Her latest book is Parable of the Sower, the first in a projected series. It's set in an America which is not so much post-Apocalyptic as post a slow decline into anarchy, and it's about the journey of one young woman - Lauren Olamin - to find a new home after hers is destroyed. Along the way, she picks up a ragtag crew of friends, associates and hangers-on. So far, so cliched. What makes this different is the attention Butler pays to building her world and her characters.
Lauren doesn't start her journey till halfway through the book. Before she does, Butler shows us life in the relatively wealthy enclave where Olamin grew up: if this is the best, or nearly so, then how dreadful can the rest be? The fate of Olamin's psychopathic brother gives us a hint, but can't quite prepare us. Also set up are the other twists Butler gives her material. Olamin's dead mother abused an intelligence enhancing drug, turning Olamin into a hyper-empath - she shares others' pain. Again, Butler makes this standard material her own: Olamin's sensitivity is not to actual pain, but what she imagines the other person is feeling. Thus, if she is unaware of what is happening, she feels nothing - but it works both ways and if she thinks something is hurting the other person, she gets hurt herself even if the actual pain is non-existant.
The other force driving Olamina and the book is religion: Olamina's father is a Christian preacher, but she rejects Christianity. Instead, she invents a religion of her own. Change is God, God is Change, Olamina says. Shape change or be shaped by it. From this, she develops Earthseed: its aim is to take humanity to the stars, so that even if civilisation dies out on Earth, something will remain. That quest is - one guesses - the substance of the books to follow this one in the series.
Without these additional factors, the Earth of Parable of the Sower is probably too standard to make an interesting game world. Both the Earthseed religion and Olamina's hyper-empathy, however, might make interesting additions to existing campaigns.
Butler's earlier work offers more intriguing gaming possibilities (though if you read her work just for that, you'll be doing her - and perhaps yourself - a disservice; Butler's work is a careful exploration of symbiosis and co-dependence; the settings and some of the characters are rich pickings for gamers, but the genius comes with the specifics of what Butler has to say). In the Patternist sequence, her earliest novel series, she explored how a mutation in humanity could challenge the very foundations of individuality, by bringing about a gestalt mind. To this she added a complication: contact with aliens.
In her later series, the Xenogenesis trilogy, survivors of a shattered Earth are rescued by the spacefaring Oankali, so that they may be participants - willing or otherwise - in a breeding programme that will see the radical alteration of both species. For the tri-sexed, gene swapping Oankali this is normal; for the Humans, of course, it is abomination. Yet it's their only hope of survival: if survival is worth purchasing at any cost.
In both series, Butler explores what it is to be human - and not-human - from every angle. As with the Book of Earthseed, what makes these books unique are the webs of relationships Butler builds up. These would be difficult to replicate in the average game, and perhaps it would be a mistake to try. Yet both series are replete with possibilities for gaming. Patternmaster offers the chance for modern gaming outside the usual horror/conspiracy/spy triangle (though it would be possible to use it as the driving force behind any of these things); or it could make a great historical game - just choose your period. The Oankali might easily make a guest appearance in any one of the standard science fiction games. With more work, it would be possible to use the world of the Xenogenesis trilogy with one of the generic systems.
I can't leave Butler without mentioning her stand-alone novel Kindred (Women's Press), or her short fiction.
In the former, Dana, a Black American living in the twentieth century, is repeatedly pulled back through time to a slave plantation in the antebellum South. The details, though, reveal some of Butler's typical concerns. For one thing, the situation is given depth by Dana's own situation - she's married to a white man, and the fact that she has a liberal attitude to race relations only adds drama and complexity to her reactions. She is pulled back to save the life of the white plantation owner's son - who may very well be one of her ancestors - again and again. Meanwhile, there's Dana's white husband, and his reaction, and the way Dana's feelings toward him change. And then there's what happens when he, also, gets pulled through time.
There are no easy answers here, morally, ethically or practically, just a remorseless working out of the permutations of desire and revulsion on all sides, until at last Dana does what she must to survive.
This is probably not something you can use for gaming purposes, except possibly in a limited way for a one-on-one game, or as a shortcut for research on the American South before the Civil War. But read it anyway.
The latter is collected in Bloodchild and Other Stories (as far as I know, available only on import from the US small press house Four Walls Eight Windows). These few stories are the whole of Butler's short-form output, and there isn't a duff one among them, from the early Speech Sounds (about a brain-damaging plague that takes away the ability to process either written or verbal language); to the almost-mainstream Near of Kin; to The Morning and the Evening and the Night, which posits a plague as terrifying as anything we know of, and a price for dealing with it that is, if anything, moreso. But the title story is sublime. It details the relationship of a human boy on a colony world and his alien... patron. Some have seen in this a terrifying kind of slavery; Butler says it is more about interdependence and the compromises people make to survive. That, actually, may sum up all her work.
Interdependencies and the inability to compromise may also sum up the next book on my fiction list. The bulk of The Prestige by Christopher Priest (Simon & Schuster; £6.99) is set in the latter half of the nineteenth century: the age of the grand illusion. Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier are rivals: each wants to be the greatest stage magician in the world. The rivalry is set off by Borden, who is incensed by Angier's fake seances; but it continues throughout their lives. It is chronicled in their journals. Hence, we see events through the eyes of each of the magicians. The main object of their obsession is the trick Borden calls his New Transported Man, in which he crosses the stage in the blink of an eye. Scotty and the transporter couldn't have done a better job of it. Angier becomes obsessed, and calls on the aid of the inventor Tesla.
As with all magic tricks, to say more would be to spoil the show. However, I will add that the two journal sequences are framed and punctuated by sections from the point of view of two descendants of the magicians. These round out the story, giving it a wholeness it would otherwise lack; yet their part of the plot is transparent far too early on. This is a quibble, however: the book as a whole is an amazing achievement. I do have some other problems with it on the thematic level - more about what it doesn't, and can't, do than what it does; but it's actually impossible for me to discuss them without disclosing the legerdemain at the heart of the story(and even admitting that is there may be giving away too much, even though Priest, through his mouthpiece Borden, says as much himself).
Next up, a reprint, this time from a US publisher. The Once and Future King, by TH White (Ace; US price $16.95, UK price unknown), is one of those books you have to have read if you want an idea of the development of fantasy in English. So it's with some trepidation that I admit I've never got all the way through it. It's actually a sequence of four stories based on the Arthurian legends. Most people will know the first one - it's what the Disney film The Sword In The Stone was based on. It is quite wonderful - funny and poignant by turns. What I've read of the rest (which is well over half) is just as wonderful.
In an odd kind of way, it's almost what you could imagine PG Wodehouse coming up with had he decide to write an Arthurian fantasy. So why have I never managed to finish it? Because the latter sections become unremittingly bleak: they stick a knife in your heart and then just keep on twisting (and yes, they do this and still manage to sound like Wodehouse, which is bizarre). And I'm afraid I've just never been able to take it (this isn't the only time this has happened to me - Was Geoff Ryman's deconstruction of the Oz stories, is equally marvellous, or at least the parts I've read and heard him read were: but as a good friend of mine said about it, "I'll be traumatised later, thank you").
Anyway, back to The Once And Future King: you really should read this; I'm not sure what Tolkien fans - or fans of Le Guin, Yolen, ER Edson, Lewis or Carroll or any number of other fantasists - would make of the cover claim that it is The World's Greatest Fantasy Classic but it's certainly a contender. Actually it doesn't include the most traumatic and depressing section of all - the one that White's original publisher refused to put in - The Book of Merlyn. In this, Merlin appears to Arthur before the final battle with Mordred, and sends him off for another visit with the animals (as he did when Arthur was a boy); much of the material is repeated, but here it becomes a depressing and didactic treatise on the nature of war and peace. Should you want it, it's available separately, also from Ace.
Ace appear to be putting all of White's work back in print, so I'd just like to add a swift plug for Mistress Masham's Repose. This is White in playful mode, as he tells us what happens to a bunch of Lilliputians after they stowed away aboard Gulliver's ship and ended up in England.
Best value in this issue's selection of stories has to be The Year's Best Science Fiction (edited by Gardner Dozois; published in the UK by Robinson Publishing; £7.99). Pretty obviously, this is really Dozois' view of what constitutes the best sf of the year (and it is sf, not fantasy - Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow do a separate volume for fantasy and horror; unfortunately, it's only available over here on import). Since he's one of the editor of Asimov's SF Magazine, there's an obvious potential bias involved - one which a quick look at the contents page will confirm.
On the other hand, Asimov's is one of the two or three top sf magazines around, so one would expect that a lot of good stories would see first publication there. There are some blazingly good ones from that magazine and elsewher, from old hands like Ursula Le Guin, through established-but-not-gigantic names like Ian R. Macleod, to fast-track newcomers like David Marusek. Certainly any of you who want to write should probably study the book assiduously. if it does nothing but give you an insight into Dozois' taste, it would be worth the money, but it's also a good way to track what's hot and what's not . The year summaries are invaluable here, also - though nothing can beat going out and buying copies of the various magazines and anthologies as they come out.
So, on to nonfiction, and my second disclaimer of the issue. There are two new books out about the making of Babylon 5. I'm friends with both Jane Killick (Boxtree £7.99) and Andy Lane (Virgin; £5.99) - in fact, I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements of both books - so I really can't do any more than indicate the existence of the books and leave you to make your own decisions.
While I'm plugging friends, I suppose I might as well mention that Decalog 4 is out from Virgin. It's a collection of stories charting the family history of one of the Doctor's (Who? You know....) companions. It's edited by Andy Lane and it contains stories by lots of great writers, only some of whom are friends of mine (one of them is Valkyrie's own Alex Stewart). Oh, and one by me...
Next, an update. Roger Fulton has brought out an update to his Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction (Boxtree, £18.99). Bizarrely, it has 696 pages against the previous (1995) edition's 726, and the print doesn't look any smaller, either. Obviously, then, the entries for some shows must have been shortened to make way for new material. As with the previous edition, the selection is quirky to say the least: I may very well be showing my own biases when I kvetch about the intro to Space: Above and Beyond getting nearly as much space as that for Babylon 5. That's a subjective opinion, of course. Objectively, Fulton seems to let shows he likes get away with far too much (the writers of Sliders, for instance, apparently didn't know that you can't treat viruses with antibiotics; but surely Fulton should have?). Is it worth shelling out another nineteen quid if you already have the earlier version? I doubt it. But if you don't have a media sf reference book and need one, this is probably as good as it gets.
Next up, one of those quiz books that is good for whiling away a few hours when you ought to be doing something more creative. The Sci Fi Channel Trivia Book (by John Betancourt; Byron Preiss Visual Publications; $15 - UK price unknown) has lots and lots of questions divided up by difficulty and area - tv, movie and so on. So - for ten points name the evil organisation that opposed UNCLE. Easy enough? Well, for fifty points, which Space 1999 episode was written by Dr Who scripter Terence Dicks? (No, I didn't know either.) All good fun. It saddens me, though, to see written sf relegated to a section called The Wormhole, as if it's just an afterthought.
Octavia Butler is a genius. Or, if not a genius, damn close. At least, the administrators of the MacArthur Award think so - it's a huge grant paid to artists of all persuasions in order to allow them to further their careers without worrying about financial constraints. For the first of several times in this issue of Valkyrie, I'm going to have to admit a personal bias here - Octavia was one of my tutors at Clarion, and as far as I'm concerned I owe at least part of my career to her.
Novels
Non Fiction
Update
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