"Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)", Octavia Butler, 1984

"Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)", Octavia Butler, 1984

Clay’s Ark (1984) was written last in Octavia Butler’s 4-book PATTERNIST series, but comes third in chronology. It takes place after Wild Seed (1980) and Mind of My Mind (1977), in the post-apocalyptic California desert. Society has collapsed into armed enclaves, marauding ‘car families’, organ hunters, and isolated towns. It’s along the lines of Mad Max, with fuel sources depleted and social infrastructure nonexistent, violent death lurking at any moment, and little room for anything more than survival.

This world is gradually revealed via two storylines, one set in the past and the other in the present. The past story arc is centered on an astronaut named Eli, the only survivor of a spaceship called Clay’s Ark that went on an exploratory mission to Proxima Centauri. The mission encountered an alien microbe that affected and transformed their DNA for its own purposes. Eli survives the return to Earth, but is infected with this microbe, which imparts on its host increased strength, endurance, healing ability, and appetite.

However, it also enslaves humans by forcing them to spread the disease. Namely, the men feel an overwhelming urge to infect unaffected females and mate with them, and infected women also feel the same compulsion. Infected men also feel intense aggression towards other males, which leads to a lion’s pride type of social structure, with the strongest males taking as many females as possible and fighting off competing males. The most disturbing aspect of this book is that infected people are fully aware of these compulsions and rebel against them, but cannot resist. So they are both slaves and puppets to this alien microbe that drives them to animal-like behavior.

In the current timeline we meet Blake, a physician who still remembers pre-collapse society, and his

twin daughters Rane and Keira. Rane is healthy and confident, while Keira suffers from an incurable form of leukemia. The story wastes no time in throwing them into trouble, as their car is stopped by two men who force them at gunpoint to return with them to a remote enclave in the desert. As the story progresses, we learn that this community is led by former astronaut Eli and consists of people infected by the sinister alien microbe brought back from Proxima Centauri.

The classic Butler themes of domination, enslavement, power, and strange sexual relations are on full display in Clay’s Ark. It’s not an easy reading experience, and I’m sure that’s one reason that Butler’s books are not more widely read, but they are certainly challenging and force the reader outside their comfort zone. We have no choice but to go along with the difficult decisions the characters face in whether to submit to an alien virus that will transform them.

Butler seems fixated on the idea of humans being transformed into something alien, both more and less than human. The process of transformation is always difficult, painful and invasive, and people often don’t survive. Butler seems to revel in throwing readers and her characters into uncomfortable situations. This was also the case in the previous books Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, though the transformation was psychic in nature. So thematically Clay’s Ark delves into the same territory, but does not feature any of the telepaths from the previous books.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster #2)", Octavia Butler, 1977

"Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster #2)", Octavia Butler, 1977

Mind of My Mind takes place about a century after the events of Wild Seed. Doro, the immortal being from the first book, has continued to cultivate a huge number of active telepaths throughout the U.S. Anyanwu, the centuries-old shape-shifting healer, now goes by Emma and occupies a much smaller role in this book. Instead, the story is centered on a young teenaged girl named Mary. Doro recognizes great potential in her, and though she has a troubled upbringing like many other latent telepaths, he brings her through the difficult transition to active psionic abilities.

At this point Doro and Mary realize that she has a unique ability to link together other telepaths under her control in a Pattern of psychic bonds. The story follows a number of psychics who find themselves drawn to Forsyth, California, not understanding why. When they are gathered under one roof with Mary, it is revealed that Doro wants them to submit to Mary’s control in the hopes of forming a telepathic bond among them. They are extremely resistant to this proposal, and consider trying to kill Mary to avoid this outcome. However, Doro is an ever-present threat, and they are afraid to cross him. However, when they do link their minds, it is Doro who questions whether this outcome is truly the goal of his psychic breeding program over millennia, or whether Mary and the others in her Pattern represent a greater threat to him than anyone before.

What carries the novel over the obvious course of its plotting is Butler's attention to character, as well as her intriguing notion of how those with psychic abilities might function in a world mostly populated by people who haven't got them. Doro, an utterly loathsome bastard from the get-go, is a ruthless, psychopathic tyrant; devoid of empathy, he kills those not useful to him as casually as one might crumple up a paper cup and throw it away. Mary becomes the first of the Pattern to develop anything like a moral compass, but even her most beneficent deeds involve taking over the minds of others, compelling them to follow her will, all the while believing they are choosing their actions. Mary understands the moral quandary, but doesn't choose to avoid it. The result is that even this novel's most sympathetic characters are never 100% likable. But Butler's theme — that the moral precepts all of us live by in order to get along might not even occur to someone who possesses powers nearly godlike to us — is startling and provocative.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Wild Seed (Patternmaster #1)", Octavia Butler, 1980

"Wild Seed (Patternmaster #1)", Octavia Butler, 1980

Anyanwu and Doro are two immortal beings. Doro is more of a spirit than a man. He lives through millennial by possessing other’s bodies, killing the original owners in the process. Anyanwu is a shape shifter who can constantly rejuvenate her body so that she stays young forever. Doro kills, Anyanwu heals. They are as opposite as they can be, and yet each is the only immortal the other knows. Wild Seed begins with the two coming into contact for the first time, when Doro happens upon the African village where Anyanwu’s living in the late 1600s and shows the relationship between them up until the late 1800s.

Wild Seed is easy to read, but there’s a lot going on underneath the surface. There’s so many different topics at play here – race, slavery, gender, sexuality. Basically, if it’s a topic relating to power structures, Wild Seed deals with it. It doesn’t deal much with LGBTQ themes, but I’m still listing it under the tag since Anyanwu has a wife at one point (happens between chapters) and could probably be considered bisexual.

Wild Seed deals with the difficulties of being immortal and the inherent loneliness of watching everyone you know die. This is the focal point of the relationship between Anyanwu and Doro. Anyanwu may not be able to condone what Doro does, but he’s the only person who will remain constant as the families she builds for herself die around her.

Doro is dislikable, but I think you’re supposed to hate him. He’s spent his extraordinary long life on a eugenics project, creating a race of people with special powers. He’s controlling and manipulative and thinks nothing of killing others. He wants people to be under his control, to respect and obey him in all things. But Anyanwu cannot respect him, and she does not always obey him. She’s wild seed – a talented person born outside his breeding programs.

Book 1 . Covenant 1690:
Anyanwu lives as a god among her power, an immortal shape-shifter whose control over living material allows her to heal others. Doro too is an immortal with a keen interest in people like Anyanwu. In fact he has been collecting people like her – telekinetics, doomed telepaths, and so on - for millennia. Anyanwu is unique in that she is the only other immortal he has ever encountered; when he stumbles over Anyanwu’s existence Doro is eager to add her to his collection. He is seductive enough that Anyanwu agrees to accompany him through the hellscape of an Africa subject to repeated slaver raids and off to the New World, not the most ideal place for an African at this time.

Alas, Doro is an obligate psychic predator forced to hop from body to body to sustain himself and his interest in people with special gifts is because their minds taste best when consumed. He is no Charles Xavier or even Magneto gathering allies but a nomadic herder engaged in an extremely long duration breeding program and any empathy he might seem to have for his food is almost purely an illusion.

After the penny drops, she sticks around because she has fallen in love with Isaac, one of Doro’s subjects. Isaac convinces Anyanwu to stick around with a telling argument that the author carefully keeps hidden from the reader much as I am doing now.

Book II . Lot’s Children 1741:

Anyanwu doesn’t have a lot of cards in her hand when it comes to bargaining with Doro but she has a few (she can, for example, run away in the form of an animal whose mind Doro cannot perceive) but his powers and willingness to use her loved ones as hostages mean that the balance of power is very much on his side. Her love for Isaac is enough that she puts up with Doro’s use of both of them in his breeding programs, and Doro’s casually murderous customs. Her persistence is paid most poorly.

Book III . Canaan 1840
Anyanwu builds a new life for herself, one with a community of gifted who she nurtures rather than exploits. Doro of course ruins all this by tracking her down and while he tries to convince her they can reach a tolerable accommodation, not only do his misjudgments provoke terrible tragedies but he cannot change his predatory ways or his profound empathetic deficits. In the end, Anyanwu comes to the conclusion there are only two paths: submit to Doro in the knowledge that even when he tries very hard to be less than a total monster for the sake of the only person who shares his immortality he will still be a horrible person, or escape into death. Doro is the only one in a position to argue out of this and of course this is one game where he is the one stuck with terrible cards.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

Head On (Lock In #2) by John Scalzi, 2018

Head On (Lock In #2) by John Scalzi, 2018

While Head On is a sequel to Scalzi’s earlier science fiction novel, Lock In , it’s a stand alone mystery story. Still, I would suggest starting with Lock In so you can get to know the world and characters before diving into Head On.

FBI Agent Chris Shane is watching a live game of hilketa, where players operating robotic bodies (“threeps”) attempt to behead each other on the playing field. The game is a showcase for potential investors in the league, so the stakes are high. Then, one of the players dies in the middle of the game, a first for hilketa. Is it simply an accident or is more at work? As Chris and Leslie investigate, coincidences pile up and more dead bodies soon appear.

With Lock In and Head On, Scalzi imagines a near future where one percent of the population has Hayden’s syndrome, which lives them conscious but locked into their non-responsive bodies. Through a series of tech and research initiatives, Hadens now interact with the world through neural interfaces, either digitally online or with robotic bodies to navigate the physical world.

The premise is fascinating, combining interesting science fiction concepts with themes relating to disability rights. Many people tend to look on the Hadens as less than human, overtly or subtly mistreating them for it. This is clear in Chris’s everyday interactions. Chris has been a Haden since birth and tends to find gender insiginicant to life; subsequently, Scalzi writes the books without ever gendering Chris. For the audio book, there are two different versions with male and female narrators, respectively.

Although Head On is largely a stand alone with an independent mystery, the world has changed from book one to book two. Laws have been passed slashing or eliminating government benefits to Hadens, leaving many struggling as a result. While Chris’s wealth provides some insulation, Chris is more than aware (and unhappy with) the suffering of the larger Haden community.

Obviously, fictional sports is the name of the game in Head On. Hilketa is an interesting concept seeming sort of like a cross between a traditional team game like football or hurling and those robotic fights I’m always seeing footage of. Only, in this world, those robots are directly linked into and piloted by people’s consciousnesses. I’m not super into sports. 

Like anything else by Scalzi, Head On is fast paced and fun, full of snarky dialog. Sometimes I find his writing style a bit tiring or too much on the snark, but that isn’t the case for either Lock In or Head On. 

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.