I'm continuing to gradually poke my way through Octavia Butler's books. It's kind of funny, I've been vaguely aware of her for a while but hadn't realized she wrote science fiction until quite recently. I just finished "Dawn", which is (probably) set in a different timeline than her "Parable" books.
MINI SPOILERS
I really loved Dawn. It's very different from Parable of the Sower, but like that book it felt far ahead of its time to me. (Which one would expect with science fiction, but in my own readings authors are usually exploring contemporary concerns in a future setting, not future concerns in a contemporary setting.) It doesn't feel prescient about specific events and trends like Parable, but it fully engages with ideas that were not in common discourse back then and are everyday topics now.
Where Parable's background is a very slow-burn gradual decline and rot of society, Dawn's background seems more traditional: a catastrophic nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. I flipped back to the copyright page and saw that this was published back in 1987! Funny to think how ubiquitous this scenario used to be and how it has vanished.
Basically all life on earth is toast as a result. It doesn't happen in an instant, and we only learn small snatches of facts in passing. It sounds like the northern hemisphere was hit the worst. The southern hemisphere is doomed as well, in large part because of the freezing temperatures brought about by nuclear winter.
With human life on the brink of extinction, they are saved by a race of aliens called Oankali. Probably the first 2/3 or so of the book is mostly the protagonist Lilith getting to know the Oankali: how they work, what they're doing, and what their plans are both short-term and long-term. The Oankali are an ancient race engaged in something they call "the trade". They explore, find sentient species, study them, modify their own genes to incorporate desirable traits, uplift the species with traits of their own. The Oankali as a civilization spread in this way, with half remaining behind and the other half continuing their exploration.
The Oankali have "saved" some of the surviving people, bringing them from the lethal surface of Earth to a space ship, curing wounds, and putting them into suspended animation. Most Oankali tech is biological rather than mechanical: the space ship is alive, and humans are kept alive and in stasis by Venus flytrap-type plants. We learn that these plants used to be carnivorous, but the Oankali modified them to be helpful instead.
I'm not clear on exactly what the timeline of Oankali contact with Earth has been. Were they silently observing the Cold War for years as it lurched towards Armageddon? Were they coincidentally passing by at the time? Did the energy of the nuclear war get their attention? In any case, they have a pretty deep understanding of humanity (though not as deep as they think they have). Jdahya, the first Oankali who Lilith meets, says that humans have two fatal traits. One is that they (we) are hierarchical. The other is that we are intelligent. Either one alone would be fine, but the combination would always inevitably lead to destruction. Because of this, they deliberately do not rescue the most hierarchical humans, which are the generals and politicians hiding in fallout shelters in the northern hemisphere. Human society will need to change.
And, more creepily, human biology will change too. The Oankali won't act without consent, but they seem implacable in their determination to mix human genes with Oankali genes, which severely grosses out Lilith and all of the other humans as well. Humanity has been "rescued", but will they still be humans once they become hybrids?
Reading this book, I thought this problem was nicely ambiguous and compelling. It's a very strange thing, and a very strange situation; but clearly humanity on its own wasn't faring so hot, so it might be something to consider. Looking back over it, I'm now wondering if we're meant to consider this idea sympathetically, or with horror like Lilith does.
I've been writing a lot about humans, but more of the book is about Oankali, and they're pretty interesting too! Physically, they're vaguely humanoid, but their bodies are covered with many dozens of tentacles. The impression I get from reading is a little like a sea anemone or something: they tend to move in concert, are used for sensing, seem to mostly move unconsciously/automatically but can be controlled if desired. Their skin is gray, smooth and cool. They are alien and revolting to look at, and it takes quite a while for Lilith and eventually others to be able to stand interacting with them.
Besides their tentacular appearance, the most interesting aspect is probably that they have three sexes. The females seem to be the tallest. Males are closest in appearance to humans. The "ooloi" have no gender and are referred to as "it". Ooloi look physically different from males and females, with an additional pair of "sensory arms", particularly thick and sturdy tentacles. Ooloi seem to dominate, although I'm not sure if that's generally true or only for the situations humans are observing. Oankali biology requires all three genders to participate in order to reproduce, with an ooloi essentially mediating between a male and a female. Yes, there is alien sex in this book.
MEGA SPOILERS
Lilith has been chosen to help train a larger group of humans, with the goal of relocating back to Earth in the Amazonian jungle. Humans don't come off very well. Prior to Awakening her first group, she is nearly raped by a human male: the first human she has seen in the long time since her captivity. This is the first of what will become many examples of the Oankali in general and the Ooloi in particular not understanding people (individually and as a whole) as well as they think they do.
Unnverved by that experience, Lilith is very strategic in her Awakening, reading candidates' biographies to try and find likely allies. This has mixed results. People are being awakened from the stress of nuclear war into an alien environment surrounded by strangers, so it's not too surprising that people aren't at their best.
In some ways, this section feels a little like a zombie movie, in the sense that "the real monsters are the humans." That isn't generally the case, or even mostly the case, but the scariest and most disturbing stuff tends to come from people (usually men) violently imposing their hierarchical superiority.
END SPOILERS
I just checked to see if there's a sequel, and there is! I'll probably check it out at some point, there's definitely more story to go with this.
Dawn is a little like the Parable books in that it looks directly at the problems with humanity - our selfishness, violence, fear and hostility towards the unknown - while still fundamentally loving humanity as a whole. The protagonists need to navigate challenging and dangerous worlds, and we admire them for that. There's good in the world, and bad in the world, and the good need to stick together and act on their principles in order to secure a better future for themselves. No matter what form the apocalypse takes.
