Butler, Octavia: Wild Seed
Wild Seed
Writer: Octavia E. Butler
Genre: Fiction/Science Fiction
Pages: 279
I had this review written up on Monday and it was all kinds of awesome. And then LJ ate it whole, ticking me off so much I couldn't bear to re-write it all over again. I think I'm over it now.
Before Odyssey 2005, I'd never heard of Octavia Butler. Granted, that's not saying much since I am relatively new to the SF/F genre, and before Odyssey, I was really green in that regard, but still: I'd never heard of her. But her name kept popping up. Glass discussion, quotes, people expressing their love over her work. Yet, nothing was ever put in context for me--I didn't know what exactly it was that she wrote, and save for a name I was sure to recognize in the future, there was nothing that caught my interest.
Yet her name kept popping up, even after Odyssey. And then, I read Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. And that, surprisingly, got my attention. Card uses the opening of her book Wild Seed to discuss good openings and writing well over all. And I was hooked. Part of it was the opening itself: how simple language and solid construction revealed so much about what was going on without beating the reader over the head with it. There was subtly. And then there was the premise: a story about two immortals--polar opposites of each other yet still connected--who had to learn how to live with one another.
I decided that I had to read it right away, because I just had this itching feeling that Octavia Butler had something to offer me as a writer, as well as a reader hungering for good, literary, genre fiction.
Despite my wide range of tastes and likes, I am primarily a character reader. Out of all the books that I love, it's the character stories that grab me the most. So it makes sense that I'm a character writer.
And Wild Seed, I have to say, is one of the first genre books that wasn't a part of an existing franchise that actually, truly, focuses on character.
Let me define this: there's a difference between strong characters and strong characters that the story can't live without. Strong characters are usually secondary to ideas, events, and setting, but manage to respond very well to all of these, but oftentimes, they aren't unique to their situation. Likely, most anyone with the same character traits would respond in a similar fashion, and the story wouldn't suffer too much.
Character stories, though, absolutely hinge on the character. You can't uproot the character of the book and change them out with other characters, simply because the story would be something entirely different. And if anyone wants to argue that, I'm going to tell you to hold your tongue right now. :) This is because Butler does what I feel any good character writer should do, and that's create characters that are so rich and complex that you can't simply divide nature versus nurture into happy little categories: they live and interact with each other, and are so intertwined that it's hard to tell where a character's nature ends and the influence of setting begins.
Wild Seed, make no mistake, is a character story. It has strong characters. These characters both grow out of their life experience and create the life around them. They are connected to one another. They grow. They sacrifice. And most important, they truly change by the end of the novel. And those changes are so beautiful, so heartbreaking, and my heart was just twisting at the very end because human nature prevailed: despite the changes, and despite the resolution of these changes, the reader knew that because of who each character was, there would always be a game of cat and mouse between them. The difference at the end of the book, versus the beginning, is how they finally come to terms with each other.
The fact that Doro and Anyanwu are immortals delighted me to no end. This is because I have immortals in my own work (one of the reasons I had to read this book right away). This is also because too often we see angsty immortals in fiction (which can be fine, don't get me wrong) who are often (but not always!) stock characters without too much conflict. Course, maybe I'm not reading the right fiction, but Wild Seed is a definite step in the right direction.
This book also had an additional bonus for me as a writer: Butler attacks several controversial issues like slavery, race, reproduction, gender, and even religion which are themes that cycle and rotate and show up in most of my work. Maybe not all at once, but these are issues that are important to me, issues I want to explore in fiction. Because of this, Butler is already on my "must-read-everything-by-this-writer" list, because not only do I want to see what's been done before me, but I want to see it done well. I want to ponder and think about what I'm reading and what's being accomplished. I want to compare notes--what am I doing that's different? What am I doing that's the same? And is that okay?
And while I feel I have so much to learn from this author, I did have little nitpicks about the story. Did it effect my overall enjoyment of the story? Fortunately, not. There were questions, but mostly the kind that divulged in a pondering I don't mind.
There is so much to love about this book. I don't re-read books often (actually, hardly EVER), but this is one I see myself sitting down with over and over down the road. And it's a quick, short read too, which makes re-reading more of a pleasure than a chore (I'm still in awe over people who read the entire LOTR saga every year). And I definitely plan to read all I can get my hands on by this writer. I'm just so terribly sorry, though, to hear of her passing. Octavia Butler had so much to offer: as a writer and a woman. I had even entertained the idea that I might actually get to meet her one day, and I looked forward to the possibility of just soaking up whatever wisdom Butler had to offer. Ironically enough, the evening I finished Wild Seed is when I found out about her death immediately afterwards. It was shocking. Neil Gaiman mentioned in his blog that simply based on her work, Octavia Butler was larger than life. And I whole-heartedly agree, especially in comparison to reading this one book about two people who are immortal and yet so powerfully human. It's shocking to think that someone with that kind of power over characters, ideas, and language, could be taken away so soon.
At least I have the rest of her writing to look forward to. And to the rest of you, especially those of you hungering for a good SF/Fantasy read, get Wild Seed. It's not really fantasy (it's a part of a larger cycle that is SF), but it can be read as such. Maybe ethnic fantasy, if you will? Whatever the label, this isn't like anything I've ever read before, and I thank Octavia Butler very much because of it.