Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

It's already October!!! that means it's time for our next installment in the Women Authors series-Imago..

I am finding this series very thought provoking...What do you all think so far?

message 1: by June
comment history 17 hours, 47 min ago
Imago is definitely my favorite in this series of three. Had I read Dawn first, I would never have continued on to the second and third books. I am so glad I did. Whereas to me Dawn has too much unrelieved, pointless conflict, the second and third books of the trilogy present more of a balance and end with some hope.

The main characters in the second and third books are far more rounded than in the first and very intriguing. Although the author remains dubious over the final fate of humanity, her characters are finding their way to a better solution. I would go so far as to say the characters of the second and third books are the best parts of these books.

All in all, I heartily recommend this final book in the series.

After I read Octavia Butler's second in this series, I wondered how much of it reflected her own self-understanding. Or course, like any author, there will be aspects of herself in all her books, but, it just struck me as I read it that the second says the most about her personally. I still think that.

I loved this series! I found that Imago was significantly different from the first two - in many ways a completely different tone - and I think perhaps the lightest of the three (both in mood and in depth).

Interesting June, that you connected Akin more strongly with Butler herself. I read Lilith as being Butler, but probably only for the most superficial of reasons. On one level it could be said that Lilith, Akin and Jodahs are all three outsiders, looking for connection.

As far as her personal philosophy goes, I think Dawn is a powerful statement of her deep pessimism. Fundamentally I think this is where she most frequently goes in her writing and this view of the human race underlies a lot of her work. I see Adulthood Rites as her attempt to force the chance for hope, no matter how strongly she believes it to be unlikely. Imago I see as almost an afterthought, a coda. As if she were to choose to imagine a happy ending as a cheerful bedtime story, even though she sees absolutely no reality in it.

That's how I view Imago, the cheerful fairy tale told to lighten the mood after we've had the serious discussion. Dessert, as it were.

Of the three, I agree that Imago is definitely lightest, but I don't imagine it as an afterthought. After the female protagonist of Dawn, and the male of Adulthood Rites, how could the series be complete without a book told from the perspective of an ooloi?

Yes, the question of sexuality really did need to be addressed, and I'm so glad she did! This one was just so much fun! It's the fact that she allows a tiny group of her characters to hold out a chance for hope, that she gave someone their own little love story, without changing her opinion of the ultimate destruction of humanity that gave it that flavor for me. In terms of her political philosophy, I'm not sure she really meant it. Or maybe she did; I recall seeing that she described herself as a pessimist fighting to be an optimist.

And yet I also have to say that in many ways this entire series is about rape - and how many different ways can "consent" be ignored, coerced, or manipulated. Even "light-weight" Butler is grim! Butler's view of humanity and Butler's aliens are both rather horrific.

Alexa wrote: "Yes, the question of sexuality really did need to be addressed, and I'm so glad she did!"

me too! it was my only serious ongoing issue in the first two books so I was particularly grateful it was such a focus in the third.

interesting point about rape, I see how the trilogy engaged that topic in different ways and from different perspectives. I see one of the major underlying discussions that the trilogy is having with the reader is one about control, of which rape is but one form. I thought the use of "control" was perhaps at ist most disturbing in this otherwise fairly light (-ish) third novel. the blithe way that Jodahs and its sibling take control of humans became increasingly uncomfortable the more it happened.

although by the last quarter, with the villagers, I came to rather accept it as an automatic part of their natures. much as Butler trained me to automatically accept that all humans are hierarchical in nature. interesting, that.

I'd agree that Butler's aliens are occasionally rather horrific (although I may have felt that less than you), but I do think that her pessimism regarding humans is so deep that the Oankali can't help but come across as so much more advanced than humans - in a way that Butler distinctly admires.

of the three books, I think my favorite was the second Adulthood Rites. or at least I found it to be the most gripping and I felt the most connection to that novel's protagonist.

I'm curious if Butler would have seen these as being about control (or rape)? On one level I think she might think that the human race had brought this on themselves and this is simply natural consequences - that the humans obviously "needed" to be controlled. (And then after saying that, I remember how well she put herself in Lilith's shoes, who so clearly resented the aliens even as she accepted them. There's nothing simplistic about Butler.)

I'm not sure I could pick a favorite - the three just function beautifully as a trilogy.