It’s been awhile since I read Octavia Butler and I had planned to read her short story collection, Bloodchild & Other Stories for quite some time. Well, I had an opening last week and read this excellent and important collection.

Butler writes in the preface, “The truth is, I hate short story writing. Trying to do it has taught me much more about frustration and despair than I ever wanted to know.” It’s a shame Butler felt such frustration and despair writing short stories, as three of the seven I read were among the best I’ve ever encountered.

I reviewed Speech Sounds several years ago, and it made me want to read the rest of the collection. The story revolves around a woman named Rye in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. She is taking a city bus home and the world around her descends into chaos. In this grim world, speech is a danger to the social order, and Butler starkly depicts the consequences of defying that norm. The story holds up well upon a reread, but it did not become my favorite story in Bloodchild.

Before I get to my favorite in the collection, I have mentioned my second favorite story, Amnesty. This story follows Noah, a woman employed by an alien race that has taken over Earth’s vast desert regions. This alien race is viewed as oppressive, and Noah is seen as sympathetic to their cause. The protagonist’s precarious balancing act between humanity and the alien race highlights a significant challenge in Butler’s story.

Reading this story made me recall Jesus’ teaching on the greatest commandment, found in Matthew 22:37-40. Jesus’ answer is that you should love god and love your neighbor as yourself. That answer was radical to everyone during Jesus’ time on Earth and, in some ways, it is still radical today. Butler’s story augments that biblical story and shows the difficulty that human beings have in embrace “the other” as our neighbor. Amnesty is a powerful story and one that should be read and studied in high school and college.

Moving on to the story I love the most in Bloodchild, imagine if God gave you the chance to change any aspect of the world. What would you decide to change? The last story in the collection, “The Book of Martha,” posed this question. Martha is a writer, and that is having a conversation with God where he gives her the opportunity to change anything about the world she wants. At first, Martha is in disbelief. She tried to refuse, but God told her she had to do it. Martha reluctantly embraces the idea and provides an answer that God accepts. Butler writes in her afterword to this story that this was her attempt at writing a utopia. She despises utopias, and that comes through in this story. However, I got more out of the story in Martha’s relationship with God. This story is thought-provoking and one that deserves multiple readings to absorb it.

In summary, the collection contains four additional stories by Butler; these were well written, but less engaging to me. That is the case with most short story collections. Also, she includes two essays about the writing life that are must reads for any aspiring writer. Bloodchild and Other Stories is an excellent short story collection and must read for Octavia Butler fans. Also, I would recommend it to all serious readers. What she says about the human condition is insightful and deserves attention.