Dawn

Wow. I usually hate hard sci-fi. But this was captivating – Butler taps into ideas about what makes us humans, at a core, biological level. As a parent, the concept of what we desire for our offspring - the desire for sameness in our offspring competing with a desire for the greatness beyond what one could desire for oneself was very compelling.

This is a hard book to rate for me.

I loved the first half. It incrementally builds out a very interesting world filled with neat sci-fi concepts, exploring lots of interesting ideas. Meanwhile, it gives us lots of time to get to know our main character, how she thinks, and the characters around her. The characters, sci-fi concepts, and philosophical musings make this section of the book a fantastic read.

In the second half, once she starts waking other humans up, it became much less interesting to me. The cast of characters grows so quickly that (understandably) few are given much page time to understand them. But either because of the size of the cast, or for other reasons, the other humans all fell flat for me - 1-dimensional and uninteresting. Even our main character gets less interesting, as we have less time with her thoughts, so her actions start to feel less realistic, less relatable. Meanwhile, a bland political plot unfolds with a bland romantic sub-plot. Lacking compelling plot or characters by the end, I was ready for it to be done and left disappointed. 

When I began this book I thought it would be more challenging to read. I haven't read much sci-fi from the 70s and 80s, but the stuff I have read has a particular stilted flair to it. They are often stories more interested in discussing philosophy and the failures of humanity than telling a compelling narrative that people can see themselves in. But once I was past the first or second chapters, this story moved. Octavia Butler's prose is graceful and swift, and Lilith....Lilith is the best.

The world has ended. Humanity has finally gone and done it and blown themselves up, and suddenly Lilith Iyapo is on a spaceship somewhere just past the moon. Her captors are humanoid but hideous, compassionate but very manipulative. They want to give humanity another shot, and in doing that they will change themselves and humans forever. Lilith is educated in the aliens' ways, changed to suit their purposes, and tasked with choosing and preparing a group of humans to return to Earth. You know, if they don't kill themselves or her first.

I was blown away by how real this felt. Lilith responds to her impossible situation in much the same I feel like I would. She's curious and practical, but deeply frustrated all the time. Can you imagine trying to talk sense into forty people who have been abducted by aliens, and are hellbent on not being sensible? Would you support an alien race in rebuilding humanity if it meant giving up your own humanity, and that of your future children? Lilith does absolutely the best she freaking can, and I would move mountains for this woman, I swear. She shoots straight, whether she's talking to Oankali or other humans. The Oankali have very distinct personalities too, and the friction that occurs between Lilith and her adoptive alien families provides for not just conflict but a lot of humor.

This book also triggers my chuck-things-through-windows reflex. I hate Lord of the Flies-style set ups, I can't stand stories that assume that when the chips are down we revert to our worst state. Thankfully, as long as Lilith was holding things together, I was too, but when things got bad towards the end, the danger of her situation began to effect me on a core level. And it makes me wonder - would humans only become better if we're made, biologically and genetically, into something else? Are we - as the Oankali suggest - inherently flawed? It's interesting, I brought this premise up to my writing group, Butler's idea that humanity's biggest self-destructive flaw is our compulsion towards hierarchy. Two people responded saying that is interesting to suggest that something that has fueled our evolution - competition - would also bring our destruction. I found it strange that they think competition and hierarchy is necessary at all for humans to be who and what they are. It was a tad worrying, to be honest.

I could talk a lot about the sociological and philosophical implications of this story. I will say that though I was extremely impressed by how progressive and sophisticated this book is, I was bothered that it was still very heteronormative. I mean, we have aliens with three genders for crying out loud, and yet there was this assumption that all the people in the group would pair along heterosexual lines. Granted, you could explain it as they were selected by the Oankali to be that way, but in a group of forty people you're going to have some gay people, regardless of whether they were out or having relationships with people of the same gender before they got kidnapped. In most books, I wouldn't point this out, but Butler is clearly smart and knows what she's doing, this should not be a blind spot for her. Maybe it'll be addressed later in the series, when the new humanity evolves further. Personally speaking, I definitely want to know how queer people fit into this new world.

Overall, this book is amazing and frustrating and eye-opening. It was particularly so for me right now, as I'm watching the news and wondering if there is much that we can be hopeful for about our future. Our worst habits as humans are culminating in their inevitable conclusion, and I don't think there are any aliens out there ready to give us a second chance. But if there were - would we even take it? Would we even know how?