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Bloodchild and Other Stories is the only collection of science fiction stories and essays written by American writer Octavia E. Butler. Each story and essay features an afterword by Butler. . Critic Jane Donawerth observes that " [i]n this short story the conventional adolescent male narrator/hero is punished by rape, incest.
Table of contents
- October 2006
- “The Butler”
- Octavia Butler
- Bookslut | Severance: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
- Accessibility links
After a moment, Martha was able to take her hands from her face and look again at the grayness around her and at God. This confused her even more. God smiled. This struck Martha as such a human thing to say that her fear diminished a little—although she was still impossibly confused. Finally, she had stopped, turned the computer off, and realized that she felt stiff.
October 2006
Her back hurt. She was hungry and thirsty, and it was almost five A. She had worked through the night. Amused in spite of her various aches and pains, she got up and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. And then she was here, confused and scared. The comfort of her small, disorderly house was gone, and she was standing before this amazing figure who had convinced her at once that he was God—or someone so powerful that he might as well be God.
He had work for her to do, he said—work that would mean a great deal to her and to the rest of humankind. If she had been a little less frightened, she might have laughed.
“The Butler”
Beyond comic books and bad movies, who said things like that? And she was sitting. She did not sit down, but simply found herself sitting in a comfortable armchair that had surely not been there a moment before. Another trick, she thought resentfully—like the grayness, like the giant on his throne, like her own sudden appearance here. Everything was just one more effort to amaze and frighten her. And, of course, it was working. She was amazed and badly frightened. Worse, she disliked the giant for manipulating her, and this frightened her even more.
Surely he could read her mind. Surely he would punish. She made herself speak through her fear. He looked at her with what she read as amusement—looked at her long enough to make her even more uncomfortable. Remember them.
Octavia Butler
Be guided by their stories. When she was a girl, she had gone to church and to Sunday School, to Bible class and to vacation Bible school. She had come to regard their stories as parables rather than literal truths, but she remembered them. God had ordered Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and to tell the people there to mend their ways. Frightened, Jonah had tried to run away from the work and from God, but God had caused him to be shipwrecked, swallowed by a great fish, and given to know that he could not escape.
Job had been the tormented pawn who lost his property, his children, and his health, in a bet between God and Satan. And when Job proved faithful in spite of all that God had permitted Satan to do to him, God rewarded Job with even greater wealth, new children, and restored health. As for Noah, of course, God ordered him to build an ark and save his family and a lot of animals because God had decided to flood the world and kill everyone and everything else.
Why was she to remember these three Biblical figures in particular? What had they do with her—especially Job and all his agony? Help it to find less destructive, more peaceful, sustainable ways to live. After a while, he went on. This time when he stopped talking, Martha laughed. She felt overwhelmed with questions, fears, and bitter laughter, but it was the laughter that broke free. She needed to laugh. It gave her strength somehow. She stood up, stepped toward God. I was born poor, black, and female to a fourteen-year-old mother who could barely read.
We were homeless half the time while I was growing up. Is that bottom-level enough for you?
Martha sat down again, frightened by the smile, aware that she had been shouting—shouting at God! Because of where I came from? I chose you because you were the one I wanted for this. She was instantly ashamed of herself. She was begging, sounding pitiful, humiliating herself. But I assure you, you will do this work. He stood up and stepped toward her. He was at least twelve feet high and inhumanly beautiful. He literally glowed. And abruptly, he was not twelve feet high. Martha never saw him change, but now he was her size—just under six feet—and he no longer glowed. Now when he looked at her, they were eye to eye.
He did look at her.
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- Featured Short Story: ‘Home Truths’ by David Butler.
- Four Color #428?
Has your image of me grown feathered wings or a blinding halo? More normal. It was as though she walked through ankle-high, ground-hugging fog. It should be May or early June. And it was so. It was as though it had always been so.
Bookslut | Severance: Stories by Robert Olen Butler
They were walking through what could have been a vast city park. Martha looked at God, her eyes wide. And she went from being elated to—once again—being terrified. God went to a huge deep red Norway Maple tree and sat down beneath it on a long wooden bench. Martha realized that he had created both the ancient tree and the comfortable-looking bench only a moment before.
She knew this, but again, it had happened so smoothly that she was not jarred by it. She thought about that—his sigh, the fact that he looked away into the trees instead of at her. Was an eternity of absolute ease just another name for hell? Not even by accident. She sat down next to him because sitting and staring out into the endless park was easier than standing and facing him and asking him questions that she thought might make him angry.
You know how. You could do it without making mistakes. Why make me do it? She thought about this with growing horror. God seemed to consider the question. He seemed pleased somehow.
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We can talk about them. She looked at him, then stared down at the grass, trying to get her thoughts in order. How do I start? Think of one important change. She looked at the grass again and thought about the novels she had written. What if she were going to write a novel in which human beings had to be changed in only one positive way?
What if people could only have two children? I mean, what if people who wanted children could only have two, no matter how many more they wanted or how many medical techniques they used to try to get more? And nobody wants some big government authority telling them how many kids to have. She wondered how far he would let her go.
What might offend him. What might he do to her if he were offended? What about people whose children die or are seriously disabled? What about surrogate motherhood?
- Brothers Dilemma: (Eighteen, First Time, Blackmail, Female Domination).
- Becoming a Lawman: Book Three.
- Q&A with David Butler – Shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2015.
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What about men who become fathers without realizing it? What about cloning? Martha stared at him, chagrined. What if even with accidents and modern medicine, even something like cloning, the two-kid limit holds.