Laura Sells wrote:
> And I also like how
> she treats race, though I haven't thought it through quite clearly. I
> wonder if anyone has any thoughts on that aspect of Butler's work?
>
Yes, that's what I like about Butler's books. First it's nice to see
black people and black women in sci fi. Generally, we are invisible or
just a balancing afterthought in a group scene.
Race consciousness pervades the lives of racial minorities in any social
system, unifying and dividing them in ways the dominant culture is
largely unaware of.
While many sci fi books are based on struggles between different races
or species of individuals - from first contact novels to fantasies in
which one group dominates another - few SF writers explore how being
visibly identifiable with one group instead of another affects the
consciousness and life decisions of the group members. And few SF
writers explore the details of people's daily lives where two or more
racially distinct groups live side by side, each occupying pretermined
roles in their society.
Some of Butler's earlier works, such as Wild Seed and Patternmaster,
touch on this theme as well.
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