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School: much work as we head into the Religion Clauses. (Alternate title for this post: Note to self -- religion, freaky.) I had a good time being outraged with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naominovik and cesperanza about the male bias of last week's Harvard conference at which a bunch of guys congratulated themselves for -- yes -- inventing the remix. Not to mention the fanvid. Also a good dinner with my parents, except that my dad may accept an offer to teach in Cambridge, which will keep him far away most of the week.
Anyway, not much to offer, though I am actively working on a vid and a Smallville AU of such cheesetasticness that even I am embarrassed.
Wild Seed: This might be my least favorite Butler so far. It's still pretty darn good. For some reason, I was less emotionally connected to this protagonist, a woman who (apparently because of a mutation) can change her shape at will, heal herself, and keep herself from aging. She's living a quiet life in seventeenth-century Africa when she encounters Doro, a man who can jump from body to body, transferring his consciousness while killing the prior inhabitant. He likes "talented" bodies best, so he has been selectively breeding groups for telekinesis, empathy, etc. Through threats and persuasion, he gets her to do his bidding for centuries, breeding him children and participating in his social experiments, but never without pain and struggle. Will he ever understand why she cares for others, or will he remain vicious and insensitive? Are there any weapons available against an immortal who can kill anyone she loves? As usual, Butler's strength is in showing why people compromise themselves; sf/fantasy doesn't often focus on limits, making this a welcome corrective.
Mind of My Mind: This is something of a sequel to Wild Seed, a connector in the series that I believe ends series-chronologically with Patternmaster, though the books were not written in the order of their placement in the series timeline. Anyway, it's another short book about one of Doro's breeding projects, a woman whose telepathy offers a breakthrough in organizing and controlling telepathy -- but therefore also puts her on a collision course with Doro the unkillable. Again, hard choices and not terribly likeable characters, though it was interesting to see the woman's good intentions towards her extended family of fellow telepaths and how that seemed almost inevitably to slide into abuse, or at a minimum exploitation, of the nontelepathic. I'm hesitant to say I look forward to reading the rest of the series, but I know it will be good.
Kindred: A black woman, newly married to a white novelist in the 1970s, finds herself ripped back in time whenever the life of a young white boy is threatened. The boy turns out to be one of her ancestors, and a slaveowner. As he grows, she's called back again and again, returning to the present only when her own life is in danger. When she's in the past, she's almost helpless against the slaveowning and sexist society she faces, but she has to learn to survive somehow; in the process, she sees how other blacks made various choices, to survive or to struggle. Likewise with slaveowners, who endorse the system in various ways and seem blind to what they're doing to other human beings. Dana's good life now is born of terrible suffering then, and she's implicated directly when she repeatedly saves the slaveowner who is going to father her ancestor on an unwilling slave. It's a powerful story, using history instead of aliens to explore Butler's usual themes of complicity and constraint.
Still to come: More Kim Stanley Robinson, comics, and firefighters.
naominovik and cesperanza about the male bias of last week's Harvard conference at which a bunch of guys congratulated themselves for -- yes -- inventing the remix. Not to mention the fanvid. Also a good dinner with my parents, except that my dad may accept an offer to teach in Cambridge, which will keep him far away most of the week.Anyway, not much to offer, though I am actively working on a vid and a Smallville AU of such cheesetasticness that even I am embarrassed.
Wild Seed: This might be my least favorite Butler so far. It's still pretty darn good. For some reason, I was less emotionally connected to this protagonist, a woman who (apparently because of a mutation) can change her shape at will, heal herself, and keep herself from aging. She's living a quiet life in seventeenth-century Africa when she encounters Doro, a man who can jump from body to body, transferring his consciousness while killing the prior inhabitant. He likes "talented" bodies best, so he has been selectively breeding groups for telekinesis, empathy, etc. Through threats and persuasion, he gets her to do his bidding for centuries, breeding him children and participating in his social experiments, but never without pain and struggle. Will he ever understand why she cares for others, or will he remain vicious and insensitive? Are there any weapons available against an immortal who can kill anyone she loves? As usual, Butler's strength is in showing why people compromise themselves; sf/fantasy doesn't often focus on limits, making this a welcome corrective.
Mind of My Mind: This is something of a sequel to Wild Seed, a connector in the series that I believe ends series-chronologically with Patternmaster, though the books were not written in the order of their placement in the series timeline. Anyway, it's another short book about one of Doro's breeding projects, a woman whose telepathy offers a breakthrough in organizing and controlling telepathy -- but therefore also puts her on a collision course with Doro the unkillable. Again, hard choices and not terribly likeable characters, though it was interesting to see the woman's good intentions towards her extended family of fellow telepaths and how that seemed almost inevitably to slide into abuse, or at a minimum exploitation, of the nontelepathic. I'm hesitant to say I look forward to reading the rest of the series, but I know it will be good.
Kindred: A black woman, newly married to a white novelist in the 1970s, finds herself ripped back in time whenever the life of a young white boy is threatened. The boy turns out to be one of her ancestors, and a slaveowner. As he grows, she's called back again and again, returning to the present only when her own life is in danger. When she's in the past, she's almost helpless against the slaveowning and sexist society she faces, but she has to learn to survive somehow; in the process, she sees how other blacks made various choices, to survive or to struggle. Likewise with slaveowners, who endorse the system in various ways and seem blind to what they're doing to other human beings. Dana's good life now is born of terrible suffering then, and she's implicated directly when she repeatedly saves the slaveowner who is going to father her ancestor on an unwilling slave. It's a powerful story, using history instead of aliens to explore Butler's usual themes of complicity and constraint.
Still to come: More Kim Stanley Robinson, comics, and firefighters.
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Now I can't wait for you to post it! I love good tasting cheesy stories, and I am quite confident that your's will be delicious.
"Kindred" looks like a traumatic read to me.