‘tiler, roofer’ (German ziegel, ‘roof’, Latin tegula, ‘tile’). Victimisation of a woman with a Jewish name is alarming. Gregory Sebastes (176) Gregory, from Greek gregōrein, ‘to watch, be vigilant’, was popular among early Christians, borne by important saints and fathers of the church. Sebastes, from Sebastian, ‘man from Sabasta (in Asia Minor)’, is also a famous saint, latterly a gay icon, who died pierced by many arrows. rape ... property (178) Lilith reasonably connects rape with slavery but Oankali gene-melding and control (ownership) of Humanity raises questions about both. If I weren’t human, why the hell would I care whether you got raped? (180) Can Oankali thereby be supposed indifferent to human suffering, or excused indifference? Do animals suffer rape? if so, of what kinds? The radical meaning of ‘consent’, feeling together, is a potent presence. CHAPTER 12 Different is dangerous (186) A simple evolutionary argument of suspecting potential predators and all that’s unfamiliar will not do as an explanation of xenophobia, let alone of the paralysing horror that overcomes Humans seeing Oankali. Much danger comes from one’s own kind, and primate curiosity is usually regarded as an important factor in evolving intelligence. Illusion! / Interpretation (188) See No ... (162). This time the issue leads to ... Your body has made a different choice (189) A major challenge by Oankali, readily imaginable in sexual terms, when physical desire may be present but the mind determined otherwise; or the body refuse to respond at command. Oankali willingness to act on a body’s state as more truthful than a mind’s utterance would get short shrift in most Human courts and theologies. I can’t give you—or myself—permission (190) Strongly suggesting Joseph has undergone psychotherapy, or received counselling.

47 she had lost her horror of such a being (191) Why should Lilith not, after all she has experienced of and with Oankali? Yet a need to maintain horror as visceral, never-to-be-questioned reaction is strong, so horror becomes definingly Human. CHAPTER 13 Imprinting (191) In biology, a bonding arrangement whereby a newborn fixates on the first life it encounters—typically its mother but potentially anything. CHAPTER 14 His humanity was profaned. His manhood was taken away. (192) Butler’s terms are pointed: “humanity” is a temple, “manhood” a possession. catatonic (193) From Greek kata-, ‘amiss’, + tonos, ‘tone’, catatonia is any state characterised by abnormal motor behaviour, including epileptic fits but with a specific sense of stillness as a psychosomatic symptom of trauma. This ooloi’s shock at its unwitting manslaughter is a typical Human reaction and the clearest evidence yet of Oankali psychology and ethics. olfactory (196) Relating to smell, from Latin olēre, ‘to smell’, + facere, ‘to do’. There is considerable evidence implicating un/conscious awareness of smell in visceral (as distinct from intellectual) racism: Oankali reverse this to their benefit. 2.1.4 Book Four: The Training Floor Book Title The Training Floor breaks and extends the sequence Womb— Family—Nursery, logically extending maturation to education but in a curious phrase (not one common word) that reflects location (a spaceship) and function. CHAPTER 1 bromeliads (199) Plants of the tropical American genus Bromelia (after Swedish botanist Olaf Bromelius, 1635–1709), typically with long, stiff leaves and colourful flowers. Pineapples and Spanish Moss are bromeliads. lichens (199) A group of c.15,000 species that symbiotically combine algae and fungus. Simple in form but a complex co-operation, lichens are pioneers in hostile environments, so their presence amid profusion is striking. The name, from Greek leikhein, ‘to lick’, is perhaps because lichens ‘lick’ rocks or variously produce dyes and simple antibiotics. In The Trouble with Lichen (1960) by John Wyndham (J. W. P. L. B. Harris, 1903–69), a compound secreted by lichen is

48 found to extend natural life span to several centuries causing political, moral, and economic chaos, as the similar Oankali gift does here. CHAPTER 2 It doesn’t fucking matter! (203) A rare expletive, carefully placed—the subject is precisely ‘fucking’ (and who is fucker, who fuckee) while the alien gender and means of the ooloi matters most with sex, which for Oankali is not ‘fucking’ but a different process mediated by ooloi without physical male/female contact. CHAPTER 3 breadfruits (205) The Caribbean history of breadfruit, imported from the Pacific by the British as food for chattel slaves on sugar plantations, is apposite. They kept to themselves, sat rock still ... (205) Ooloi catatonia when bonded humans depart marks suffering, and informs understanding of Oankali ethics. coral snake (208) Any of c.90 New World venomous snakes, mostly of the genus Micrurus, related to cobras; like Cobra venom, coral-snake venom acts on the nervous system and mortality among those bitten is relatively high. CHAPTER 4 You shouldn’t have to take the brunt of our feelings, but ... (214) Such explicitly irrational, emotional victimisation is a good example of ‘hierarchical behaviour’. One is singled out for reasons nothing to do with survival and everything to do with violent, amoral, emotional gratification that feeds on cruelty and eventually murder. know ... / ... let yourself know (215) Much behaviour by those Lilith Awakens involves systematic denial of reason and/or their senses. Oankali show no corresponding ability to live in denial of apparent facts. CHAPTER 5 eidetic memory (218) See eidetic memory (60). Instead, he drew away (220) Oolio-induced aversion to physical contact between humans bonded to it is predictable, given other reported effects of ooloi bonding, but a major part of the Oankali price they have not explained.

49 CHAPTER 6 Then he saw Joseph healing ... (224) Precisely and bitterly ironic, restoration to wholeness—improved humanity, by any standards—is the token of a supposed inhumanity warranting annihilation. The scream, such as Nikanj has never heard, betokens extreme psychology, perhaps suffering but often reported of warriors in battle-frenzy (like Norse berserkers). With murder the names Curt Loehr & Joseph Li-Chin Shing reach full potential (pp. 120, 123). a new color ... alien, unique, nameless (226) As explanation unfolds, it becomes clear this ‘color’ expresses Nikanj’s grief, and connotes ‘human’ as well as ‘lost’. yet overwhelmingly, compelling. (226) The comma is a misprint. CHAPTER 7 you and your animals (227) That is, Oankali and humans with them. Curt believes that in ‘voluntarily’ remaining ‘enslaved’, Lilith abandons Humanity to become a pet or experimental subject, but his propensity to racist murder goes hand-in-glove with willingness to designate other humans as unprotected animals. thick clear fluid (230) In human healing such fluids seal wounds, form scabs etc.. blood so bright red (230) The redness of human blood is determined by haemoglobin as a carrier for oxygen and levels of oxygenation. The implication of very bright Oankali blood might be efficient oxygenation (helping explain speed and mental efficiency) or blood-transport of other gasses than oxygen. Stripping naked on the battlefield ... (232) A moment demonstrating the quality of Butler’s control over a scene. Baldly reported, this would be outrageous: a human woman stripping, on a battlefield and in sight of defeated humans, to help an alien heal its sexual organ wherein is harboured Human destiny—yet Lilith’s blunt self-perception comes as a shock, interrupting readers’ concern for Nikanj which justifies her lack of hesitation. But she is enabled by “refusing to think how she would look” while aware of it—a mental state to compare with Curt’s. epiphytes (234) Plants (like orchids) dependent on others for support. she was Cassandra (236) In Greek mythology, a daughter of Priam of Troy whom Apollo offered the gift of prophecy in return for her favours. She took the gift but rebuffed the god, who took revenge by ensuring her prophecies were never believed. After the sack of Troy (during which Ajax raped her) she was taken by Agamemnon as spoil, and with him murdered by Clytemnestra. In art she is often represented naked, about to suffer Ajax’s rape.

50 CHAPTER 8 sensory language had left them with no habit of lying (238) Whether counterfactual statements are chemically possible is moot; lying (wilful deception) is, but neither encouraged nor easily supported by direct neural language. Human language, conversely, is slipshod. The possibility of languages that make lying impossible has been explored by SF writers; Delaney’s Babel-17 is concerned with mathematical and linguistic approaches, and in Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle the “true” language of spell-casting binds human speakers to truth, but not dragons, whose native tongue it is. Hell (240) A first religious expletive; they spread tellingly. CHAPTER 9 Nothing about you but your words reject this child (247) Interpretation is very consequential. ‘Reject’ must be understood biochemically—identification by the autoimmune system as a target for destruction—but Nikanj’s genetic abilities enable him to ensure that no ‘normative’ or individual control over these ‘natural’ corporeal processes of rejection can apply. What but words could Lilith use to reject? and are mental perceptions, emotions, and intellections informing words not ‘things about her’ that reject? Honest humans must admit to knowing states of interior conflict, and that we often speak of what someone ‘really’ wants even if they express denial. One question is whether and how what Nikanj appears to be doing is Human, and to what extent it is a typical male sexual trait, commonly invoked to justify aggressive sexual demands and/or rape. The differences will be hidden until metamorphosis (247) A key datum whose exploration in detail drives Adulthood Rites and Imago, which name a human equivalent of insect metamorphosis and the adult insect form. A few fertile people might slip through and find one another (248) The great dream of escape, fulfilled in Imago in a terrible, predictable way that Dawn should force on readers’ attention. Much as one may want to sympathise with and respond to Lilith’s closing rhetoric, she is not thinking clearly.

51

2.2 Adulthood Rites Volume title Between Dawn and Imago, Adulthood Rites mediates natural and alien. ‘Adult’, from Latin adultus, is the past participle of adolēscere, ‘to grow up’. ‘Rites’ is also Latinate, from ritus, ‘prescribed form of a ceremony’. Rites of individual devotion, communal worship, and passage are distinguished, and ‘adulthood rites’ as a phrase clearly denotes rites of passage, typically centred on achievement of sexual maturity, releasing childish restraints and granting rights and responsibilities. Modern urban rites of passage are weak, ranging from official markers legitimating alcohol, driving, marriage etc. to group markers of many kinds, some malign. There is a long-standing argument that in abandoning a clear boundary between child- and adulthood, a rite that acknowledges boys as young men and girls as young women, Western culture did itself serious injury. Adulthood rites described by some anthropologists have a frisson of terror or pain about them, and practices are hard to reconcile with Western morality. Dedication: Lynn I cannot identify this dedicatee, but simple, potent wording (“— write!”) implies someone in whom Butler believed, who could write but had not, and for whom dedication signifies a gift of faith. It links therefore to the dedication of Dawn to Mike Hodel. 2.2.1 Book One: Lo Book Title The significance of Lo as place (location), a habitation of multiple but unitary dwellings, and aspect (portion, seed) of Chkahichdahk, the Oankali ship, are unfolded only slowly, but posited by the titular structure as critical. The use of places (though also in this case a being) as titles continues the pattern of Dawn. CHAPTER 1 He remembered much of his stay in the womb (253) Another memorable opening. The idea of prenatal awareness, cognition, and mentation has often been posited, most influentially and negatively by Frank Herbert in the first Dune trilogy (1965–76), in which it is induced by exposure in utero to a rite-of-passage drug and consequent access to the rite’s core, paranormal transfer of memories in one’s female genetic (i.e. mitochondrial) line. Butler was clearly familiar with Herbert’s work and pondered his take on prenatal awareness, but elements are

52 rearranged and the experience is in Butler (as in more utopian SF writers) benign, while in Herbert it initiates a course towards adult madness and possession by dead ancestors incorporated fully aware into the foetal brain. he learned anticipation (253) This owes much to Freud, who discussed this process in infants and called it Fort-Da—‘Gone-There’ (or ‘Back’). Human-born males ... an unsolved problem (254) The basic structural problem of Adulthood Rites, as Lilith’s education was of Dawn. They can’t help what they are ... what they become (255) The other half of the problem, with debate about parental responsibility in sharp focus, for while the children (multiple; this is not the child with which Lilith was just pregnant at the end of Dawn) and Lilith cannot help themselves, Nikanj certainly and in detail did make them exactly what they are. See next annotation. Nothing in him is mismatched (255) Biochemical sense in Nikanj’s ooloi boast must be admitted. The child is neither rejected by Lilith nor less than whole, yet how can Human and Oankali halves match? It is the Hegelian dialectic writ large, thesis and antithesis creating synthesis—but in the dialectic thesis and antithesis are related by opposition, while there is no reason to think Human and Oankali (or Human and any alien) related save as living beings. CHAPTER 2 He was Akin (255) A superb name, combining Yoruba male name Akin, ‘strong’, ‘hero’, with English akin, ‘kin to’, producing a statement more Oankali than Human. Humans formulate such philosophies, usually with some mysticism, but SF context sharpens statements of this kind: consider Terence’s “I am human; nothing human is alien to me”. Akin’s development continues to draw on Freud’s descriptions of infant growth, but deliberately crowds them to accelerate away from Human norms. the one who never came to him (256) A revelation of Oankali sensibility and attitudes to mortality. What would it mean thus to ‘know’ a long-dead ‘parent’? or to have five parents, of three genders and two species? He would share any pain he caused (257) A theological principle in some faiths, transference of pain is a touchstone for Butler in countering cruelty. See Note 1.5. nucleus ... chromosomes ... genes ... DNA ... nucleotides ... smaller particles (257) See note 1.6. The smaller particles are molecules and atoms, implying Akin’s internal vision can resolve structures of less than 1,000 angstroms (tenmillionths/metre)—better than scanning electron microscopes.

53 babies born with teeth (258) Cf. the future Richard III in Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI: “The Midwife wonder’d, and the Women cri’de / O Jesus blesse us, he is borne with teeth, / And so I was, which plainly signified, / That I should snarle, and bite, and play the dogge : / Then since the Heavens have shap’d my Body so, / Let Hell make crook’d my Minde to answer it.” (5.6.74–9). Richard is at the time killing King Henry VI. CHAPTER 3 isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation (262) This implies elimination in Oankali society of a wide range of possible variations, since ooloi will not select for them. In taking over their evolution completely and eliminating natural variation, Oankali create their need to meld genetically with other species, whose different and creative DNA provides changes preventing racial stagnation. it resembled a huge caterpillar (262) The ship-tending Oankali are important in Book III, Ch. 6. Margit (263) Hungarian form of Margaret (Greek margarites, ‘pearl’). St Margaret of Antioch, 4th century martyr, is patron of expectant mothers. someday she would not let him nurse (266) Going past Freud to Melanie Klein (1882–1960), particularly associated with breastfeeding and play in infancy. CHAPTER 4 a resister (267) A Human who resists/lives apart from the Oankali. scigee (270) An invented word. a trading village (271) One involved in the Oankali ‘gene trade’. Augustino Leal (272) Augustino, from St Augustine rather than Roman emperor Augustus, contains the same meaning (‘august, important’). In Early Modern English and Modern Spanish leal means ‘loyal’. if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone (274) A potent counterpoise of Human–Oankali ethics, continuing the issues raised in the revelation of Lilith’s first pregnancy at the end of Dawn. CHAPTER 5 They’ll want your life story (274) The village ethos of Lo is Oankali, hungering to collect difference. Humans would be hostile for longer before primate curiosity came to the fore, a point developed throughout the chapter.

54 Eka (275) Oankali endearment to a pre-metamorphic (unsexed) child. Chemically eka- (Sanskrit eka, ‘one’) is a prefix for elements listed under another element, that have yet to be discovered and named. Phoenix (276) In Egyptian mythology a magnificent bird. Only one lived at a time; every 500 years it burned itself, emerging newborn from the ashes; hence a symbol of recovery and immortality. to bring back civilisation (279) Human civilisation, warts and all—under the circumstances, however emotionally understandable, an irrational plan. Hell, I believed ... (279) Picking up the solitary religious expletive in Dawn (p. 240), and conjoining Hell with ‘to believe’ (as distinct from to know). Religious language, often as expletives, spreads strongly through Adulthood Rites. neotenic larva (283) Neotenic (Greek neo-, ‘new’, + teinein, ‘to extend’) refers to larvae that achieve sexual maturity without metamorphosis, like salamanders (axolotls in the neotenic stage), beetles, and midges. Of insects ‘paedogenesis’ is also used, and in some midges is fatal to the mother, daughter larvae consuming her to escape—a malign form of a process Oankali have tamed. the soft yellow glow of the ceiling (283) Light produced by organisms (glowworms, jellyfish) is bioluminescence, of interest in space design as a possible solution for space habitation or travel integrating air-control and food production. CHAPTER 6 Lilith ... loaded with bad connotations (285) A new perspective, transformation among Resisters of Lilith’s reputation, based less on any facts than twisted guilts and repudiations of the first group’s complicity in Loehr’s murder of Shing. menagerie (285) From Latin manēre, ‘to remain’; cognate with ménage, ‘household’, but menagerie in English implies a collection of animals. had no Humanity (285) This cannot mean ‘have no humanity’ in a broad sense; resisters who steal construct children, however, surely lack humanity while being top-full of Humanity. Butler deconstructs our species’ smugness of self-image. seen a woman nursing (285) Perceived propriety of public breast-feeding was a topic of debate in the 1980s–90s. In the UK it is now unremarkable; in the US it remains more taboo, and male attitudes more prurient. We need cultural as well as genetic diversity for a good trade (289) A large statement, reflecting Oankali lack of culture. They dislike music and seem to practice no visual, plastic, nor performative arts. your ozone layer (290) Damage by fluorocarbons and other synthetic chemicals

55 was suspected in the 1970s, proven in the mid-1980s, since when ozone layer has disseminated in the popular scientific imaginary. It is a region of the atmosphere 15–30 km high with relatively high concentrations of ozone, which helps block harmful ultraviolet radiation. Its attenuation by pollutants is linked to rising incidence of skin cancers. a normal trade (290) This implies that Oankali behaviour with Humans, if ethically flawed, is so because of prior Human self-destruction. a second Satan or Satan’s wife (297) Invoking biblical & rabbinical associations of Lilith as Adam’s rebellious wife and a (demon-)mother; see Lilith Iyapo (5). a talent for Humans (299) Cf. Lilith’s “talent for cancer” (p.22). Butler used the idea as a central principle in Parable of the Talents (1998), from Matthew 25:14– 30, about the master who gave three servants money while he was away, and on return punished the one who hadn’t used money to make money. A talent was a large but variable weight or sum of money throughout the classical world, and came to mean the weight or worth of something. CHAPTER 7 Oankali, who could not write anything ... (305) A theme coloured by the dedication of Dawn and Adulthood Rites. It is not obvious that in their pre-trade forms, using a chemical and not any spoken language, no writing was required; issues of contact at a distance and over time are still open. The question is what writing represents, and whether being without it is empowerment or limitation. peripatus (306) A species of velvet worm, a nocturnal carnivore that catches prey with a kind of glue and eats it alive. Resisters. Raiders. Child thieves! (307) The terms become quasi-synonymous. his un-Human characteristics (308) There is irony in “ability to speak” and “intelligence”, often used to distinguish Humans from ‘animals’, as un-human. 2.2.2 Book Two: Phoenix Book Title To ‘phoenix’ as a symbol of renewal and immortality (p. 276) should be added solitude—there can only be one—and inability to multiply. The word is similar in all languages, transliterating Greek phoinix, perhaps cognate with phoinos, ‘blood-red’; it is a southern constellation, a genus of date-palms that readily hybridise, and the state capital of Arizona, built over an abandoned Amerindian city.

56 CHAPTER 1 prop roots (313) Roots an at an angle from the stem, above ground, to support as well as nourish the plant. He had been born to work with a Human male parallel ... (314) Nikanj has said as much about itself; this observation of Dichaan’s created identity emphasises that Oankali treat themselves as they treat Humans, and that ooloi determine family structures. CHAPTER 2 Upriver (316) Lo is on the Amazon or a tributary, so upriver is westward, towards the foothills of the Andes. canoe ... oars (316) Canoes are by definition paddled, not rowed; paddles are by definition not oars, being held by the paddler. Oars rest in oarlocks. willing to endure pain rather than ... (319) An idea that becomes important in tandem with religious expletives and revelation of what Resisters have become. As in many religious systems, suffering becomes invested with virtue, and relief stigmatised as unholy, cowardly, or corrupt. He could think, but ... could not act (319) This puts Akin in the same position as Lilith at the beginning of Dawn, but his captors are worse than Oankali. tools, glass, good cloth, a woman or two ... (321) Explicit reduction of women to property (in very Human fashion) contrasts with Nikanj’s concern about free will. worms (321) A usual Resister term for Oankali, from their sensory tentacles, anticipated in Lilith’s first impressions of Jdhaya (p. 19). beans ... deadly (322) No particular species is implied. Many beans contain toxins that require boiling (e.g. kidney beans) or make them inedible. CHAPTER 3 normal body temperature (324) In Humans, 37°C (98.6°F). CHAPTER 4 hemorrhaging (326) From Greek haima, ‘blood’, + rrhage, ‘a break’ (rhegnynai, ‘to burst’), covering all bleeding; haemorrhage nevertheless implies severe blood loss and/or internal bleeding. an ulcer (327) In medicine an open sore or lesion (Latin ulcus, Greek elkos, ‘wound’) on skin or (typically) mucous membrane, characterised by cratering,

57 necrosis, and pus. The Resistor probably has a peptic ulcer, a wound in stomach lining caused by Helicobacter pylori and over-production of hydrochloric acid. Ulcers cause chronic blood loss and can rupture, causing acute haemorrhage. a traitor to his own kind. He chose to be a traitor (328) An important dynamic (cf. ‘sleeping with the enemy’, p. 232), but by what laws, to what body, in violation of what oath or obligation, has Tino been treacherous? How does this intra-Human loyalty work, or reward adherents? Sir John Harington’s crisp epigram—‘Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? / If it do prosper, none dare call it treason.’—is reversed, as Oankali ‘rewards’ to Tino (health, parenthood) are the prosperity Resisters deny themselves. Humans persecute their different ones ... Oankali seek difference (329) A bald statement of Human-Oankali difference, indicting intra-Human persecution of whatever kind and leading to what seems Lilith’s and Butler’s moral judgement: “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.” CHAPTER 5 Eleven months ... fifteen ... eighteen (331) Length of gestation relates to mass, complexity, and state at birth. One must be able to fend for oneself at once or have a kin-group to provide nurture. Humans have anomalously long gestation relative to mass and very long infantile dependence. Oankali normative 18-month gestation is more anomalous, indicating great internal complexity; longer than Human gestation signals constructs’ enhanced abilities. Gestation periods are highly invariant within species, rarely departing more than ±4% from species norm—one of the smallest degrees of variability in any biological dimension— but Oankali manipulate the balance of uterine and post-natal development. Ahajas had no birth orifice (332) The image of young ‘chewing’ their way out is potent in SF and other imaginaries. Its closest real-world cognate is an insect family of wasps, flies, and galls, Ichneumonidae, some of which lay eggs inside the larvae of other species; when eggs hatch, Ichneumon larvae consume the host from within—the image of fatal parasitism in Alien and Butler’s award-winning story ‘Bloodchild’. One implication is that Oankali have genetically absorbed the process, taming it; alternatively, given the painfree consensual ease of Oankali birth, the point may be that given chemical capacity and intra-uterine awareness, a permanent “birth orifice” is inefficient. Maintaining one would be possible, but would constrain ooloi design; absence of one reifies ooloi-mediated physical aversion of Oankali fe/males, who lack external genitalia.

58 sair orifice (333) Butler’s coinage for Oankali throat orifices that allow them to breathe in air and water; probably coincidentally, Sa’ir is one of the seven levels of Jahannah, the Islamic hell. conscientious, normal Humans ... might kill him (334) An important secondary dynamic, wherein well-meaning is undermined and inverted by wilful ignorance or refusal to acknowledge difference. Dichaan imagines a relatively benign though still potentially fatal form; deeply malign forms will be seen. CHAPTER 6 Galt (334) In geology, ga(u)lt is a name for Southern English beds of clay and marl; gald is in Norwegian ‘hard ground’, in Icelandic ‘hard snow’. This Galt’s red colouring is consistent with a Scottish-Irish ancestry. Tilden (334) An English habitation name associated with Bill Tilden (1893– 1953), a great tennis player, and Samuel J. Tilden (1814–86), a reforming Democrat who in 1876 won the popular vote in the presidential election but was controversially defeated in the electoral college. Hillmann (335) Unlike the symbolic Phoenix, this resistor-village name is an eponym—a subtle expression of Human enslavement to hierarchy. Damek ... Iriarte and Kaliq (335) Damek is a slavic variant of Adam ( ‘son of red earth’). Iriarte is a common Hispanic surname, probably a habitation name. Kaliq is Arabic, meaning ‘creative’. topsoil to the rain (336) Resistors use methods derived from Western agricultural technology in temperate climates, radically unsuitable for farming in Amazonia. agouti (338) A large jungle-dwelling South American rodent, Dasyprocta aguti, 40–60cm (16–24”) in length, reddish-brown to black in colouring. It’s a wonder he hasn’t poisoned himself (338) It is wholly normal that Akin hasn’t poisoned himself; the only thing that came close was beans his abductors attempted to feed him while drunk. Utter inconsistency is painfully apparent. Ananas ... bohnen ... bananen ... mangos (338) German: pineapples, beans, bananas, mangoes. He looks okay, that’s what’s important (341) Traditional human prejudice about appearance, and feminist critiques of patriarchal obsession with appearance, are both ironised in Resistor treatment of pre-metamorphic construct children. CHAPTER 7 Swahili (342) A Bantu languages spoken in East Africa, influenced by Arabic and

59 written in Arabic script before the Roman alphabet was introduced; an official language of Kenya and Uganda, and lingua franca of a large area. CHAPTER 8 Vladlengrad (343) A composite of Russian names. Vladivostok (“controlling the east”) is a northern Pacific seaport; Leningrad was Soviet St Petersburg, on the Baltic; Stalingrad (Volgograd) is in SW Russia, NE of Rostov. Whether Oankali ethnically streamed Humans released on Earth is moot, but villages names imply ethnic streaming (competition? hostility?) has either been rapidly established or largely preserved within Resister culture. CHAPTER 9 niño (345) Spanish, ‘child, infant’; an endearment. bushmaster (346) A large Central and South American snake, Lachesis muta, a pit-viper (as are rattlesnakes) whose bite is potentially fatal. the church ... prayers (346–7) The first indication other than expletives of the survival of religious practice. By comparison with some SF religious questions are suppressed—alien encounter will pose a quandary for all faiths and open an arsenal of rational argument; Tino’s reported habituation elides the question of to whom or what he supposes prayers addressed. I don’t understand ... but I believe you (349) A sign of Akin’s high intelligence: how can anyone ‘understand’ behaviour that displaces hatred of one individual onto another? What would it mean to ‘understand’ such behaviour? Yori (352) A Japanese name, meaning ‘reliable’. suppressed emotion ... deadly tension (355) Diction gives a Freudian cast to older thinking, that suppression leads to tensions and malfunctions that endanger. CHAPTER 10 what she called a decent vegetarian meal (355) Rare satire: as vegetarianism became faddish in the 1980s-90s, dull, unnourishing meals were often served. something other than water (357) Presumably alcohol, as an antiseptic. a piece of folded cloth between his teeth (358) Standard before anaesthesia: clenching the jaw helped patients not to bite off their tongues during surgery. Mateo (358) Like Matthew, from Hebrew Matatiyah, ‘gift of God’.

60 CHAPTER 11 Pilar (360) Spanish, ‘pillar [of strength]’. His new sibling (361) The desperate importance to Akin of separation from his sibling is implicit in data supplied in Ch. 5, about Ahajas giving birth, but has not previously been explicit as a major trope, the largest single act of conscious wrongdoing Oankali commit. pummelos (361) Or pumelos, the grapefuit-like fruit of a South-East Asian tree, Citrus maxima, also called ‘shaddocks’. Huntington’s disease (363) Or Chorea, a progressive, hereditary, neurological disorder, typically becoming active in middle age (35–50) and causing physical and mental symptoms leading to premature death. Described in 1872 by US physician George Huntington (1850–1916), the disease is a focus of genetic research. The relevant gene has been identified, and the mutation can be tested for, but the condition remains incurable; 5–12% of sufferers commit suicide. Maturing Chkahichdahk (365) This implies a species rather than individual name, but the greater import is connection of their life-cycle with stripping a planet of all water and organics. In many SF worlds that include galactic politics this would be a crime to all spacefaring races, destroying planetary potential for evolution. The universe beyond Earth is never considered, or the Chkahichdahk life-cycle and Oankali attitude to planets would be higher on the agenda. CHAPTER 12 lasers (366) An acronym: light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation. acid rain (366) Rain absorbing pollutants, becoming acidic, and damaging plants became a flagship issue of environmental concern in the 1980s. Reductions in first-world emission of sulphur and nitrogen compounds has since alleviated the problem, but it remains a pathway for serious damage to ecosystems. A lie (368) The distinction between myths as untruths and symbols is a challenge: there is an aspect Akin doesn’t grasp but Gabe is emotive and wishful. CHAPTER 13 the books most likely to be desired (369) It is possible to imagine reconstructing a printing press, original works listed could be short pamphlets, and printing from wood- or linocut plates would serve, but production of a complete bible would require type, and hence a foundry—a scale of production greater than anything

61 else suggests for Phoenix. The data therefore seems more symbolic than realistic. Macy and Kolina Wilton (370) Macy is English, of uncertain origin but perhaps meaning ‘enduring’; Kolina is Greek (‘pure’), Wilton an English habitation name. Kaalshkaht eka Jaitahsokahldahktohj aj Dinso (371) Shkaht of clan Kaal, premetamorphic child of male Jaitahs, female Okahl, ooloi Dahktohj of group Dinso. Neci (371) Probably from Latin, necō, ‘to kill, do to death’. Amma (371) ‘Mother’ in Sanskrit and many daughter languages; an Indian heritage is consistent with the girls’ reported skin-colour and hair-type. Twi (372) Pronounced ‘chwee’, a Kwa language with c.7m speakers in Ghana. Ghana ... English (372) Ghana, on the Volta basin and delta in West Africa, was from 1874–1957 a Crown Colony, Gold Coast. English is the official language. Crying ... had to be frightened (372) Children’s distress and emotional welfare are of no account to Resisters; only their own distress at lacking children counts. CHAPTER 14 Abira (374) A female form of Hebrew Abiram, ‘father of height’, ‘proud’. In the bible, Abiram is (i) a son of Eliab who joined Korah in rebellion against Moses, and died in an earthquake (Num. 16:1–27), and (ii) a son of Hiel the Bethelite who also perished prematurely (1 Kings 16:34). Neci Roybal ... Stancio (374) Roybal is a name in Hispanic Californian politics Butler would have known. Edward R. Roybal (1916–2005) was a Democrat Representative 1963–93; daughter Lucille Roybal-Allard (b. 1941) has been a Representative since 1993. Neci and a –cio ending suggest Latino identity, and Butler may express political hostility in using the name. They won’t feel much now ... so young ... small (375) As specious a ‘logic’ as can be imagined. Refusal to acknowledge Oankali physiology in the constructs leads to Neci’s plan of repeated mutilation and sensory deprivation. What she proposes would be equivalent to eternally recurrent punishments in myth. CHAPTER 15 a Human Akjai (378) Symmetry compelling in Human terms has no Oankali purchase: Oankali Akjai have Oankali ability to gene-manipulate; Human Akjai would have no such ability, and remain (as Oankali see it) fatally bound to the ‘Human Contradiction’ of intelligence serving hierarchy. He is being left here (379) The only logical conclusion, given Oankali abilities. You mean too much to my people (382) Humans and Oankali know themselves

62 to be abusing Akin, but justify it. Akin is like the ‘half-breed’ in Westerns, caught between cultures, but in infancy, while (by pre-war Human norms) precocity exposes the trope to powerful internal pressure. You and the girls are hope (383) A bitter turn of illogic, a hope known to delude. CHAPTER 16 Humans needed to touch people ... pleasurable or useful (386) Psychological and cultural needs for tactility became part of a pop-psych lexicon in the 1980s, with interest in all forms of sensory deprivation and Ecstasy as ‘the hug drug’ (users experience enhanced tactile sensation). Oankali neural contact with ooloi or one another blinds Akin to what Humans gain in physical contact. Those mountains ... volcanic activity (386) The Andes (Quechua andi, ‘high crest’) have many active volcanoes but were not “pushed up ... by volcanic activity”—vulcanism is one symptom of a subduction fault running the length of South America, Nazca and Antarctic plates sliding beneath the South American plate. Some mountain-building is volcanic but the Pacific edge of the South American plate, high ground to begin with, is directly lifted and buckled. Whether the error is attributable to the speaker rather than Butler is unclear. pictures of Christ (387) In Catholic devotion door-rapping signifies the demand ‘to let Christ into your life’, the “red shape that contained a torch” is the Sacred Heart of Christ’s burning love, and the table the Last Supper. Images that ‘seem to move’ are holograms, a laser technique developed by Dennis Gabor in 1948. Plastic? ... poison packed tight together (388) Akin’s violent Oankali distaste for plastics is interesting. Plastics are synthetic polymers (made of a simple, repeating unit) that can be moulded by heat and/or pressure. Most are organic, manufactured from hydrocarbons like oil that come from decomposed animal bodies. Akin might be sensing ancient deaths, or reacting to organic compounds being fixed in a non-biodegradable, utterly inert (dead) form. Plastics used to kill people ... fire (389) Non-flammable plastics were the focus of a major campaign in the 1980s–90s; legislation about use in furniture was passed in many countries. The problem was foams and coverings that produced cyanide, making death from smoke inhalation common. rather go out and eat leaves ... frown ... laugh (390) Tate is joking, Akin takes her seriously. There is an allusion to a children’s rhyme, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to go into the garden and eat worms”, ironised through the use of ‘worms’ as a derogatory Human term for Oankali.

63 CHAPTER 17 Gilbert and Anne Senn ... Shinizu ... Sabina Dobrowski (391) Gilbert (Norman Gisilbert, using Germanic elements gīsil, ‘[noble] hostage’, + berht, ‘bright, famous’) is suggestive, and all show the range of human cultures. some sickness in her family ... didn’t dare have children (392) Neci’s argument is distasteful as well as ignorant and short-circuited. aliens who don’t even understand how we see things (393) The irony is bitter: what Neci wants will physically blind the girls. Don’t leave me here alone (395) An elegant way of deepening Oankali moral transgression in leaving Akin with Resisters: Shkaht and Amma must abandon Akin, because what they have as Oankali (their pair-bond) has been denied him. CHAPTER 18 Humans can drink it without dying (397) Within limits: Akin’s dismissal of alcohol underestimates its toxicity, of which vomiting is one sign. CHAPTER 19 harnessed and tied (401) Neci’s desire is to limit, deprive, enslave, and animalise Akin, as she wished for the girls, but as those cannot be terms in which she thinks of her intentions a substantial pathology is needed to understand her. CHAPTER 20 my body would either change its structure and neutralize it (405) An idea consistent with Oankali physiology, but in the SF imaginary owing much to Herbert’s Dune, in which Fremen Reverend Mothers can transform certain chemicals—a process Herbert narrates in detail. why Human kids put things in their mouths (406) Various theories, circulating around Freud, suggest young babies perceive no barrier between themselves and the world, and do not understand the mouth as an orifice. CHAPTER 21 Tate had been almost a relative (406) Relatedness, for Oankali directly perceptible in genetics, implies degrees of identity and trustworthiness; there are implications for Oankali society and consensus Butler does not explore.

64 CHAPTER 22 an old man ... daughters ... Lear (408) Gabe performs a one-man version of Shakespeare’s King Lear (c.1605), now regarded as his ‘greatest’ tragedy. This is the only mention in the trilogy of a canonical work: resonance centres on commodification, alienation, vilification, and rejection of children, and Human reduction to self-awareness as a “poor, bare forked animal”. to remember a feeling ... You do that? (409) This is ‘Method acting’, developed from the ‘System’ of Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) by Lee Strasberg (1901–82). In 1949 Strasberg founded the Actors Studio, New York, and through pupils who became film-stars exerted enormous influence. His techniques do not work well on stage, and are difficult to apply to Shakespeare: this scene seems a rare moment when Butler deploys material she doesn’t fully understand. There is an underlying, consistent concern with Oankali chemical equivalents of culture. Inca (409) Quechua, inka, ‘ruler’; a pre-Colombian empire in Andean South America from Ecuador to Chile. Most Incan sites are between the cordilleras of the Andes (as Gabe acknowedges); Gabe and Akin must be east of the Eastern cordillera, but pre-Columbian origins are certainly possible. Indians were descended from Asians (409) In diffusionist theory the Americas were populated from Asia over the Alaskan land-bridge and by boat across the Pacific—the orthodox view; recent discoveries raise doubt about sequence of events, but evidence still points to a single human origin in Africa. travel and collect and integrate new life (410) An old trope, aliens collecting specimens, derived from imperial connoisseurship, zoos, and menageries, made famous by US novelist Kurt Vonnegut (b.1922) in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). CHAPTER 23 both disappeared over the hill (417) The scene resembles a Western ride into the sunset, posing Gabe and Tate as emblems of what is best among Resisters. 2.2.3 Book Three: Chkahichdahk Book Title This Oankali word, used several times without full explanation, is the ship’s name, and a species with which Oankali are in symbiosis. In Imago ‘Chka(h)’ is a common endearment between mated adults (pp. 424, 426, 527), but whether this is a short form or the name incorporates an element meaning ‘lifecompanion’ is moot. The composite species is parasitic on planets and their life.

65 CHAPTER 1 He’s twenty (421) 17 years have passed between Books II and III. Chkah ( 424, 426) Used by Dichaan to Tino, then Nikanj to Dichaan, this is an Oankali endearment between mated adults—confirmed in Imago (p. 527). so many very different things are working together to keep him alive (427) An important idea for Butler, little recognised outside bioscience in the 1980s but since widely appreciated so far as ‘good’ bacteria go—symbiotes we host gastrointestinally to digest certain foods (especially milk). The radical case is mitochondria, as Nikanj says “a previously independent form of life” with its own DNA that became incorporated into cells to provide energy—the model for the Oankali ‘organelle’ (see organelle (41)); mtDNA is passed down the female line and offers genealogy an important tool; there is interest in mitochondrial malfunction as a cause of degenerative disease. The challenge is to recognise ourselves less as individuals with self-sovereign rights, more as community. They lose too much of what I value in them (428) Nikanj’s reluctance has a selfish rather than explicitly moral or ethical motive. tell Lo to signal the ship (429) The mechanism of shuttle flight is not explained, though some details emerge—a good example of Butler eliding matters that don’t interest her even when they have (serious) consequences for things that do. CHAPTER 2 Tiikuchahk (429) The sibling with whom abduction prevented Akin bonding. not been able to bond ... least interesting (429) An intriguing physiological instance of Oankali tendency to see things (for all their complexity) as polarised. CHAPTER 3 Ayre, their oldest sister (433) The baby with whom Lilith was impregnated at the end of Dawn, named for her dead, pre-war first-born son. Igbo (434) A people of SE Nigeria. After massacres by Fulani and Hausa in the north, they attempted secession from Nigeria, declaring a Republic in 1967 and fighting the Biafran War (1967–70). English-speaking people ... he was browner (434) The multiple prejudicial associations of English-speaking peoples with whiteness and open racism are surprisingly crude, but Butler may (ignoring Afrikaans) have had in mind South Africa, still under apartheid when she was writing.

66 groups of two or more people (437) An insight explaining the lack of Oankali loners, and identifying with new clarity Akin’s role as one. Oankali did not like music (439) An unexplained dislike: biochemical language seems to preclude art. The lack is alienating, and striking in that after maths, music has often been imagined a primary tool of communication with aliens. CHAPTER 4 No shuttle could travel this close to a star (441) Like means of communication, shuttles’ propulsion is assumed: “its own internal sun” suggests nuclear fusion, but nothing else supports such capacity for thinking, and a metaphor seems probable. On ship and Earth avoidance of specifics doesn’t matter, but even one paragraph imagining perceptions of a living spacecraft raises questions. In hard SF, ability to understand and narrate gravitational constraints on travel are a major test, and Butler’s distinction doesn’t make sense: a planet’s gravity well is steeper at the earth’s orbital distance of 93 million miles than the gravity well of the sun, so if the shuttle could get off-planet it could escape the solar system. coati (441) Any of four species of the genera Nasua & Nasuella, South American racoons with elongated snouts and tails. They are us, too (441) This suggests that as mitochondria are to Humans and the organelle to Oankali, so Oankali are to Chkahichdahk; alternatively, cells of the ship carry the Oankali organelle, making them a sibling species. CHAPTER 5 pseudocorridor (445) The prefix, unused since ‘pseudotrees’ in Dawn (p. 36), referring to structures within Chkahichdahk, is associated with the ship but ... pseudotentacles (446) ... extends to its component parts. The true referent is now itself alien, Oankali tentacles, more complex than anything they design the tilio to need—but it still has and can express curiosity. ooloi from the Kaal or Lo (449) The implications are unclear: one possibility is that regions of the ship with a biochemical identity binding all Oankali dwellers within them produce a seedling that becomes a dwelling, simultaneously extending the clan-group and the ‘place that is (of) that clan-group’. CHAPTER 6 an ooloi ... large and caterpillarlike (452) This Oankali form was mentioned in

67 Book I, Ch. 3 (pp. 262–3). The backstory now attached, revealing that Oankali began to trade (during the years Lilith slept) by refashioning themselves as speaking humanoids, should not surprise. Such capacity is implicit, but Humans are obsessed with Platonic accidents (form, size, colour), and suppose them of the essence—hence, for example, the pejorative ‘worms’. Oankali are changing human anatomy and physiology, and seeking to give the construct race attitude. endorphins (454) A contraction of endogamous morphines, hormones that bind to opiate receptors in the brain, lessening pain and inducing calm. Light-headedness after prolonged crying is from endorphin-release. most forms of electromagnetic radiation (455) Humans see only in the ‘visible spectrum’, frequencies of c.1015 Hertz, and wavelengths of c.3x10-7m. The spectrum ranges from radiation generated by commutated direct current (1 Hz, 3x108m) through radio and TV signals, radar, microwaves, infra-red, the visible spectrum, X-rays, gamma-rays, & cosmic photons (1023 Hz, 3x10-15m). Animals typically have wide auditory range, but wide visual range is rare and on current understandings it is inconceivable a living being could perceive across the spectrum. Oankali have assembled and harmonised abilities in a form that can benefit them, cognate with ability to manipulate tiny objects (genes, molecules), which become too small for it to be possible to see them when their size becomes less than wavelengths in the visible spectrum. CHAPTER 7 the second one or the fourth one (457) The planets Venus and Mars. There’s nothing living there (457) In SF and scientific terms, such brevity and absoluteness of answer are a joke, given the predilection of early SF for Martians (generated from seventeenth-century telescopic images of Mars showing ‘canals’) and preoccupation of space research with non-Terran life in this solar system. It could be done? / Yes. (457) Terraforming Mars to produce a warm biosphere with sufficient oxygen for unaided Human respiration has been considered in SF, with increasingly hard science; see Kim Stanley Robinson (b.1952), Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), & Blue Mars (1996). Wasn’t that work chosen for me ... (458) Akin’s ‘democratic’ deprivation is plain, but significance continues to unfold. Oankali culture making progress dependent on hurting a child echoes a terrifying story by Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ (in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, 1975), where beauty and happiness depend on a suffering child locked in a room.

68 CHAPTER 8 confusing the hell out of me (461) Religious diction has more ‘hell’ than anything else, and the inter-species dissonance of the metaphor strengthens. truly eka (462) The word here means ‘sexless/immature’, losing its endearment. CHAPTER 9 too tame, too planned (463) The critique implicit in Oankali need to merge with (naturally variant) species, because their nature controls their evolution, transfers to socialisation. In Lo the habitat was as sophisticated as need be and the planet provided challenge; on Chkahichdahk all is of necessity present and organised, and life becomes too safe, unchallenging and stagnant. Dehkiaht seized his hand ... (465) The functioning of ooloi aversion to physical contact between mates is unexplained, but possessive and predatory. It is shown to have deleterious effects of Humans but not explored or explained in ooloi terms. It seems probable that Oankali avoidance of hierarchical problems involves primary binding of adults to one ooloi acting as a suppressor mechanism mediated by chemically induced dis/inclinations. Then let them fail (468) The ‘right to fail’ (coined by John Dexter of London’s Royal Court in the late 1950s) has been variously celebrated. Beckett summed up one aspect—“Try. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”—and it is important in architecture, computing, and fields where profit or safety become stifling. in the manner of a storyteller ... abduction, captivity, and conversion (468) Invoking alien abduction, biblical chapters, slave narratives, and early US tales of Amerindian abduction, a subgenre of frontier writing. Identification of Akin’s story in Book II as a conversion narrative opens a new perspective on religious language and revival associated with Phoenix and its printing press & church. CHAPTER 10 It spoke through the ship (469) Butler again assumes mechanisms of communication and consensus other writers explore or specify in an imaginative way. In other works Butler posits telepathy, and in effect that happens here. create more life only to destroy it (470) Much depends on “only”: if a new course to destruction took a thousand years, or generations, are they rendered null by ultimate failure? The Oankali moral view is not unreasonable, but extreme. If your flesh knows (470) The metaphor of knowing in flesh (or in the bone) is

69 made literal by Oankali. Their chemical awareness of knowledge, perception, and genetics make flesh directly participant in refusal and acknowledgement. Akin turns against them the argument Nikanj directed at Lilith, reading bodily consent as superior to mental dissent. CHAPTER 11 your ooan (475) Your ooloi parent. A certainty of the flesh (476) A further revolution in religious perspectives, for what Butler carefully doesn’t say is that in Christian perspectives flesh is certain of failure and destruction. Only in the driving emergence of Natural Philosophy and science has a general notion of earthly progress, onwards and upwards with evolution, been widely influential. To some degree Oankali biochemical perspective endorses religious millenarianism, but stripped of salvation for anyone in favour of wholesale damnation. 2.2.4 Book Four: Home Book Title As a powerful, Human idea Home is in contrast to previous titular places, Lo, Phoenix, and Chkahichdahk; cf. the distinct Book IV of Dawn, ‘The Training Floor’. Butler knew an instructive passage in Delaney’s Babel-17: Take the Çiribians, who have enough knowledge to sail their triple-yoked poached eggs from star to star; they have no word for ‘house’, ‘home’, or ‘dwelling’. ‘We must protect our families and our homes.’ When we were preparing the treaty between the Çiribians and ourselves at the Court of Outer Worlds, I remember that sentence took forty-five minutes to say in Çiribian. Their whole culture is based on heat and changes in temperature. We’re just lucky because they do know what a ‘family’ is, because they’re the only ones beside humans who have them. But for ‘house’ you have to end up describing ‘... an enclosure that creates a temperature discrepancy with the outside environment of so many degrees, capable of keeping comfortable a creature with a uniform body temperature of ninety-eight-point-six, the same enclosure being able to lower the temperature during the months of the warm season and raise it during the cold season, providing a location where organic sustenance can be refrigerated in order to be preserved, or warmed well above the boiling point of water to pamper the taste mechanism of the indigenous inhabitants who, through customs that go back through millions of hot and cold seasons, have habitually sought out this temperature changing device...’ and so forth and so on. At the end you have given them

70 some idea of what a ‘home’ is and why it is worth protecting. Give them a schematic of the air-conditioning and central heating system, and things begin to get through. (Part III, Ch. 4)

CHAPTER 1 Margit, who was brown now (482) As pre-metamorphic eka, she was gray. while he still looked Human (482) The more Oankali a construct eka appears, the more Human it tends to appear after metamorphosis, and vice-versa, so Humanlooking Akin expects to change substantially. The effects of this symmetry on individual construct children is a matter of moral concern. CHAPTER 2 shabbier (482) A shabby phoenix suggests need for immolatory renewal. I don’t fucking believe it (484) Another obscenity very active in context (cf. p. 203): Akin returns to the father who could not ‘fuck up’ a son. Only Humans could do that (489) A trope insisting Gabe’s body-language is damning Tate because her predicament forces him to acknowledge dependency and weakness. As Gabe and Tate are primary example of good love and kindness among the Resisters, such egotism is ominous. Huntington’s disease (491) See p. 363. CHAPTER 3 Gabe’s interruption (492) This is set up by Tate’s assurance he would not do so: Gabe cannot leave well alone, primate curiosity warped to interfering restlessness that becomes the urge to do what you know not to do, heedless of consequence. CHAPTER 4 Bringing it on so traumatically (495) Making it clear Gabe’s assault and Akin’s exertion not to harm Tate triggered metamorphosis, which should not have happened; again infantilised, Akin must suffer by irrational Human action transformative isolation from his kin-group and in his subsequent identity. homo sap (495) Homo sapiens, ‘knowing man’, the Linnaean name for Humans. CHAPTER 5 Rudra (497) A Hindi name, meaning ‘Howler’ or ‘one who gives voice’, from the

71 Rig Vedic god of storm, the hunt, death and nature. I have to prepare the way (498) Although Akin means it practically, his language is resoundingly religious; he is leading Humans to a new planet. Human purpose isn’t what you say it is. It’s ... what your genes say it is (501) A blunt credo consistent with Oankali and some Human thinking but reductive and deterministic, obviating free will. It is the corollary of the genetic dystopia of the ‘Human Contradiction’, used to obviate resistance as a value. This genetic doom is sufficiently absolute to function tragedically as truth against which to struggle, and readings of Butler need both tragedy and messianic dynamics. CHAPTER 6 Mehtar (503) Like Rudra, a Hindi name, meaning ‘prince’. the goddam leeches (504) A potent extension of ‘worms’ for Oankali: leeches are aquatic bloodsucking worms of the class Hirudinea. Hirudo medicinalis was for centuries used medically to draw blood, and still is in some surgery, but metaphorical extension to, especially, moneylenders makes it ominous. CHAPTER 7 a short, thick gun ... double-barreled (508) This sounds like a sawn-off shotgun, in Sicily a lupara, which gives a pepper of small shot, typically against snakes. Neci ... attempted murder (509) She lives up to her name (Latin necō, ‘to kill’). There will be freedom on Mars (513) Invoking in a different context a familiar concept, connected both to the High Frontier dream of space as Human destiny, and to freedom from overpopulation through expansion within the solar system. what’s this stuff you’ve smeared me with (514) Gabe’s behaviour throughout rescuing Akin, being saved from death and pain by Akin, and instinctively assuming his miraculously healed flesh to be something done to him, embody his Human “horror and beauty in rare combination”. CHAPTER 8 this man disliked Abira (515) As Abira was an Israeli , a hint of anti-Semitism. He never saw either of them again (517) An ending, like the sunset-ride in Westerns, redolent with heroic self-denial, but qualified by the metaphoric value of Phoenix as a name and of its death/Human rebirth by fire.

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2.3 Imago Volume title An imago is (i) in biology an insect in its sexually mature adult stage after (final) metamorphosis, in winged species able to fly; the plural is ‘imagines’ [i-ma-gín-ēs]; (ii) in post-/Freudian psychology, an idealised image of someone, typically a parent, persisting into adulthood to influence behaviour; and (iii) in Jungian psychology, an archetype, a pattern of the collective unconscious, from whence (iv) in literary theory, an archetype, a pattern so widely disseminated in texts as to be considered a universal element or form. Dedication Irie Isaacs The song ‘Feeling Irie’ by Jamaican reggaeman Gregory Isaacs (b.1951) was not released until several years after Imago was published, though it is conceivable he is meant. Irrespective of actual identity, the name has a frisson: Irie is a Rastafarian-Jamaican patois term, perhaps from ‘I Respect I Eternally’, subject to variant definitions, including (i) respect, in the fullest sense, (ii) a state of rightness, (iii) being high on marijuana (considered a form of communion), and (iv) simple approval or endorsement. Isaacs is a Jewish name (Hebrew, ‘laughter’) but biblically associated with God’s demand for sacrifice, so Irie Isaacs summons Rastafarianism and Judaism, their respective histories and resonances in slavery, endurance, coming transformation, and diasporic survival. 2.3.1 Book One: Metamorphosis Book Title From Greek meta, here ‘changed, altered’ (cf. metaphor, metaphysics) + morphe, ‘form, shape’, metamorphosis is change. An impeccably scientific title, drawing on entomology and geology, where metamorphic rocks have been changed by heat and/or pressure, yet also immensely allusive, summoning the Metamorphoses of Ovid, collecting Greek and Roman myths in which people and nymphs are transformed (through divine contact) into animals or vegetation, and The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung, 1916) by Franz Kafka (1883–1924), in which Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself transformed into einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer, traditionally translated as ‘a monstrous insect’, but more literally as ‘a monstrous bug’. Oankali are in their Human-trading form more marine than insectoid, but the form retained by the Akjai is caterpillar-like, and metamorphoses common to all Oankali derive from Terran insects.

73 CHAPTER 1 I slipped into my first metamorphosis (523) A third memorable opening, signifying comically against Kafka, and cleverly setting disturbing markers (“my first metamorphosis”) as well as new norms (“Most people begin ...”). They had grandchildren who were old (524) Ayre, Lilith’s oldest living child, had children in Book III of Adulthood Rites: they being “old” (for this post-metamorphic narrator) implies c.25–40 years have passed between novels (construct metamorphosis seems to happen aged 25–35). If the narrator means Tino now has “old” grandchildren, substantially greater time is implied, 80–100 years. Lilith, subjectively 27 at the beginning of Dawn though living most of those years 250– 280 years earlier, was in her 50s in Book I of Adulthood Rites, in her 70s by its end, and must now be well into her 100s. “Treasured stranger.” “Bridge.” “Life trader.” “Weaver.” “Magnet.” (526) ‘Treasured stranger’ is the first meaning suggested, in Dawn; others are new. This opening chapter is dense with set-up data in a way suggesting Butler’s response (mediated via publishers) to make Imago less dependent on having read earlier novels, but turns with new intensity to the meaning of ooloi, and what it might be to be ooloi, because having dealt with femaleness (Lilith) and construct maleness (Akin), it is Imago’s business to deal with ooloi-ness. This is Jodahs (527) Third-person supply of a first-person narrator’s name is an interesting form of alienation. The name is Oankali but sounds like ‘Judas’. Eka ... lelka ... Chka (527) The meaning of Eka and Chka are apparent in earlier use, though capitalisation of Chka is odd; lelka has not previously been used. with the emigration (528) Human emigration to Mars to form a Human Akjai; the death of an Oankali willing to help Akin is notable. Oankali disregard of memorialisation reflects their chemical awareness and memory of the dead. Your own history tells you (530) A recap that produces the fullest statement in the trilogy of the ‘Human Contradiction’ as the Oankali perceive it. CHAPTER 2 Aaor (533) An invented name, sounding unisex. CHAPTER 3 bent in an attitude of shame (540) A new datum about Oankali; neither shame nor specific posture have previously been specified, only smoothing of tentacles

74 that corresponds to smiling or laughing, and knotting of tentacles into a pre-strike mode that signals tension or fear. Twentieth-century anthropology saw work on ‘shame cultures’ and literary study of shame was also marked; given Oankali consensus and non-hierarchicality, an ethics of shame among ooloi makes sense. a piece of straw floating on a still pond (542) A metaphor closer to religious parable or poetry than the biotechnological register that has dominated. CHAPTER 4 Metamorphosis is sleep (543) Implicitly in Kafka, but not in Ovid where it is an active process of transformation between discrepant rather than sequential forms. between my hearts (543) The double-heart modification featured famously in the BBC TV character Dr Who, and helps explain constructs’ swift strength. a single Oankali organelle (544) The most complete account of the organelle, moving strongly towards an essentialist view, and confirming its characterisation as a super-mitochondrion, an energising, invasive symbiont. Yashi (544) Japanese, ‘peddler’; with various meanings and cognates in Arabic, the most relevant connection might be with Sanskrit and Hindi yoni, ‘female generative principle and organs’, the pair of lingam. by way of radio signals (545) The nagging problem of communication necessary for consensus at a distance is summarily solved without conviction—as if an editor demanded something despite Butler’s disinterest in mechanism. Radio begs as many questions as it answers. One of my brothers (546) Akin. Oeka (547) Extending ‘eka’, an endearment to subadult ooloi. you, as an ooloi, can have no dormant abilities (547) This offers another powerful definition of ooloi—a gender disallowing genetic latency. You’ll be able to change yourself (547) Shape-shifting is the prize Oankali saw when they discovered Human ‘talent for cancer’—the ultimate fruit of Lilith’s lying naked on a battlefield with an alien to allow it to heal a crippling physical and sexual wound. Ovidian stories of gods and their troublesome issue return to sharp focus, but shape-shifting activates aspects of Caribbean, African-American, and Amerindian myth and folk-lore concerned with ‘skin-folk’, who even if rational and nice-seeming tend to be predatory, destructive, and feared. Synergy (549) From Greek sunergos, ‘working together, cooperation’, synergy is the idea that two together do more than two alone, the whole more than the sum of its parts. In Renaissance theology from c.1600, it was adopted by business in

75 the 1960s as a buzz-word for mergers and economies of scale. until they could perceive a consensus. Then they acted (553) This does something to satisfy problems raised by earlier ooloi behaviour, modulating the elevation of ‘body statements’ over verbal statements as the true gauge of what is willed. But ooloi now begin to sound like overwhelming mechanisms for enforcing a notion of democratic consensus no-one else can perceive. CHAPTER 5 a check on the air ... microorganisms (555) An ability that even for Oankali biochemistry sounds impossible; in any human habitation millions of bacteria would be involved, and even allowing for factors operating through irradiation of earth, Lo, and Construct physiology, the idea of an individual being able to check all micro-organisms with which another individual comes into contact is implausible—but Butler needed an earth rather than ship exile. Many. Not most (558) This implies fewer than 50% of Resisters went to Mars. CHAPTER 6 a desert place called Los Angeles (559) Southern California is drier than north, and the SE hosts the Mojave desert. Water shortages have long been a problem for L.A., and water rights a major cause of criminal and civil conflict. Oni and Hozh, Ayodele and Yedik (560) In Japanese folklore oni are a sort of ogre or demon; Oni is also an Amerindian name, said to mean ‘born on holy ground’, while ‘hozh’q’ is Navajo word, ‘beauty of life’. Ayodele is Yoruba, ‘joy has come home’, Yedik a Turkish name without known meaning. premetamorphosal (560) The usual form is ‘premetamorphic’: Butler may have felt -ic forms associated with geology, and preferred –osal for biology. No Human could see ... perhaps no Human completely believed (562) Making it explicit (as in Dawn) that despite physical presence and demonstrated abilities, belief in Oankali is indeed faith rather than knowledge; the journey from Lilith to Jodahs is from faith in others’ perceptions to knowledge of one’s own. It cost them so dearly (564) Ant explanation clarifying the connection between Oankali perceptions of others and morality, relating both to a drive to symbiosis rather than predation or any form of individual triumph. some things shouldn’t be said easily (565) An interesting ethic, that it is right for some statements to be made through nausea, not avoided. cecropia trees (568) From Cecrops I, king of Athens, a genus of South American

76 trees related to nettles (Urticaceae), easily identified by large, lobed leaves. CHAPTER 7 Pascual (569) The Spanish form of Pascal, meaning ‘(of) Easter’; the Latin pasca, pascha, derives from Hebrew pesach, ‘passover’. vine snakes (575) Colubrid snakes of the New World genus Chironius, also called sipos or savanes; like all colubrid snakes, vine snakes are non-venomous. CHAPTER 8 Marina Rivas (579) Marina means ‘of the sea’. Then I would live only as long (583) Another revelation of the price Oankali are pay in the Gene Trade. a cesarean (585) Birth by surgery: the problem Jodahs corrected involved the ability of the pelvic bones to separate sufficiently during birth to allow the baby’s head to pass through the cervix and vagina. CHAPTER 9 large, foul-smelling sores (588) Narrative context explains these and their healing by other ooloi, but their persistence activates myth. A sore figures in the history of Philoctetes, a Greek abandoned en route to Troy because he stank, but needed in the end for his skill as an archer. Philoctetes matters in post-colonial literature, notably the Raj Quartet (1966-75) by Paul Scott (1920-78) & Omeros (1990) by Derek Walcott (b. 1930). 2.3.2 Book Two: Exile Book Title The only non-insectoid title in this volume, a counterpart to ‘Home’ in Adulthood Rites. Exile was thought to be from Latin ex-, ‘away’ + solum, ‘soil’, but is now believed to come from ex- + an earlier Proto-Indo-European root, al-, ‘to wander’; hence Latin exul, ‘banished person’, or one who has wandered away. A punishment from classical times, undertaken in/voluntarily, the theme is central in Modernism. CHAPTER 1 the river west then south (591) They are heading upstream, towards the Andes. Nikanj caught the archer (592) The punishment should be exile to the ship, but

77 the inconvenience of having to transport a prisoner is too great (for Nikanj or Butler), so Nikanj improvises punishment: the adult ooloi as law-enforcer. swollen, discolored, and blistered. The smell of it (592) The wounds have become infected with toxic, anaerobic gas-producing bacteria, causing ‘gas gangrene’; ‘gangrene’ refers to the death of tissue through inadequate bloodsupply. It was poisoning his body (593) Bacteria from the wound-site/s enter the bloodstream, causing septicaemia (blood-poisoning) which is fatal if untreated. But Humans steady me somehow (596) As a maturing construct ooloi, it seems Jodahs can only steady himself when mated. The abilities of the new species only settle when locked into a fully mature (potentially reproductive) pattern. CHAPTER 2 Español? ... Português? ... Sim, senhor. Falo português. (597) ‘Spanish? ... Portuguese? ... Yes, sir. I speak Portuguese.’ You take men as though they were women! (599) João’s pure machismo may be intended as in part a function of Latino ethnicity and cultural identity. The grotesque logic that leaps to Oankali as “the cause of all our trouble”, eliding the Human nuclear war and ignoring the fact that his own existence—like all Humans on Earth he must be over 100—depends on Oankali geneering, is all too Human a failing. CHAPTER 3 its small breasts (601) A compact disturbance of gender, reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin’s confessed pleasure in having written (in The Left Hand of Darkness) that “The King was pregnant”. he hated me for that more than anything (601) A subtle take on the internal emotional politics of psychology: João’s hatred focuses on the revelation that he could with pleasure become the other he hates as a means of self-definition. São Paulo (602) Founded by Jesuits in 1554, this city in SE Brazil grew rapidly from the 1880s and is now South America’s largest, with a population of c.10m (metro-area, c.20m). It is capital of a state with the same name, Brazil’s most populous and economically important. João is the first Human resister introduced who has returned to his home country. the forest now covered (602) Implying the reversal of the destruction of Amazonia by logging, a major concern since the 1980s.

78 And adult ooloi (604) A misprint for ‘An adult ooloi ...’. CHAPTER 4 Nikanj could even signal for help (606) Mechanism is again elided. stress. Distress (611) From the past participle of stringere, ‘to draw together’. so un-Human and so un-Oankali (611) Jodahs’s chameleonism recalls Proteus, a prophetic old man of the sea who tended Poseidon’s seals. He could shapeshift at will (‘protean’) but if seized and held would tell the future. Various rites include a period of lost and/or multiplied identity, and at some level Jodahs’s journey (quest?) resembles metempsychosis, serial reincarnation in animal forms. My body wanders (612) Given the title of this book (see headnote), an important word: Jodahs’s exile is as much internal wandering as imposed precaution. It’s still dividing in two (613) Chkahichdahk are capable of reproduction by producing a seed (such as Lo), and by macro-scale cell-division, doubling itself. The second method would immediately produce a second fully capable ship, while the seed is a far easier proposition but takes several centuries to mature. CHAPTER 5 peccary (614) A small, wild New World pig of the family Tayassuidae; there are two species, Tayassu tajacu & T. albirostris. quadrapedal (615) Four-footed. Tomás ... Jesusa (621) Symbolic names common in Hispanic culture. Disease makes them outcast, like those Jesus (here Jodahs/Judas) heals. Doubter, Betrayer, and Messiah come together with roles transposed ... CHAPTER 6 I would have to betray them (628) ... or not so transposed. CHAPTER 7 but we insisted on acting like animals (630) Lacking hierarchy, Oankali do not denigrate animal life, and use retained or borrowed gene sequences to make available particular abilities or behaviours. She had never had a mate in the Human way. Now she never would (634) The Blessed Virgin Jesusa—a form of virgin birth for the new species. Like the children of Adam and Eve (637) Most churches allow marriage

79 between first cousins—a measure of resistance to genetically based taboos on incestuous mating, applied primarily to sibling and child-parent matches. Their gene pool is too small (637) The consideration that made Lilith’s closing hope in Dawn foolish (p. 248). CHAPTER 8 alpaca (643) A domesticated, long-haired relative of the llama, Lama pacos, standing about 3 feet high. Their natural range is at elevations of 3,000–4,800m (9,840–15,750 ft); the largest populations are in the Peruvian Altiplano. CHAPTER 9 un-Christian ... un-Human (648) The first time religious judgement has been rendered, not merely a religiose oath—but what exactly is un-Christian, and why? Many laws and customs deal with treatment of strangers, but the issues aliens pose for theology are a matter some SF writers have been concerned with. How do you shit? (650) The ultra-efficient digestion Jodahs reports is a necessary aspect of Oankali biochemistry, but excretion in literature has a twentieth-century history. A scene in Ulysses (1921) by James Joyce (1882–1941), Leopold Bloom opening his bowels, caused much shock, was for years cited in judgements banning the book, and became a touchstone against nineteenth-century modesty codes that abhorred literature dealing with anything ‘impolite’. a very long river (651) The Amazon and tributaries run c.6,275km (3,900 miles). a cacao tree (651) Theobroma cacao, whose seeds give cocoa. CHAPTER 10 the carnivorous fish (652) Piranhas, species of Characidae native to Amazonia. poisioning herself with bodily wastes (653) Bullet-damage to her colon releases faeces into the abdomen, infecting wound sites along the path of the bullet. CHAPTER 11 But like me, she said nothing at all (660) If Tomás and Jesusa stay with Jodahs through metamorphosis, chemical bonding to him will be irreversible. Lilith was so bound in ignorance by Nikanj and feels herself to betray Humans now by remaining silent in loyalty to Jodahs.

80 CHAPTER 12 Adan (662) Adán is Spanish for Adam (Hebrew adam, ‘red’). María de la Luz (662) ‘Mary of the Light’, an unused name of the Blessed Virgin. There is a Santa Maria about 20 miles from Cadiz on the Costa de la Luz. to put mother and son together (662) The classic back-cross of breeding, putting a first-generation hybrid to one parent to fix a trait—liable to activate recessive genes, often leading in successive generations to decrease in strength and fertility. not only fertile but mortal (662) That is, aging; in avoiding Oankali sterilisation María also avoids having her Human genetic propensity to early death modified. a hole in his back (662) Such malformations (primary errors in morphogenesis) are common results of inbreeding, with disrupted or incomplete morphogenesis, deformation, and dysplasia (abnormal tissues and/or tissue organisation). Some have seen the Mother when they went there ... to pray (662) Summoning the Christian tradition of Marian visions, as at Lourdes, Knock, and Medjugorje. neurofibromatosis (665) Also Von Recklinghausen’s disease, after the physician who described it in 1882 A malfunction of nerves’ fibrous sheaths, it causes initially benign if disfiguring tumours, but 3-5% typically become malignant. 2.3.3 Book Three: Imago Book Title The first time a book- and volume–title have come into harmony, marking resolution of the trilogy. On ‘imago’ see the volume-title note. CHAPTER 1 I chose to live (672) And therefore to compromise. CHAPTER 2 it almost lost itself (675) The danger to shapeshifters of losing identity in a form has long been recognised in myth and fantasy literature. They became Akjai (678) A new explanation of the Dinso-Toaht-Akjai structure. It has previously seemed that in every Oankali gene trade there was an Akjai, but this suggests it is a strategy in this trade to perceived dangers. We feed on them every day (680) Literally as well as figuratively, but in controlled symbiosis, not predation—at least by normal Human standards.

81 CHAPTER 3 We’ve already betrayed our people (687) Jesusa’s sense seems clear but betrayal is of an ideology—she and Tomás steadfastly refuse to give away location, and show great loyalty to their abusive people. CHAPTER 4 they shouldn’t have been ... a few black lines (690) Suggesting the language of art may be as closed to Oankali as their language of biochemistry is to Humans. billions of strangers screaming from inside you (694) A description that owes much to Herbert’s characterisation (in Dune, Dune Messiah, & Children of Dune) of the ‘possession’ to which prenatally aware children are liable (see p. 253). CHAPTER 5 I make a better insect than you do (696) With four arms & two feet, Aaor is sixlimbed—a distinguishing characteristic of insects. In fact, Human biology encouraged male Humans (700) In most theories; certainly the patriarchal family and monogamy are recent cultural developments that may code against biological imperatives. CHAPTER 6 stone work terraces (701) A feature of Inca agriculture, allowing soil to build up on steep slopes. sternum (701) The breastbone, to which the front ribs are fused and which protects the heart. a broad flattened ridge ... between two mountains (701) This and other topography suggest the Inca city Machu Picchu (see p. 88) that Lilith was visiting when nuclear war began. This photo was taken by Allard Schmidt on 9 April 2005 at sunrise; see: Œ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Peru_Machu_Picchu_Sunrise_2.jpg CHAPTER 7 some skin disease (708) Perhaps eczema or psoriasis; a more severe condition

82 such as scleroderma might also fit. It was significant (711) Resisters recreate an unpleasant Human habit, victimising one who is different (small, diseased) and forcing a form of internal exile. CHAPTER 8 Santos (711) ‘Saints’ in Spanish; in saints’ lives isolated dwelling is a topos. Javier and Paz (712) Javier is Basque, from etxe berri, ‘new house’, and cognate with Arabic, ‘bright’, ‘new’. Paz is ‘peace’ in Spanish, ‘gold’ in Hebrew. sibling ... brother-sister (712) Spanish has hermano, ~ana, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, but no gender-neutral ‘siblings’ (OE sibb, ‘kinship’, sibling, ‘blood relative’). mates ... close relatives (712) Forced inbreeding creates mated adults who resemble the brother-sister pairs with which ooloi usually mate. Juana and Santiago (713) Juana is the feminine of Juan (John), ‘God is Great’. Santiago is the Spanish form of ‘St James’—more saints. the devil had four arms (713) Not a usual Christian myth but an example of a process attested in literature and history, whereby evil beings of Christian texts are mapped onto other phenomena. Missionaries to the Yoruba translated ‘Satan’ as Eshu, trickster-god of crossroads—and Satan then acquired Eshu-like characteristics, as for these Christians he has become ooloi, hence four-armed. Kill us (715) A policy that might explain the successful secrecy (until now) of the village, but sacrifices individuals they cannot afford to lose. CHAPTER 9 Judases (719) Activating the pun on Jodahs/Judas. CHAPTER 10 Rafael ... Ramón ... Natal (721) Rafael (Hebrew repha’el, ‘God has healed’) is an archangel. Ramón is Catalan for Raymond (Germanic, ragin, ‘advice’, + mund, ‘protector’). ‘Natal’ is from the past participle of Latin nasci, ‘to be born’. Francisco (721) Or Francis, from late Latin, ‘Frenchman’, invoking (i) St Francis, founder of the Franciscans, who showed stigmata, and (ii) Francisco Franco, El Caudillo (1892–1975), fascist dictator of Spain 1939–75. CHAPTER 11 The male had hit the female (725) Gross and immoral practices, rape and domes-

83 tic violence, are resurrected in Human culture. In writing Imago Butler would have heard Tracy Chapman’s Tracy Chapman (1988), where ‘Behind the Wall’ deals with failure to respond to the noise of domestic violence; it followed Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’ (Solitude Standing, 1987) about blindness to child abuse. It could only have been reflex (727) Reminding readers that as ooloi Jodahs is manipulative. He is relying on speed to overpower when co-operation is needed. One of the two Human guards (730) Protecting the alien, betraying one’s own, recalls Lilith stripping to help Nikanj heal in Dawn. Healing the guard recalls Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:41–4). CHAPTER 12 their hostility slowly decreasing (736) Ooloi scent at work, suggesting whatever sterile elders feel, aging fertile Resisters have learned something in islation. CHAPTER 13 The stump of her amputated leg (736) Recalling Dawn (p. 74) CHAPTER 14 You have a strange gift, Lelka (740) The mahdi all cannot help loving figures in religion but evokes a counter-image of the rebel who cannot abide what all love. Nikanj’s parents (740) The return of Kahguyaht, Jdayah, and Tediin, absent since Book III of Dawn, marks imminent closure. CHAPTER 15 One mistake ... two mistakes (743) Recalling Wellington’s ‘Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, third time it’s enemy action’. Something neither predicted nor controlled by Oankali is testimony to the new species. CHAPTER 16 a single cell ... this seed (745) Ooloi must store DNA at massive densities. a spot near the river (746) A river has flowed through the trilogy from Book IV of Dawn, and becomes at last the river that will flow through paradise.

84 ABOUT THE AUTHOR fifty-three-year-old writer (746) This bio was updated in 2000, when the trilogy was published as Lilith’s Brood. Butler often used the opening formula, adjusting age as needed, which makes still more painful her premature death at 58.

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3. Essay The Strange Determination of Octavia Butler Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the Gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction. So I awoke, and behold it was a dream.1

T

he variant umbrella titles of Octavia Butler’s great trilogy, boxed as Xenogenesis in the 1990s but collected as Lilith’s Brood since 2000, pose a surprising challenge. Like all mass-market genres SF is prone to variant titles as a tic of repackaging—one US, one UK, and one for the omnibus, or equivalent—and these rarely seem more than commercially significant, seeking a current buzzword to pump sales or freshen display and con a few readers into buying as new what they have already bought and read. But where Xenogenesis is good Greek technospeak, Lilith’s Brood sounds more like a horror film, yet plugs equally into the Old Testament and Rabbinical mythology. It isn’t clear if the change was Butler’s choice, or a publisher’s prod for some marketing reason, but both titles must themselves be Butler’s, and they reward thought. 2 Science fiction regularly uses the prefix xeno-, from Greek xenos, ‘a stranger’, to denote the alien—as in ‘xenophobia’, the fear or automatic dislike of strangers. Xenobiology, for example, is the study of alien anatomy, biochemistry etc., alongside xenodiplomacy, if one would rather one’s aliens were peaceful, xenopolitics, should one get further, xenocide, if it all goes horribly wrong, and so on. The strongly technical and SF-specific impact of Xenogenesis as a coinage and title is backed up by Butler’s narrative, which requires some hard science (nuclear war, DNA) as well as intensive consideration of alien thinking and morality—but Lilith’s Brood retrospectively stresses -genesis in the biblical sense. An Assyrian name in Isaiah 34:14 for a blood-sucking night-monster, reduced in translation to a 1

2

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which Is to come: Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein is Discovered, The manner of his setting out, His Dangerous Journey; And safe Arrival at the Desired Countrey (1678; ed. Roger Shattuck, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 205; italiics mine. A much longer version of this essay incorporating material in the Notes, appears as ‘Of Organelles: Octavia Butler’s Strange Determination’ in my collection Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (Humanities-EBooks, 2007).

86 “screech owl” (AV) or “night-jar” (RSV), Lilith is also, in rabbinical mythology, the first wife of Adam, cast out in favour of Eve for refusing to lie under him—hence the feminist magazines Lilith and Spare Rib. ‘Brood’, which might once have summoned broody mothers or hens, also now carries a very strong taint from horror movies of demonic lairs filled with progeny, so Lilith’s Brood as a title activates a distinctly religious sense of the narrative. And—the problem—this is also backed up by Butler, not only in showing religion among Resisters as small-minded and intolerant, and through the loudly revived religious oaths that ring peculiarly hollow on an irradiated earth, but in protagonists Lilith Iyapo and Jodahs, whose name summons ‘Judas’ and who is clearly shown as both betrayer and messianic saviour. How can these distinct technological-scientific and religious-demonic senses of the trilogy be reconciled? Theology has always been important to SF, from nineteenth-century French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion (1842– 1925), one of the first to imagine aliens in any detail, to contemporary authors like Mary Doria Russell and Peter F. Hamilton—and rightly so, for our encounter with reasoning alien life, when it comes, will be the greatest test of religious thought there can be. If the little green men have a two-thousand-year-old legend of a crucified god, Rome will do some brisk business; if they say, once someone has explained it to them, ‘You believe what?’ before howling with laughter, the traffic will be in the other direction. But in Russell’s The Sparrow (1996) & Children of God (1998), where Jesuits send a mission to the alien home planet before the echoes of first contact have died, or Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy (1996–9),1 where the dead return en masse in the 27th century, the religious issues are spelt out up-front, not buried or somehow allegorised, as they rather seem to be in Butler. There is, however, one clear single concept that stitches together the most visible concerns of both scientific Xenogenesis and religious Lilith’s Brood, for it has had both religious and scientific incarnations, and that is ‘determinism’, the opposite of ‘free will’. In its most extreme religious form, Calvinist ‘Predestination’ holds that every human soul is marked down before its existence in God’s books of the saved or the damned, and that nothing one does or doesn’t do in life can alter this outcome; hence (surprisingly late but the perfect, gloomily Scottish summary) James Hogg’s strange and wonderful gothic chiller, The Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), in which one believing himself saved figures he might as well be saved for a sheep as a lamb. Too vile in its implications for any but fanatics, this contorted Calvinist doctrine gave way to a supposed scientific absolute, the clockwork 1

The Reality Dysfunction (1996), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997), & The Naked God (1999).

87 Newtonian universe in which all flowed from certain cause to inevitable effect. If one could (as God might) hold every single atom’s nature and position in one’s head, one could mathematically run the whole universe back or forward in time with absolute precision. Physics being what it was, only one set of things could happen at each stage, and the laws of physics were now known; only computing ability was lacking to reconstruct Adam’s and Eve’s most private conversations, or slip forward to see how apocalypse would start. This is the ‘Newtonian determinism’ that Laurence Sterne so blissfully mocks in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67), where the hero’s conception was (as he reports it) affected by his father’s possible failure to have wound up the household clock and his mother’s uncertainty at a crucial moment as to what might be chiming; the novel remains a hoot—but Einstein put permanently paid to the theory it mocks. And yet again a replacement soon sprang forth in the form of DNA, that mysterious double-helix that some people (and all Oankali) believe absolutely controls what a given individual or species can and cannot be—our modern ‘genetic determinism’. In the Oankali view, moreover, it is fully as potent as Calvinist Presdestination, for no matter what any human being thinks or does, s/he is in the wholly destructive grip of the ‘Human Contradiction’—tool-using intelligence subordinated to hierarchical behaviour—and is with all of us doomed willy-nilly to extinction. In most Christian doctrine baptism cleanses babies of ‘Original Sin’, the offence against God we inherit from Adam’s and Eve’s transgressions in Eden, but in Butler nothing but our complete submission to Oankali genetic and reproductive oversight can save us (say the Oankali, with one voice) from our ‘Human Contradiction’. In this light it becomes much less of a surprise that Jodahs/Judas, as an ooloi the most Oankali and least human of the three protagonists, should arrive to save (among others) Jesusa and (Doubting) Tomás in Imago. This religious climax has been carefully worked towards, through the resonances of the name Lilith, the Resister church in Phoenix that regenerates religious oaths, most often ‘hell’, which kidnapped Akin spreads among Resisters and Constructs alike, and through his suffering as a child on a species’ behalf. Phoenix itself as a name promises fiery immolation and resurrection, but never multiplication—for there can only ever be one phoenix at a time—and what rises from the Resister settlement’s ashes at the end of Adulthood Rites is not only the Mars colony of Akin’s Human Akjai, but also Jodahs slipping into its first ooloi metamorphosis at the beginning of Imago. Conversely, the hidden village of fertile but hideously inbred and genetically doomed humans whom Jodahs finds and saves has multiplied, but in their insistent

88 independence very wrongly, dooming their children to vile blights, compulsory incest, and a desperate, crucifying descent into extinction as their recessive genes become dominant and foetal viability fails. The Human Contradiction, that is, has been installed by Butler from very early in Dawn as Humankind’s original genetic sin, and in that novel’s last paragraphs Lilith dreams of escaping the Oankali answer, cancelling all unsupervised human fertility: Another chance to say, “Learn and Run!” She would have more information for them this time. And they would have long, healthy lives ahead of them. Perhaps they could find an answer to what the Oankali had done to them. And perhaps the Oankali were not perfect. A few fertile people might slip through and fine one another. Perhaps. Learn and Run! If she were lost, others did not have to be. Humanity did not have to be. She let Nikanj lead her into the dark forest and to one of the concealed dry exits. 1

Lilith is (understandably, but nevertheless) so overwhelmed by Oankali genetics and potency that she forgets what she already knows as a human being: that a sufficient gene-pool is needed; that Humanity has already reduced itself to the verge of extinction with insane nuclear war; and that the Earth anyone might escape to would but for the Oankali be a sterile cinder, and is still in any case largely uninhabitable. She lives (thanks entirely to the Oankali) to see what she foolishly hoped for come true, and to see exactly what then happened to the few “fertile people” who did “slip through”—runaway genetics (as before the nuclear war), gross deformity, enforced incest, and untold suffering. Rubbing salt in the wound, only one of Lilith’s Oankalimanipulated, ‘compromised’ and miscegenate children can anneal and rectify this new human disaster. The very last sentence of Dawn also points an interesting way, for “the dark forest”, however literal in its training-floor context, recalls the in/famous “dark wood” in which the very first line of Dante’s Inferno says he suddenly found himself. For Dante the shade of the Roman poet Virgil was needed as a guide through Hell and Purgatory before he wholly escaped the dark wood into Paradise, but for Lilith, despite her sense of symbolic Oankali damnation, there is “one of the concealed dry exits”—a luxury Dante was denied. Butler’s trilogy as a whole actually makes good sense as a Dantean Commedia of a hell (Lilith’s in Dawn), a 1

Octavia E. Butler, Dawn, p. 248 (IV: “The Training Floor’, Ch. 9).

89 purgatory (Akin’s in Adulthood Rites), and a paradise (Jodahs’s in Imago), and once seen in that way much snaps into focus. The persistent sense of irony attached to Akin’s and others’ uses of ‘Hell’ as an oath, for example, makes potent sense if we have by then progressed to purgatory, and the more obviously (even blatantly) ironic action of Jodahs-Judas saving (Doubting) Tomás and Jesusa as a trilogy-finale is tellingly framed if we are at that last stage entering paradise. Clearly enough Butler had a quarrel as well as an allegiance with the Christian religion, in her case via an austere and impoverished Baptist childhood which her long-lived mother’s love and conscience would (I imagine) have obliged her to continue to respect as an adult, but which she also clearly passed well beyond doctrinally.1 This also is a helpful model, allowing the thought that the scientific and religious determinisms of the trilogy may be seen as both at odds and intertwined, variously overlapping both to reinforce and cancel one another. At the beginning, on the Oankali ship with Lilith in desperate shock, a scientific frame dominates; by the end, with Jodahs as a genetic messiah, a religious one—but that spiritual destiny Jodahs promises the remnants of humanity on Earth is still an Oankali and Chkahichdahk destiny in the stars. Its realisation will require the reduction of what is left of Earth to a sterile ball of rock, as dead and soon as cratered as the moon. Perspectives of both scientific and other liberations alternate with visions of scientific and other damnations; the narrative tilts up hopefully throughout, but drags with a despair about human beings that is never really answered, because there are in reality no Oankali to transform us. And this there is no getting round, for Butler, though determined in many ways to hope, was underneath it and in more ways a pessimist.2 Whether called Xenogenesis or Lilith’s Brood, the trilogy begins with human nuclear self-annihilation as a consequence of miscalculation and moral nullity, and goes on to explain it as genetically inevitable, an Original Sin as gross as a millstone round our necks. If it wasn’t nuclear war it would be, oh, eco-catastrophe, say, or runaway global warming induced by our complete inability to recognise that finite resource and unchecked consumption don’t compute, or that trashing the biosphere might be a silly idea; or asthma and allergies our polluted atmospheres mean our stressed-out bodies can no longer forestall. And the whole is locked down to a genetic explanation that can neither be proven nor refuted, but has a horrid plausibility. Granting all Darwin suggested and others have refined in the theory of evolution, it 1 2

She called herself “a former Baptist” in the note ‘About the Author’ in Bloodchild (1/e, p. 145). In the same note she calls herself “a pessimist if I’m not careful”.

90 makes good sense that more anciently evolved characteristics should dominate more recent ones; and equally good sense that in the particular and unhappy case of Hom. sap. the relevant older characteristic is hierarchical behaviour (class, sex, power games, war, status ...) and the newer the primate intelligence that has made us toolusers. A geneticist fella told me we humans differ from other brutes by drinking when not thirsty, eating when not hungry, fucking all round the calendar regardless of climate and torturing and killing helpless creatures of our own kind. In plain language, we have an inborn capacity for intoxication, greed, lust, cruelty and murder: a fact which your thinking moralist will always find more significant than our ingenuity in constructing such bizarre containers of ourselves as the Polaris submarine, Sistine Chapel, and suspender-belt. 1

So Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray in 1982 Janine: the tone is very different, funnier and angrier, but in context equally heavy with suicidal despair, and the connection of that despair with genetics is identical. Butler’s case, that is, has within it a relentless realism in analysis, and her conclusions are bleak—but the trilogy does manage to import from religious belief, Dantean and Baptist, a movement towards redemption, however proto-apocalyptic. There is also a context that makes Butler’s plotting stand out even more sharply, and frames in a quite different way what she might be thought to have been doing. One way of approach is suggested by the “Oankali organelle”, that strange determinant of what is essentially and enduringly Oankali—for there are human organelles too. An organelle is simply a self-contained structure within a cell. The biggest is the nucleus, which contains the cell’s DNA—in the case of Homo sapiens 46 chromosomes in 23 paired strands, each containing thousands of genes. For a long time it was thought all DNA was in the nucleus, but it turned out that another organelle, the mitochondrion, an elongated oval a little more than one-billionth of a metre long (1 nm) that takes in proteins the cell manufactures and in return supplies energy, had DNA of its own; moreover, mitochondrial DNA was passed down the female line, not in the same divisive fashion as nuclear DNA. The use to which these facts have been put is better known than the underlying science, because it is mitochondrial DNA that with Y-chromosome testing has allowed over the last two decades such remarkable and definitive statements about human ancestry and 1

Alasdair Gray, 1982 Janine (1984; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p. 184.

91 historical migration. In Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), a huge TV hit in 1977 with a sequel in 1979, the enslaved Kunta Kinte’s modern descendant is able to complete his journey back to his roots when a West African griot, a historian-bard, sings him a list of local villagers abducted by slavers nearly three centuries before, and he hears his ancestor’s talismanic name. Thirty years later what happens, increasingly, is that samples of a modern African American’s DNA are compared with samples on record for various African regions and peoples, or with that of specific individuals, to confirm or deny distant cousinhood. Similar work has been done all over the world, and for most genealogy is the true benefit of the discovery of DNA, nuclear or mitochondrial; but for Butler the lesson was quite contrary. Mitochondria have their own DNA because they were once a distinct species. They evolved perhaps 4 billion years ago, alongside the eukaryotic cell—that is, the kind that have a nucleus and form the massive, differentiated agglomerations called plants and animals. Advertisements for Actimel and other active yoghurt cultures have made us aware of the ‘good bacteria’ we host in our guts, lactobacilli that digest dairy produce for us. Mitochondria take this kind of symbiosis to a new level, ensconced deep within each and every one of our cells; and Butler’s question is should we therefore call ourselves not ‘I’, an individual of one species, but ‘we’, a collective of many species? Put another way, are mitochondria extinct if they live only within others? Within the plot of Xenogenesis this matters because Humanity might go the same way, absorbed, mitochondria and all, into an Oankali genome that has already incorporated scores of species. Outside the plot there are resonances with issues of the Cold War, amid whose dying years Butler wrote, that recall the ‘Borg’ collective in later series of Star Trek as well as trail-blazing theoretical work like Donna Haraway’s remarkable Cyborg Manifesto,1 and Gaian views insisting on the interconnection and interdependence of all species. Consider also the politics. Born in 1947, Butler came of age with the 1960s and the great African-American galvanisation of Civil Rights, in large part spurred by the fallout from the world war she just missed. She as much as anyone, and more than anyone not Black, knew intimately what Haley’s populist vision of rediscovered African historicity meant, or might mean. Her most popular novel, Kindred 1

Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181; and at: Πhttp://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html .

92 (1979), about a modern southern Californian black woman who finds herself timetransported to meet her enslaved black and slave-owning white ancestors, places Butler squarely in at least one mainstream African-American tradition, and like her earliest novels, the five books of the Patternmaster series, confronts the fearful dislocation enslavement imposed on diasporic Black history. But even there she forced her protagonist to confront awkward complexities, and her response to mitochondria was similarly atypical, passing over the allure of genealogical provenance to a philosophical challenge of a different order. The genealogical quest is not simply spurned in Xenogenesis, but violently written off, any redemptions of African-American ancestry undermined by the alldestroying nuclear war and the Oankali revelation of the ‘Human Contradiction’ in our most basic programming, Black as much as White, Brown, or Yellow. How truly pessimistic Butler’s case is, or how it deploys pessimism as a spur, readers must decide for themselves, but that she offers an extremely powerful and peculiarly determined critique of much contemporary thinking, Black, White, or just selflimitingly black-and-white, is not open to doubt.

93

4. Bibliography 4.1 Works by Octavia E. Butler NOVELS Patternmaster (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) Mind of My Mind (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977) Survivor (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978) Wild Seed (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980) Clay’s Ark (New York: St Martin’s, 1984) omnibus edition, excluding Survivor, as Seed to Harvest (New York: Warner, 2007 [Aspect]) Kindred (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979) Dawn (New York: Warner, 1987) Adulthood Rites (New York: Warner, 1988) Imago (New York: Warner, 1989) boxed, as Xenogenesis, from 1989 omnibus edition, as Lilith’s Brood (New York: Warner, 2000 [Aspect]) The Evening and the Morning and the Night (Eugene, OR: Pulphouse Publications, 1991) Parable of the Sower (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993) Parable of the Talents (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998) Fledgling (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005) SHORT STORIES Bloodchild and other stories (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1996, 2/e 2005)

The 1/e collects five stories (‘Bloodchild’, ‘The Evening and the Morning and the Night’, ‘Near of Kin’, ‘Speech Sounds’, and ‘Crossover’) and two essays, ‘Positive Obsession’ and ‘Furor Scribendi’. The 2/e adds the stories ‘Amnesty’ and ‘The Book of Martha’.

94

‘The Book of Martha’, at: Œ http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/butler2/butler21.html

‘Amnesty’, at Œ http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/butler/butler1.html

ESSAYS AND ARTICLES ‘Positive Obsession’, in Bloodchild. ‘Furor Scribendi’, in Bloodchild. ‘A Few Rules For Predicting The Future’: Œ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_1_31/ai_61891747/print

‘Aha! Moment : Eyewitness – Octavia Butler’: Œ http://www.oprah.com/rys/omag/rys_omag_200205_aha.jhtml

‘"Devil Girl From Mars" : Why I Write Science Fiction’: Œ http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/butler_talk_index.html

‘NPR ESSAY—UN RACISM CONFERENCE’: Œ http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010830.octaviabutleressay.html

4.2 Works about Octavia E. Butler and SF CRITICISM ALLISON, Dorothy, ‘The Future of Female: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode’, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (New York: Meridian, 1990), pp. 471–8 ANON., ‘Octavia E. Butler: Persistence’, in Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field 44.6 (2000): 4, 75–8 BACCOLINI, Raffaella, "Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler", in Marleen S. Barr, ed., Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 13-34 BEDORE, Pamela, ‘Slavery and Symbiosis in Octavia Butler's Kindred’, in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 31.84 (2002 Spring): 73–81 BEST, Allison Stein, ‘Octavia E. Butler’, in Science Fiction Chronicle: The Monthly Science Fiction & Fantasy Newsmagazine 17.3 (1996): 8, 42–3

95 BIRNS, Nicholas, ‘Octavia Butler: Fashioning Alien Constructs’, in Hollins Critic 38.3 (2001 June): 1–14 BROOKS-DE VITA, Novella, ‘Beloved and Betrayed: Survival and Authority in Kindred’ , in Griot: Official Journal of the Southern Conference on AfroAmerican Studies, Inc. 22.1 (2003): 16–20 DUBEY, Madhu, ‘Folk and Urban Communities in African-American Women's Fiction: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower’, in Studies in American Fiction 27.1 (1999): 103–28 FEDERMAYER, Eva, ‘Octavia Butler's Maternal Cyborgs: The Black Female World of the Xenogenesis Trilogy’, in Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 6.1 (2000): 103–18 HAMPTON, Gregory J., & BROOKS, Wanda M., ‘Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: Black Women Writers and Science Fiction’, in English Journal 92.6 (2003): 70–4 HARAWAY, Donna, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century", in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149–81 HOLDEN, Rebecca J., ‘The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy’, in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 72 (1998): 49–56 HOLMGREN TROY, Maria, In the First Person and in the House: The House C[h]ronotype in Four Works by American Women Writers (Uppsala: Ubsaliensis S. Academiae, 1999) JESSER, Nancy, ‘Blood, Genes and Gender in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Dawn’, in Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 43.1 (2002): 36–61. LEVECQ, Christine, ‘Power and Repetition: Philosophies of (Literary) History in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred’, in Contemporary Literature 41.1 (2000 Spring): 525–53 LEVY, Michael, ‘Green SF and Eco Feminism’, in Robert Collins & Robert Latham, eds, Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual [1989 edition] (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1990) LUCKHURST, Roger, ‘'Horror and Beauty in Rare Combination': The Miscegenate Fictions of Octavia Butler’, in Women: A Cultural Review 7.1 (1996): 28–38 —‘The Science-Fictionalization of Trauma: Remarks on Narratives of Alien Abduction’, in Science-Fiction Studies #74, Vol. 25.1 (March 1998): 29–52 McTYRE, Robert E., ‘Octavia Butler: Black America's first lady of science fiction’,

96 in Michigan Chronicle (26 April 1994) MEHAFFY, Marilyn, & KEATING AnaLouise, ‘'Radio Imagination': Octavia Butler on the Poetics of Narrative Embodiment’, in MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 26.1 (2001): 45–76 MELZER, Patricia, ‘'All That You Touch You Change': Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents’, in FEMSPEC: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Journal Dedicated to Critical and Creative Work in the Realms of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Surrealism, Myth, Folklore, and Other Supernatural Genres 3.2 (2002): 31–52 MICHAELS, Walter Benn, ‘Political Science Fictions’, in New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 31.4 (2000): 649–64 MILLER, Jim, ‘Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler's Dystopian/Utopian Vision’, in Science Fiction Studies 25.2 (1998): 336–60 OSHEROW, Michelle, ‘The Dawn of a New Lilith: Revisionary Mythmaking in Women's Science Fiction’, in NWSA Journal 12.1 (2000): 68–83 PARISI, Luciano, ‘Essence and Virtuality: The Incorporeal Desire of Lilith’, in Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli-sezione germanica: Anglistica 4.1 (2000): 191–212 PHILLIPS, Jerry, ‘The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction 35.2–3 (2002): 299– 311 RAFFEL, Burton, ‘Genre to the Rear, Race and Gender to the Fore: The Novels of Octavia E. Butler’, in Literary Review 38 (1995): 454 RAMIREZ, Catherine S., "Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler and Gloria Anzaldua", in Mary Flanagan & Austin Booth, eds, Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 374– 402 REED, Brian K., ‘Behold the Woman: The Imaginary Wife in Octavia Butler's Kindred’, in CLA Journal 47.1 (2003): 66–74 SALVAGGIO, Ruth, ‘"Octavia Butler and the Black Science Fiction Heroine’, in Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (1984): 78–81 SANDS, Peter, ‘Octavia Butler's Chiastic Cannibalistics’, in Utopian Studies: Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies 14.1 (2003): 1–14 SCHEER-SCHÚZLER, Brigitte, ‘Loving Insects Can Be Dangerous: Assessing the

97 Cost of Life in Octavia Estelle Butler's Novella 'Bloodchild' (1984)’, in Domna Pastourmatzi, ed., Biotechnological and Medical Themes in Science Fiction (Thessaloníki, Greece: University Studio, 2002), pp. 314–22 SHAW, Heather, ‘Strange Bedfellows: Eugenics, Attraction, and Aversion in the Works of Octavia E. Butler’, at Œ http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001218/butler.shtml

SLONCZEWSKI, Joan, ‘Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy: A Biologist’s Response’, at Œ http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/books/butler1.html STILLMAN, Peter G., ‘Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler's Parables’, in Utopian Studies: Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies 14.1 (2003): 15–35 TALBOT, Mary M., ‘Embracing Otherness: An Examination of Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy’, at: Œ http://www.tulketh.high.btinternet.co.uk/kimota/articles/o_butler.htm.

TULLOCH, John, & JENKINS, Henry, Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek (London & New York: Routledge, 1995) ZAKI, Hoda, ‘Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler’, in Science Fiction Studies 17.2 (1990): 239–251 A homepage for Butler with obituaries, photographs, and many links is maintained at the Science Fiction Writers of America website. at: Œ http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler/

INTERVIEWS Πhttp://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/potts70interview.htm (February 1996) Πhttp://www.locusmag.com/2000/Issues/06/Butler.html (June 2000) Πhttp://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010830.octaviabutler.html (September 2001) Πhttp://www.scifidimensions.com/Jun04/octaviaebutler.htm (June 2004) Πhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/11/158201 (November 2005) Πhttp://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/63925.html (January 2006)

See also a transcript of a Q-and-A with Butler & Samuel Delaney at MIT in 1998 : Πhttp://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/science_fiction/transcripts/butler_delany_index.html

98 4.3 Useful Reference Works There are entries on Butler in : CLUTE, John, & NICHOLLS, Peter, eds, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993) GOVAN, Sandra Y., Notable Black American Women (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1992) LESNIAK, James G., Contemporary Authors [New Revision Series 38] (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1993) LOCHER, Frances Carol, Contemporary Authors 73-76 (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1978) MANN, George, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (New York & London: Carroll & Graf, 2001) STEVENSON, Rosemary, Black Women In America, An Historical Encyclopedia (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Pub., 1993) Xenogenesis serves as a case-study in the chapter on race in: ROBERTS, Adam, Science Fiction (2001; 2/e, London: Routledge, 2006) Butler is also variously cited and contextualised in: JAMES, Edward, & MENDLESOHN, Farah, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) LUCKHURST, Roger, Science Fiction (Cambridge & Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005) On Black SF and the racial issues SF raises see also: Œ http://ursulakleguin.com/Index-EarthseaMiniseries.html Œ http://www.slate.com/id/2111107/ Œ http://www.infinitematrix.net/faq/essays/noles.html Œ http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/and_we_shall_march/2006/01/the_shame_of_ea.html Œ http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/wordpress/?p=1898

Humanities Insights The following Insights are available or forthcoming at: http://www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk/ Genre FictionSightlines Octavia E Butler: Xenogenesis / Lilith’s Brood Reginal Hill: On Beulah’s Height Ian McDonald: Chaga / Evolution’s Store Walter Mosley: Devil in a Blue Dress Tamora Pierce: The Immortals

History Insights The British Empire: Pomp, Power and Postcolonialism The Holocaust: Events, Motives, Legacy Methodism and Society Southern Africa

Literature Insights (by author) Chatwin: In Patagonia Conrad: The Secret Agent Eliot, George: Silas Marner Eliot, T S: ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ and The Waste Land Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury Gaskell, Mary Barton Hardy: Tess of the Durbervilles Hopkins: Selected Poems Lawrence: The Rainbow Lawrence: Sons and Lovers Lawrence: Women in Love Shakespeare: Hamlet Shakespeare: Henry IV Shakespeare: Richard II Shakespeare: Richard III Shakespeare: The Tempest Shelley: Frankenstein Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads

Literature Insights (general) English Renaissance Drama: Theatre and Theatres in Shakespeare’s Time Fields of Agony: English Poetry and the First World War

Philosophy Insights American Pragmatism Business Ethics Ethics Existentialism Formal Logic Heidegger Informal Logic and Critical Thinking Islamic Philosophy Marxism Meta-Ethics Philosophy of History Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Sport Sartre: Existentialism and Humanism Wittgenstein

General Titles An Inroduction to Feminist Theory An Introduction to Critical Theory An Introduction to Rhetorical Terms

Commissioned Titles Include Aesthetics Austen: Pride and Prejudice Blake: Songs of Innocence & Experience and The Marriage of Heaven & Hell’ Eliot: Four Quartets Fielding: Tom Jones Heaney: Selected Poems Hughes: Selected Poems Lawrence: Selected Poems Mental Causation Toni Morrison: Beloved Philosophy of Religion Plato Plato’s Republic Renaissance Philosophy