“My last night of childhood began with a visit home.”The short sci-fi/horror-lite story of the title, Bloodchild, opens thus. You know something significant, and probably not good, will happen. But at first, it’s a pleasant enough domestic scene: among the family, sipping a soporific but rejuvenating egg, snuggling against the velvet underside of someone’s (something’s?!) embrace.The awareness of mysteries and taboos grows slowly, seeded by careful choice of vague but uneasy words: the need for

I must now read everything she's ever written!'

A collection of seven speculative short stories, featuring a pair of essays on writing, Bloodchild uses the tropes of science fiction to probe existential questions and imagine alternatives to the present. The fiction ranges from considering what a world stripped of speech might look like, to questioning how one might create a utopian society if granted godlike powers. In precise prose, Butler moves at a measured pace in all the stories, lending herself enough time to delve into the subtleties o...

Where do I begin with this treasure trove of a book? This book has fortified my love for Octavia E. Butler, a collection of eight wondrous short stories and two incredible essays all with afterwords from Butler herself.The stories explore human relations with each other, with their environments and to those that are alien and unlike them. All bursting with lurid imagination, the short stories examine human experience and the essays told in simple wise words, some that I'd seen in quotes but foun...

Excellent. Disturbing. Distressing. Hopeful. Reading this collection reminded me of the lurching discomfort and curious longing I often felt when reading fantasy as a child. All the things I want out of speculative fiction.

I should have been reading Octavia E. Butler years ago! Bloodchild and Other Stories serves as an exceptional introduction to the work of one of SFF's greats. Across five classic stories, two essays, and two "new" stories Butler shows incredible range in topic and style. The writing here is snappy, readable, and endlessly fascinating. The eponymous story, Bloodchild, is the type of science fiction tale that burrows deep in the consciousness and lays eggs that hatch for days afterwords. Each of t...

OCTAVIA BUTLER, HERE I COME. I loved these stories, so thought-provoking. Butler has been on my reading list forever, and now I plan to read several this month.

Bloodchild is a collection of short stories by the famous science-fiction writer Octavia Butler. The problem with most short story collections is that they are usually a mixed bag, populated with mostly mediocre stories speckled with a few stinkers and a few gems. Well, I am happy to report to you that Bloodchild is not like that at all. Every single story in this collection is captivating, intelligent, and written in a style that is clear and accessible without losing any of its sophistication....

I love everything Octavia E. Butler writes. Though not every story was 5-stars from me, this collection of short stories was quality writing. Just really true perfection here. Made me want to re-read Octavia Butler's entire body of work. Bloodchild- 4 starsVery intense. I find it interesting that the author says in the discussion that this isn't a commentary on slavery because that is what it felt like to me. Sickly fascinating, I couldn't stop reading. My first time seeing mPreg outside of a ro...

“I believed I was ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless. I also thought that everyone would notice these faults if I drew attention to myself. I wanted to disappear. I hid out in a big pink notebook—one that would hold a whole ream of paper. I made myself a universe in it. There I could be a magic horse, a Martian, a telepath.… There I could be anywhere but here, any time but now, with any people but these.”This anthology includes two essays, one of which is autobiographical. I don’t no...

"Speech Sounds"In a dystopian setup, people lost their abilities to read, understand words, speak, hear, etc because of a disease. Still, in such a dark, somber and depressing world, there is hope and humanity might still have the will to survive and to communicate with each other.It is one of those short stories with a weight beyond words; loved it to pieces.

4,5 stars /// HOLY FUCKING COW! I rarely read sci-fi but Butler has the potential to become an author for me. I love her writing style and her ideas are really clever and engrossing! I usually struggle with sci-fi because I have a hard time understanding what's going on and how the world is shaped etc. but Butler's world building is so vivid and clear, it was confusingly easy to get lost in her writing. :D Also, reading the foreword and all the afterwords for every single story has me convinced

I gotta hand it to Octavia E. Butler. This is the first collection of short stories that I really, really liked. Usually I dislike them because as soon as I start getting into them, they end. I start the next only to flounder around still thinking about the previous story, and by the time my brain catches up and gets in the present one, it ends. Repeat the process throughout the book.However, Ms. Butler was able to pull me into each new story on the very first page. I didn't have that moment of

Octavia Butler never fails to delight me, make me think about things differently and make me feel... well, an awful lot of feelings!I will not attempt to summarize the stories in this collection of short fiction: that whole book can be devoured in a couple of sittings, and if you enjoy speculative fiction, you owe it to yourself to check this out. These are stories about survival, love, family, language, intimacy, dreams and faith. Sometimes there are aliens, sometimes there is a disease and som...

"Those whom we love are often the most alien to us." —Christopher PaoliniMy review centres on Bloodchild, the better-known segment in this anthology - an extremely short sci-fi story, recommended to me by @apatt and @cecily.As the story’s curtain rises, we are led into an intriguing scene of surreal domestic bliss, whereby (view spoiler)[‘something’ resembling a walking lobster/scorpion is casually cuddling up to a human on a sofa.(Please excuse my flippancy, it’s way more evocative and macab

Octavia Butler hit me with the humanity and relatability I didn’t know I was seeking in the often cool and clinical world of science fiction. This was my first Butler book and, as it turns out, I adore the writer as much as I adore the writing. Who couldn’t fall for someone who sets out to write a pregnant man story (“Bloodchild), and gets real about that day she was so disgusted with humans and our inability to communicate with each other that she had to tell a grim tale about the end of commun...

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |In Bloodchild and Other Stories Octavia Butler demonstrates how fluid Afrofuturism is. In these stories, Butler combines different genres—such as speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, horror—presenting her readers with thought-provoking stories that challenge Western influences and beliefs. Within these stories, Butler is able to simultaneously reclaim the past and to promote visions of possible futures. This reappropriation of the past and the future occurs throug...

As grim and bleak as Octavia E. Butler’s work is in many ways, there’s also always a sense that she believes in the possibility that individuals can, and do, find ways to survive any difficulty, although often at a great cost. She writes with a clear-eyed simplicity that allows the power of her ideas to come through without heavy neon signage or melodrama. Hugely influential, with very good reason, I wish that more SFF writers would trust their readers’ intelligence as much as Butler seems to ha...

When I was a child, I read Madeleine L'Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time countless times. I didn’t think of it as science fiction or fantasy—I didn’t know the terms then anyway—it was just a story I loved and connected to on many levels. After reading this collection’s title story, the first thing I’ve read by Butler, I thought of the L’Engle novel and not because of its genre. In a biographical essay collected here, Butler speaks to her voracious reading, courtesy of the public library. I don’t know if...