Saturday, September 12, 2009

"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler

Relax, human. The big, cuddly bug doesn't want to eat you, she just wants to lay her eggs in you (spoilers).

RATING: *wretch*%

(Image from iz.carnegiemnh.org.)
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12 comments:

Internet Robyn said...

Are you sure that bug isn't male???

September 12, 2009 at 8:12 AM
laurie said...

I don't even want to know.

September 12, 2009 at 9:28 AM
Belabras said...

I thought that was a good collection of short stories from her. Especially Bloodchild and the one about trouble on the bus.

September 12, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Internet John said...

I only read the one story for a class I'm TA'ing for, but after finishing it, I definitely want to read more of Butler's work.

It's funny--I love horror and I read it all the time, but after I finished "Bloodchild" I was weak at the knees and white as a sheet. It's not just that it's gross, which it kind of is, it's that it's like an erotic nightmare. Sort of like the Alien films but with genuine (and disturbing) sensuality and possessive emotional attachment on both sides rather than the straight up coercive hurly-burly.

September 12, 2009 at 2:21 PM
Evan J Peterson said...

I love this story and I force my students to read it during Sci Fi week. They usually respond well to it, but like me, they find the fancy-shmancy sci fi names for things (that could just be called by recognizable terms) to be tedious and confusing. That's really my only complaint about an otherwise compelling story.

September 13, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Belabras said...

Butler was a great author. I'm just sad she didn't get a chance to write more.

September 13, 2009 at 1:30 PM
I.J. said...

Yeah, making up your own names for stuff almost never goes well. Tolkien could do it because he wrote the linguistic history of an entire world. Lovecraft's Cthluhuspeak is fairly memorable, but when he switches to the Dunsanian mode it's fucking cringe-worthy.

Writers seem to think that adding a bunch of randomly placed apostrophes to a made-up word or phrase will make it more mysterious and alien-seeming. I usually read it as marking a glottal plosive, but that's more of a nerdy self-indulgence than anything.

September 13, 2009 at 2:23 PM
I.J. said...

(In Anglish it usually marks an omission of some kind, but if you don't know what's being omitted from "n'Tlic," what's the fucking point?)

September 13, 2009 at 2:24 PM
shoppista said...

I loved that whole book of short stories. "Bloodchild" and "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" were the best ones, I thought. Although also creepy.

What other horror writers do you like, IJ?

September 14, 2009 at 2:19 AM
I.J. said...

Steven King, Lovecraft, Gaiman (not exactly horror, but he's OK), Clive Barker (ditto, but Books of Blood is a masterpiece), Robert Bloch, Bradbury. Even some of the second rate Lovecraftians like Brian Lumley aren't bad, except Ramsey Campbell--I can't stand that guy. Or Dean Koontz.

September 14, 2009 at 1:43 PM
shoppista said...

Dean Koontz is really awful. I haven't heard of Robert Bloch -- will try him, thx.

September 15, 2009 at 9:55 AM
DCP said...

Bloch wrote Psycho and more importantly the episode of the original Star Trek where the ghost of Jack The Ripper possesses Scotty.

September 15, 2009 at 10:18 AM

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