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Out of all the scifi I've read over the years, one really stands out to me. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler. The reason isn't that I enjoyed it, but rather tha
by geuis 15y ago
Out of all the scifi I've read over the years, one really stands out to me. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler. The reason isn't that I enjoyed it, but rather that by the time I finished it I was inherently disturbed by it.
I've often read stories I enjoyed. Sometimes I read some that are boring. But it's very rare to actually finish something that makes you physically uncomfortable most of the way through.
The story is excellently written and I recommend anyone willing to experience scifi in a different way to read it.
Would also throw in The Windup Girl as another first rate recent novel.
- YogSothoth 15y agoDefinitely second the recommendation of Lilith's Brood, I also found it very moving. I bought it based upon the strength of her (much) earlier short story Bloodchild which I found myself thinking about for weeks after I'd read it.
- geuis 15y agoI'm very interested in how the book affected you. When you say you find it moving, can you describe in what ways? For me, the word "moving" means that I was emotionally tied to the character(s). When they succeed, I succeed. When one dies, its heart breaking. But that's not how Lilith's Brood affected me. At some deep level I was very disturbed by the overtones of rape and subjugation by the aliens, but that at the same time these creatures loved the humans they bonded with in the same deep way we feel when we love another person. There was a big amount of alienation in that humans in the bondings were physically repulsed to be near each other even though they were deeply in love. That human beings could only be close via the alien partner, there was just something deeply wrong with that. One of the reasons I respect that novel and can recommend it, but can't love it, is that Octavia Butler did such a magnificent job in telling the story in a way that it makes me feel as I do. That's rare.