I requested this book from the library because the titular story was highly recommended by a writer at Deadspin. I enjoyed that one, but I have to say that I enjoyed most of the rest of the stories in the book even more. I read The Parable of the Sower last year, and I didn't mind it, but I can't say that I was drawn in. After reading these stories, I think that I am a bigger fan of Butler's short stories than her novel-length work. My favorite of the stories was "Amnesty," a story of a woman who was abducted by alien invaders who look like big haystacks (I pictured them looking kind of like Gossamer - I looked it up - the hair monster from Looney Tunes) and completely subdue the human race. The aliens don't initially have a way to communicate with earthlings, so they perform a bunch of experiments on them and hurt and kill many of them as part of their research. However, they can connect with humans by enveloping them in their bodies, a process which has comforting effects on both the aliens and humans. Anyway, the woman becomes more or less an employee of the aliens, attempting to train new humans to act as translators between aliens and earthlings. It's a pretty great story! And there are others that I enjoyed nearly as much! There are also a couple of essays about Butler's writing process, which I could see being very helpful to others trying to follow the path that she blazed.
No comments:
Post a Comment