Dawn tells a tale of mass alien abduction and colonization. The human race has perished in a worldwide conflagration, apparently of human origin. Published initially in the late 1970s, Dawn suggests that nuclear war may have been (and might still be) the cause of humanity’s (self)destruction. An alien race, the Oankali, discovers earth and has the technology to regenerate individuals from small sets of genetic material. Dawn opens with one such human, Lilith, waking up and trying to make sense of what’s happened to her. Her captors remain unseen, but she soon discovers that they are aliens who travel the galaxy in search of “trades.” They are willing to assist humanity, helping it recover from destruction and flourish again — but at a price. The Oankali seek genetic material, and they essentially interbreed with the races they discover, adding to their gene pool some of the best characteristics and qualities of those races and imparting some of their own better qualities and abilities in exchange. For instance, we learn that Oankali have amazing self-healing abilities.
The Oankali have identified, however, a fundamental flaw in humanity: a genetic gift for intelligence coupled with a predisposition to hierarchy. Such in turn leads humanity to figure out better ways to create divisions amongst people, impose order, punish deviation from “normalcy,” and engage in war to ensure the status quo.
The “price” of interbreeding with the Oankali is that this contradiction will be bred out of the race, and humans will transform over time into human/Oankali hybrids. As one of the ooloi interbreeders tells Lilith, “Our children will be better than either of us. […] We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations. Our children won’t destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they’ll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits.” With this genetic twist, Butler dispenses with merely titillating scenes of interspecies sex in favor of grounding such intercourse in necessity. We will have to interbreed to survive.
My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!
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