(Note: this is part of a series in which I discuss works of the contributors to The Other Half of the Sky. Links to other entries in the series appear at the end of this discussion.)
Bloodchildren is a collection of eleven stories by th...
(Note: this is part of a series in which I discuss works of the contributors to The Other Half of the Sky. Links to other entries in the series appear at the end of this discussion.)
Bloodchildren is a collection of eleven stories by the recipients of the Carl Brandon scholarship, established in Octavia Butler’s honor to enable SFF writers of color to attend one of the Clarion workshops. The stories were edited by Nisi Shawl, herself a practitioner of many literary arts; they’re front-ended by a haunting cover by Laurie Toby Edison, by moving testimonials from Nalo Hopkinson and Vonda McIntyre and by Butler’s story “Speech Sounds”.
The collection is titled after Butler’s groundbreaking story “Bloodchild”, one of the most original and disquieting explorations of interspecies contact: spacefaring humans stranded on a planet with its own advanced sentient species have been reduced to breeding vessels along the lines of hosts for parasitic wasps or the Alien über-predator, though they generally survive the ordeal. Men are preferred as incubators so that women can produce more breeders, although bonds of reciprocal need, loyalty and affection have slowly developed between humans and their native masters.
Despite the title, editor Shawl chose “Speech Sounds” instead of “Bloodchild” as the Butler story in the collection and her reasoning is sound: it’s a shard-filled narrative of what happens when humanity loses its ability to form and understand speech. Non-default writers find it hard to speak, especially outside their own milieu. And SF, despite its pride at being the genre of unfettered imagination and forward vision, is actually a-swim with parochial unquestioned assumptions. Collections like Bloodchildren are welcome antidotes to this tendency, giving voice to the dispossessed, the rendered-invisible, the vast swaths of humanity still largely elided in SFF that stubbornly adheres to whiteAnglomale primacy in its narratives.
As is the case with un-themed anthologies, the stories in this one range from horror to mythic slipstream to steampunk to hard(ish) SF, from a slightly slanted here and now to alternate worlds light years away. There are braiding strands nevertheless: several of the stories transmute facets of non-Anglo histories and mythologies; many feature unusual societies and family arrangements; most dissect uprootings and oppressions (violent and subtle, personal and collective) as well as responses to them – from subsisting “in the cracks” to defiant resistance. As is my wont, I will start with the stories I felt worked the least and work my way up. The anthology does suffer from a systemic problem: several of the pieces – intriguing as they are – read like workshop exercises that would benefit from one or two more sculpting rounds. Additionally, two are novel excerpts, which severely shortchanges them by not giving them enough room to showcase their strengths.
Three stories are “high concept” and basically end the moment the concept has been mined. Christopher Caldwell’s “My Love Will Never Die” starts strongly: the heavily asymmetric relationship between the gay narrator and his charismatic lover (whose powers are telegraphed to anyone remotely familiar with vodun) packs heat. But instead of plunging into the thicket of obsession and dominance, the story runs out of steam with a rushed, facile wrap-up. In Mary Elizabeth Burroughs’ “Impulse”, inanimate objects come to sentient life and comatose humans revive, whereas able-bodied humans freeze into immobility. End of (admittedly frisson-inducing) story, with no development or explanation. Jeremy Sim’s “/sit” is a variation of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” played for uneasy laughs. Its Gregor Samsa is an RPG-playing loner whose family sharpens their hexing skills on hi
