Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bloodchild

How about a story about the horrors of parasites, inserted via a long narrow stinger, growing in the human body, feeding off blood and the flesh, and ultimately cut out in a horribly painful manner. No, I'm not talking about the shows about birth on TLC, it's a short story by Butler, (the same one who wrote Lilith and it was no surprise to me when the short story turned out to be about more disturbing tales on sex and reproduction. Oh! And horrible grotesque aliens.)

The story is very confusing at first. We get little to no explanation. But this is what makes the story work so well. I kept reading because I wanted to understand more about what I was reading and then when I found out it had some sort of reproduction plot I wanted to read it even more because let's face it, young people love that stuff. I don't know why so many horror movies focus on slashing and chasing, they should just play a women giving birth on the big screen and call it a horror movie. Teenagers everywhere would stand ten feet from the opposite sex for a couple days after that (I know I did). So, Butler is intelligent enough to figure out that the idea of birth is very scary to young people (mostly girls I would guess) and the pain that surrounds that. Let's not forget also the idea that, it can happen over and over again. Butler takes this idea and then suggests, what if men went through something similar? Also, she adds, "I wrote this to get over my fear of botflies". Right. You wrote an amazing and deep short story, that is a rather feminist view of birth to get over your fear of botflies. Genius.

The story itself was, as disturbing as it is, very well written and suspenseful. The themes represented were very deep (come on, it's Butler you guys) and intrusive thought wise. You have Tilcs and Terrans (humans). They supposedly live on a reserve (a prison)? The Tilcs have a pick at the Terran men; which ones they will "join families" with. Butler's main character is the representation of this ignorance. The "joining" of families, the sharing of the eggs, the idea that the Tilcs and the Terrans are jolly good buddies is like telling women in the 50s that having a kid was like going to sleep and then waking up with a baby. We follow the main character through the story until he realizes at one point his true purpose, thus his blind faith is questioned through events and his brothers jabs. In the end, he questions his soon to be "mate" T'Gatoi and forces her to come to an agreement with him, (the tables have turned). I really loved the line he used to win the argument as well. "You take chances in relationships." Or something like that.

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