Butler, Octavia - Frances Bonner (essay date Spring 1990)
Frances Bonner (essay date Spring 1990)
SOURCE: "Difference and Desire, Slavery and Seduction: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis," in Foundation, No. 48, Spring, 1990, pp. 50-62.
[In the following essay, Bonner discusses how Butler portrays desire and rape in her Xenogenesis trilogy, and how the trilogy is still successful despite its lack of hope.]
Octavia E. Butler's recently completed Xenogenesis trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago) is a striking addition not just to her already fascinating body of work, but also to the field of s[cience] f[iction] trilogies generally. Too often it seems, especially when the first volume is published as "Book I of the whatever trilogy," the reader is prepared for the second-rate and the too heavy-handedly formulaic. The s[cience] f[iction] reader is often told that trilogies (and even longer sequences) are preferred by publishers because they enhance the predictability of sales, rather...
[The entire page is 5369 words long]
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