Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Butler does not respect boundaries. Well, at least not the boundaries between
fiction genres. Fledgling, the last book she published before her death in 2006, moves
through suspense plot memes faster than Kim Kardashian posts selfies on Instagram. The
result is a kind of turbocharged storytelling, in a book both alluring and jarring, fast-paced
yet subverting its own momentum by defying reader expectations at every turn.

The book begins: "I awoke to darkness."
We soon get to know the narrator, but
the she hardly knows herself. She has no
memories, no name, doesn’t even know
what she looks like until she sees herself
in a mirror. She has regained consciousness
in a cave, and is recovering from serious
injuries. "But how had I come to be in it?"
she asks herself. "Where had I come from?
How had I been hurt and left alone,
starving?"

This is a classic plot device of suspense tales
and thrillers, familiar to us from The Bourne
Identity, The Raw Shark Texts, Dhalgren,
Missing Person and other comparable stories. But in most instances, this quest to discover
the protagonist’s identity serves as the springboard for the book’s drama. Not so with Butler.
Within a few pages, the mystery of Shori's identity—for that is her name, Shori—has been
solved, and Butler has shifted gears.

Readers now find themselves in a tried-and-true vampire story. Shori replenishes her
strength by feasting on the blood of victims—except it isn’t clear that they are really victims.
Butler presents the bloodsucking relationship in rapturous sexual terms, and the recipients
of the vampire’s advances squeal in orgasmic delight as their red cells, white cells, platelets
and plasma are slurped out of their open wounds. We are again in familiar territory—
imagine a cross between Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey—but very different from the
amnesia plot that opened the book.

Yet before we are one-third of the way through the novel,
Butler begins shifting the tone from fantasy/horror to
science fiction. Shori, we learn, is not just a normal vampire
(is that an oxymoron?), but a genetically modified one,
whose dark, melanin-enriched skin makes it possible
for her to survive, at least for brief periods, in daylight.

This new twist is rich with symbolic valence, and Butler
takes full advantage of the opportunity to address issues
of race and discrimination, but translated to the imaginary
realm of vampire society. By the midpoint of Fledgling,
we seem on the brink of moving beyond the conventions
of genre fiction and into a new kind of socio-political novel.
Butler works wonders in probing the soft underbelly of
group dynamics by exploring a series of binary oppositions
—between vampires (now called Ina in this new stage of the
novel) and humans, between vampires and their victims (now called symbionts), and
between dark-skinned and pale-skinned vampires. Each of these relationships are
presented as both catalysts to the storyline and also as entry points into discussions of
institutionalized power structures, slave cultures, and the dynamics of marginalized
communities. She adds to the mix intriguing notions of patriarchal and matriarchal
institutions within vampire society.

These aspects of the book are enriched by Butler’s peculiar ethnography, in which her
protagonist Shori is presented as master over the victim/symbionts, but finds herself in a
role reversal within the vampire community, where her dark skin makes her the
representative of the underclass. Butler even probes the most awkward elements of this
dichotomy, notably in her exploration of whether the victims who enjoy their enslavement
to the Ina are capable of free will—perhaps their growing identification with their masters is
a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for vampire lovers.

Even the amnesia plot now is invested with the larger significance. Shori’s inability to recall
her personal history is also a failure to retain her cultural bearings. She knows that she is a
member of a different race, but has no grasp of the rituals and traditions that are her legacy
as an Ina. At this juncture, her lack of roots echoes the similar plight of the African diaspora,
forced to recreate a new life without the support the rich fabric of their age-old culture,
bereft of that most importance inheritance of all, namely a sense of who we are and where
we come from.

But Butler still has surprises in store for us, and her sociopolitical sci-fi vampire amnesia
novel morphs into a courtroom thriller. Shori needs to navigate through the vampire judicial
system as she attempts to convict those who killed her family and left her wounded and
bereft of her memories. Here are all the trappings of the legal drama, with witnesses and
interrogators, expert testimony and elaborate perjuries, trial procedures and jury wrangling.
Yet everything is a bit different because vampires have their own way of handling these
matters.

Four months after the publication of Fledgling, Octavia Butler died at age 58. She had
suffered from writer’s block in her final years, but this novel shows no signs of hesitancy or
strain. The layering of different plot elements serves to amplify the suspense, and the shifts
from, say, horror novel to courtroom narrative, or from sci-fi to sociology, never seem
awkward. I suspect that, had Butler lived, she might have continued Shori’s saga in further
works. As it stands, Fledgling is no fledgling effort, but a worthy capstone to Butler’s career.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz
from Basic Books.

Publication Date: July 4, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler