In a sense, both of them were right: The question of what exactly to make of the disturbing relationship between Gan, the human narrator, and T’Gatoi, the Tlic politician to whom he has been promised since birth, is not only the thematic core of “Bloodchild” but also a topic of heated debate among the story’s own characters. “Well, the author doesn’t always know!” the young woman replied.

“It isn’t.” She later recalled telling this to a college student who had written a paper on the topic. “It amazes me that some people have seen ‘Bloodchild’ as a story of slavery,” Butler wrote. “Sooner or later, the humans would have to make some kind of accommodation with their um … their hosts.”īut many readers found a different kind of parable. “It wouldn’t be the British Empire in space, and it wouldn’t be Star Trek,” Butler wrote in a 1996 afterword to the story. The author herself viewed “Bloodchild” as an unusual kind of love story as well as “a story about paying the rent”-that is, one that took seriously what it might cost humanity to survive on an alien planet.

Narrated by a young human host who begins to question the whole arrangement after witnessing a gruesome larval delivery, the story represents Butler at the height of her powers, patiently unfolding the consequences of an upsetting moral premise with horrific serenity. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in 1984, “Bloodchild” won Butler the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award for Best Novelette-a sci-fi Triple Crown. The native Tlic, a species of intelligent, centipedelike aliens, establish the Preserve, where humans can work, marry, and raise children without interference in return, some humans are implanted with eggs by Tlic females, whose larvae must feed on living flesh. Butler’s novelette “Bloodchild,” a quantum of humanity fleeing Earth finds sanctuary on a distant planet-but at a price.

Octavia e. butler faith