Unexpected Stories

Octavia Butler is a much celebrated science fiction author and this short collection of 2 short stories is my first introduction to her work. First things first - I recognize that a pair of previously unpublished short stories may not be the best place to start with an author like this. However, I can definitely appreciate there is a lot of creativity on display in the two stories presented here.

The longer of the two, ‘A Necessary Being', present an intriguing glimpse of an alien culture, with rigid caste structures determined by colouration. It presents an intriguing analogue to some of the racial attributes of human society, albeit presented in a cleaner and less systematically oppressed way. The desire to possess a being of a certain colour to show dominance of a particular tribe is intriguing and disturbing in some ways. As intriguing as the ideas were I did struggle a bit with engaging with the characters.

The second story is considerably shorter and presents a dystopian vision of society where certain psychic sensitives have emerged. The titular ‘Childfinder' is someone searching out these psychics to protect them from some nefarious government organisation. This one puts me in the mind of PKD, and as such I found it enjoyable. I just wished there was a bit more to it (was a very short story)