"One author, living or dead"

[laurajv]

for the_rck: One author, living or dead, who you would like to meet and talk to and what you would like to talk to them about.

This one's hard, because two authors immediately popped into my head!

The first one is Octavia E. Butler. I first encountered her work when I was 11 or 12, in my local library, and I struggled to understand it. Something about it held me, but it was difficult to wrap my head around. It still is difficult to wrap my head around -- her work never stopped challenging me.

I would ask her how the Parables series would have ended, if she'd had time to write it, or what she was trying to get at with the super, super creepy dub-con vampire sex in Fledgling. (Her vampires are the ones that freak me out the most, of all the vampire stories I've ever read -- they remind me more than a little of those parasitic wasps whose larvae take control of the host insect.)

The second one is Stella Gibbons, and I would ask her what wrong was done to Robert Poste, and what exactly happened in the 1946 Anglo-Nicaraguan War.

Comments

[twistedchick]

Also: what was in the woodshed?

[laurajv]

You know, for some reason, not knowing what was in the woodshed doesn't bother me much. BUT DID THE GOAT DIE, that's the question that keeps me up nights. What goat, even? Why did Robert Poste even have a goat at Cold Comfort? And what did Amos do to it???

[devohoneybee]

I'm right there with you with the uber-creepy vampires -- the creepiest part being how compelling they are and how much I LIKE them and *cough* want to please them *cough*.

I think in many of Butler's works was this unflinching owning (so to speak) of the submissive dynamic with a creepily controlling yet appealing Other (sex-controlling aliens, patternmasters, vampires, etc). I know she talked about being asked if it was a reference to slavery (of the literal, historical kind) and if I remember correctly, she said it wasn't, or not consciously so, but if it in some way was, it was a very brave, transgressive way to talk about those power issues.

I was really, really sad at her early departure from this plane of existence. She clearly had a lot more Story to tell.

[laurajv]

It was the appealingness that always confused me, from the very first book I read (a SFBC omnibus of Dawn, Imago, and Adulthood Rites called "Xenogenesis"). I picked it up in the library because the cover had a black woman and an alien on it, and I had never seen a black person on the cover of any sf before. The pull and allure of the Oankali! I had no idea what to do with that.

Still don't, in some ways.

[devohoneybee]

i KNOW.

that.

[laurajv]

you might be entertained by this:

http://jacquez45.tumblr.com/post/105013565945/octavia-butler-fancasts