Several years ago, acclaimed science fiction writer Octavia Butler was deep in writer’s block. Then one day, she received a random novel in the mail from a book club she’d forgotten to respond to. “I read it and it surprised me that I finished it because it was so bad, but on the other hand it seduced me enough to get me to finish it,” Butler recalled.
A short time later, Butler emerged from a local bookstore with a stack of vampire novels. She was attracted to the form because like science fiction the stories could incorporate mystery, humor, romance or nonfiction. But as she read, Butler was disappointed to find that most stories focused on male lotharios; female vampires were in short supply.
“The males were always about 10 times as powerful as the females,” she said. “Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome who could do just about anything better than poor Little Miss Whatever—Miss Pitiful, I think I used to think of her. And I never liked that. I don’t understand why anybody would,” she said.
This fall the Hugo Award-winning novelist published her 12th book, Fledgling—her first in seven years—about a modern-day female vampire who loses her family to killers and discovers she’s their intended target. Shori, the central character in Fledgling, has little in common with her sharp-tooth predecessors. She’s a 53-year-old vampire (still relatively young for a vampire) but her appearance is that of a black girl of about 10 or 11 years old.
When Butler began Fledgling, she was drawn to the freedom of the genre after writing a series of cautionary tales, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which included extensive research and political critique. “I liked the idea that I could create my own vampires,” she said. “I didn’t have to follow along behind Bram Stoker or Anne Rice or anyone else.”
But Butler admits she can’t stay away from politics altogether: “I seem to be incapable of writing an apolitical novel.” As a result, Fledgling is a fantasy without supernatural effects, with human emotions at its core, interwoven with issues of race, miscegenation and genetic experimentation.
Unlike other vampires in her tribe, called the Ina, Shori is able to move about in the daylight. Her female ancestors successfully blended Ina (pronounced enna) and human DNA to produce a vampire with enough melanin to protect her from the sunlight. Not all of the Ina are pleased. Because of her skin color and her part-human parentage, they don’t see Shori as pure.
As the story opens, Shori wakes up naked in the dark, lost, confused and seriously wounded. She has no recollection of what landed her in this dark cave. And more than anything, she’s hungry. For blood. Without second-guessing her impulses, she quickly kills two deer in the forest, rips out their throats and eats the meat raw.
Shori discovers her entire family has been destroyed, along with her memory. Soon, she finds her genetics have made her a target.
Butler’s vampires aren’t just from a different gene pool; they also have a unique relationship with humans. The Ina bind themselves to humans in a long-term union that’s compassionate, sexual and physically healing. Called symbionts, these humans are drawn into an almost hypnotic life-long dependence on their Ina that, over time, gives symbionts strength and longevity.
The Ina history incorporates its own goddess legend. Females vampires are privileged, endowed with a more powerful venom and thus greater control. “It’s the first book I’ve written that could be seen as matriarchal,” Butler said.
Butler’s vampires are also as vulnerable, moral and passionate as any human. Before Shori knows anything about who she is, she can tell she has an impulse to do what’s right. Though she’s headstrong, Shori takes care to learn about her relationship to symbionts and the other Ina before damaging any delicate bonds.
As one female character tells Shori: “We need our symbionts more than most of them know. We need not only their blood, but physical contact with them and emotional reassurance from them. Companionship….We either weave ourselves a family of symbionts, or we die.”
Butler’s characters promise to live on in the mind long after the last page is turned.
