You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you.
Lilith's Brood (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)
Written by Octavia Butler
Afro-futurism as a genre has brought me some of the most visionary titles I’ve read. “Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy to explore the African-American experience and aims to connect those from the black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry” (definition from tate.org). I first learned about the genre in college classes World Literature and Caribbean Literature, reading books like the Book of the Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor and the Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. Then in graduate school I took a class called Gender in Speculative Fiction, and that’s where I came across N. K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler. Each of these authors books will one day get their own official review, but today is for Octavia Butler’s trilogy: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, also known as Xenogenesis or Lilith's Brood.
Dawn, the first of the trilogy, was published in 1987 when threats of nuclear war had many fearing apocalypse, and so Dawn begins after such an event. After a devastating plant-wide war, Lillith Iyapo finds herself alone in a cell-like room with no information as to how she got there or who her captors are. She is kept isolated for an uncountable amount of time before a disembodied voice begins asking her questions, studying her while giving no information in return. That is until Lilith awakens at one point to discover someone in the room with her. This being is not a person at all, but something else entirely, an alien.
The Oankali are a species of extraterrestrials that propagate their species by locating intelligent life across the galaxy to “trade” with, meaning that the Oankali intend to mate with the small remainder of the human race they rescued from Earth to create an improved species that combines the best parts of the Oankali and the humans through gene manipulation. Does that seem too freaky, overwhelming, or even abominable? That’s how the Oankali’s pitch landed with the humans in this book too. Lilith, trapped on an Oankali ship, realizes the Oankali’s true motivation slowly in pieces. She learns that she has been on the ship for 250 years, that Earth is livable again, and that she will be allowed to return there only if she can convince other humans to comply with the Oankali, if she’ll act as the judas goat.
Don’t confuse this book with a sci-fi romance with big, sexy, ice-planet barbarians. Dawn, and the following two books, take an exacting look at humanity itself. While reading I sometimes found myself just wishing the humans would calm down and adapt to their strange new circumstance but other times, I found myself heartbroken for these humans who tried in vain to maintain their customs. Is it more human to evolve, or, like a Ship of Theseus, how much change can happen before the humans are no longer human?
This is deep sci-fi, so if what you’ve read so far sounds like too much, then maybe it’s not the right fit for you. But, if you appreciate original world-building, philosophical questions without obvious answers, and a riveting plot by a legendary author, then oh my goodness please read this trilogy.
