Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Frances Bonner

SOURCE: "Difference and Desire, Slavery and Seduction: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis," in Foundation, No. 48, Spring, 1990, pp. 50-62.

In the following essay, Bonner discusses how Butler portrays desire and rape in her Xenogenesis trilogy, and how the trilogy is still successful despite its lack of hope.

Octavia E. Butler's recently completed Xenogenesis trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago) is a striking addition not just to her already fascinating body of work, but also to the field of s[cience] f[iction] trilogies generally. Too often it seems, especially when the first volume is published as "Book I of the whatever trilogy," the reader is prepared for the second-rate and the too heavy-handedly formulaic. The s[cience] f[iction] reader is often told that trilogies (and even longer sequences) are preferred by publishers because they enhance the predictability of sales, rather than being the result of authors desiring a particular format to enhance the exploration...
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