Butler died much too young. And I think that you’re right, a white person probably couldn’t have written her stuff. Ever noticed how her human and especially female characters are used as breeding stock in some stories, like slave women were used in the US? I’m thinking of Bloodchild in particular here, and the Xenogenesis series. The aliens sometimes attempt to seduce the humans into breeding, but sometimes use force. The Clayark organism also takes over humans and forces them to become breeders.
I’m a biologist. It’s not like I spent hours analyzing it - to me, it’s like if someone wrote a plot that centered around the fact that two plus two equals six. It’s just very clearly off to me. But the elephant thing was only one example. The whole world’s societies, economies, and biology should be radically, drastically different from ours, and they’re not.
They are really dark, but then again, so’s the material they parody. Just wanted to tell you both that he has a new novella in the Laundryverse. Readable for free, at Tor.com. It’s pretty dark too.
While I certainly want an actual END to GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire, I’d love to get more stories in that world, along the lines of his Dunk and Egg series. There’s so many freakin’ stories, histories, and myths that have been mentioned in the books that I’d love to read more about.
Ideally, I’d want several collections of short stories, and maybe a few full-length, but stand-alone, novels and novellas. A good mix of things from long, LONG ago (i.e., Age of Heroes…it would be great to see what ACTUALLY happened vs. how the story is told,) more recent history (the few hundred years before the War of the Five Kings started,) and some “contemporary” stuff (random stories of people we only heard of in passing, or not at all, during the main series.)
To go away from Fantasy / SF, I’d like to recommend the **Tale Of Genji **(Wylie translation). Although it’s published as a single thick book, it’s really a series in modern eyes. There are several translations, but I think the Wylie one is the most accessible to modern readers. Sadly, it ends rather abruptly without a ‘good ending’. The author probably died and never finished. We’ll never know–unless a time machine is invented.
Actually, most of them are. Though I still largely disagree about the biology.
The book ISN’T about the premise that two plus two equals six. As far as I’m concerned, this is closer to you doublechecking the math on how spaceships hold together at high sublight speeds.
Oh well. One man’s nitpick is another man’s Important Topic, I suppose.