Lilith's Brood, by Octavia E. Butler
Well, I had intended to write about each book in the trilogy as I finished them, but I read thru them too fast so I'll just give a nutshell account of each:
Dawn. Takes place 250 years after America and Russian pretty much destroy the planet and and human race after the Cold War flares up. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for humanity a passing species of interstellar travelers and genetic traders called the Oankali notice our predicament and, thinking we'll be interesting "trade partners", rescue the remnants of humanity and keep them in suspended animation until the planet is livable again. There are, however, some conditions.
The main one is that humans, considered too dangerous and unpredictable to be allowed to continue breeding on our own, have had our fertility turned off and are capable of reproducing only with Oankali mates (it should be mentioned here that the Oankali look like large sea cucumbers) and of having "construct" (i.e., part human, part Oankali) children so that eventually humanity will be genetically absorbed by the Oankali. Naturally, there's a lot of resistance to this and even humans who cooperate with the Oankali for the sake of having children of some kind are resentful.
The main character here, and a continuing large presence in the following books, is Lilith Iyapo. She's one of the first awakened out of suspended animation and assigned to be an instructor and leader to humans being returned to Earth. This is not an easy or welcome assignment and since she's not only apparently in charge but one of the first mated to an Oankali trio (they have 3 sexes) many consider her a traitor and vent on her the frustrations they can't take out on the powerful aliens. Dawn ends with Lilith's ooloi (3rd sex) mate telling her it's impregnated her with a daughter made of genetic material mixed from both of them, their male and female Oankali mates and a now dead human male Lilith had been briefly involved with on the alien ship. The ooloi can do all sorts of interesting things with genes.
Adulthood Rites. This takes place apparently 50 years after the first book, and we learn that Lilith has already had 9 construct daughters. This story centers on, and begins with the intrauterine experiences of, her first construct son, Akin. Most of the humans on the ship have been returned to Earth (excepting those considered too violent, who are returned to suspended animation) and broken up into trader villages (human and Oankali mates having children together) and resister villages (exclusively human mates, no children).
Altho the Oankali have greatly increased humanity's lifespan, youthfulness, health and strength, the resisters find their lives pointless and wasted without children and frequently steal the most human looking of the construct children. This happens to Akin, greatly disrupting his life among his own kind but impressing the boy with the need for the resisters to lead independent, human lives. Adulthood Rites ends with Akin persuading the Oankali to restore the resisters fertility and allow them to colonize Mars with only minimal Oankali help and no Oankali interference in their lives.
Imago. This takes place another 50 years into the future and centers on Jodhas, one more of Lilith's numerous offspring and the first human-born construct to become a 3rd sex ooloi after metamorphosis (something all construct children go thru, even the apparently human ones). It falls to him to discover a hidden colony of humans, many of whom are descended from people who escaped Oankali detection at the end of the war and remained fertile, tho the colony has become greatly disfigured by neurofibromatoisis (aka the Elephant Man's disease), which a female ancestor was a carrier for.
Jodhas meets, and takes as his human mates, a brother and sister from this colony that he finds wandering in the jungle and eventually their diseased village is brought to light and healed by Oankali, with most of it's members choosing to join the Mars colony. This story ends with Jodhas' closest construct sibling also turning ooloi after a particularly difficult metamorphosis, and two more unrelated construct ooloi being found elsewhere on the planet. The story ends with Jodhas growing (yes, growing) his own village for the new ooloi constructs and their mates.
In this excerpt, Jodhas explains the Oankali's position human nature and the Mars colony to a pair of hopeful emigrants:
"Your own history tells you. Your people are intelligent, and that's good. The Oankali say you're potentially one of the most intelligent species they've found. But you're also hierarchical -- you and your nearest animal relatives and your most distant animal ancestors. Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient. The new was too often put at the service of the old. it will be again. You're bright enough to learn to live on your new world, but you're so hierarchical you'll destroy yourselves trying to dominate it and each other. You might last a long time, but in the end you'll destroy yourselves."
"We could last a thousand years," the male said. "We did alright on Earth until the war."
"You could. Your new world will be difficult. It will demand most of your attention, perhaps occupy your hierarchical tendencies safely for awhile."
"We'll be free -- us, our children, their children."
"Perhaps."
"We'll be fully human and free. That's enough. We might even get into space again on our own someday. Your people might be dead wrong about us."
"No." He couldn't read the gene combinations as I could. it was as though he were about to walk off a cliff simply because he could not see it -- or because he, or rather his descendants, would not hit the rocks below for a long time. And what were we doing, we who knew the truth? Helping him reach the cliff. Ferrying him to it.
That's one of the frequent themes in this book, and in much of Butler's writing -- the tug of war between the urge to dominate and to cooperate. I get the feeling Butler thought humanity could, if we really tried, overcome the dominating urges and become more cooperative and, thereby, likelier to survive. I'm not sure I agree with the ability to overcome domination -- on the individual level, sure, but way too few of us will be interested in doing so, I think, for it to matter.
Other themes that turn frequently in Butler's works are relationships between parents and children, between (and among) spouses, and the having of many, many children. This has occasionally made her stories a challenge for me to read because I find very large families repellent. It's a knee-jerk reaction for me and probably any large number of people clustered together would make me feel ill, but there's a special nausea attached to humans who seem to breed as mindlessly as insects.
It often makes me wonder what Butler's personal story was, as she seems not too much unlike me in many respects. An acknowledged asocial being who lived alone and who, as far as I know, never married or had any children, did regret this on some level that made her imagination overcompensate to this extraordinary degree? I can only feel grateful that I've enjoyed my solitary life.