Bloodchild: And Other Stories

Octavia E. Butler

Jul 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

Six extraordinary stories from the author of Kindred, a master of modern science fiction—including a Hugo and Nebula award–winning novella.

Octavia E. Butler’s classic “Bloodchild,” winner of both the Nebula and Hugo awards, anchors this collection of incomparable stories and essays. “Bloodchild” is set on a distant planet where human children spend their lives preparing to become hosts for the offspring of the alien Tlic. Sometimes the procedure is harmless, but often it is not. Also included is the Hugo Award–winning “Speech Sounds,” about a near future in which humans must adapt after an apocalyptic event robs them of their ability to speak. “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” another esteemed title in this collection, is a Nebula Award finalist. In these pages, Butler shows us life on Earth and amongst the stars, telling her tales with characteristic imagination and clarity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate. 

Ratings and reviews

This collection of short stories was so intriguing, I couldn’t put it down. It really makes you think about life, and what could become of our earth down the line. It’s also inspiring because Butler describes her own struggles with her career and what she pushed past before becoming the writer she is known as today. Excellence👌🏾

finished in a matter of days and can't wait to reread. beautiful collection of short stories, essays, and interviews, prose, parables, Octavia Butler really does it all❣️

I couldn't get into the first story in this collection, but it was smooth sailing after that. The interview with Butler, at the end, seals the deal.

About the author

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a bestselling and award-winning author, considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. She received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded the prestigious PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), was praised both for its imaginative vision and for Butler’s powerful prose, and spawned four prequels, beginning with Mind of My Mind (1977) and finishing with Clay’s Ark (1984). Although the Patternist series established Butler among the science fiction elite, it was Kindred (1979), a story of a black woman who travels back in time to the antebellum South, that brought her mainstream success. In 1985, Butler won Nebula and Hugo awards for the novella “Bloodchild,” and in 1987 she published Dawn, the first novel of the Xenogenesis trilogy, about a race of aliens who visit earth to save humanity from itself. Fledgling (2005) was Butler’s final novel. She died at her home in 2006.