I want to write more about my reactions to Kindred and encourage more people to read it. Octavia Butler has been one of my favorite authors since I read Dawn when I was in elementary school. I picked it up off the desk in my scientist father's office one day, and I just started reading. When I read Dawn , I didn't know that Octavia Butler was a black woman. I wouldn't have attached any special significance to it if I had. It spoke to me because it addressed a problem that made a lot of sense to a young girl raised on Star Trek . What would happen when the aliens came, and what if they wanted to assimilate us? It was a different take on assimilation, of course, than that of the obviously evil Borg (who became more complicated in First Contact and Voyager , but this was before that), and it fascinated me. Was it really more important to be "pure" human? What if the aliens were nice, and could cure cancer? I struggled continually with the question, and could not...
Life, Books, and SFF