Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.
1. Mind of My Mind, Octavia E. Butler (1977)
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John Jude Palencar’s cover for the 1994 edition
4/5 (Good)
Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind (1977) is the second-published and second chronological installment of her Patternist series of novels (1976-1984), that chart the dystopic and hyper-violent development (and destruction) of a telepathic society. The series also contains her disowned (and hard-to-afford without selling a child) novel Survivor (1978). I wish I had read Wild Seed (1980) first!
The immortal Doro, able to hone into those with telepathic talent and shift his essence into new human bodies at will, oversees a generations-old telepathic breeding project. The harrowing story follows one his many daughters, Mary, a rare active telepath (vs. latent), as she comes of age and begins to understand the role that she is designed to play. Doro preys on the downtrodden and abandons the majority of latent telepaths to live miserable lives, unable to filter out the emotions they sponge up. Doro pairs Mary with another active telepath named Karl in order to guide her through her transition. But something new appears in her mind, she seems to have created a pattern that compulsively draws in actives from across the country. And Doro begins to feel threatened by his own creation.
I found the collision of Butler’s brutal view of power–and its interplay with relationships, gender roles, and race–and telepathy a heady mixture. It’s hard not to feel for Mary and the horror she has to experience. But soon telepathy becomes a way for Mary to create new–and disturbing–power relationships. I bounce off rosy views of telepathy in science fiction. I imagine Butler’s gut-punch is a bit closer to the truth.
As with Dawn (1987) and Kindred (1979), I struggled mightily with Butler’s stark, clipped, and direct prose that refuses—page after page–to use even the simplest metaphor. I acknowledge these are deliberate stylistic choices designed to highlight the overwhelming drive to survive and the brutal new power relationships that emerge as a result of telepathic awakening. That said, I have always been a connoisseur of a beautiful sentence and I found my artistic sensibilities clashed.
Track down Garry Canavan’s Octavia E. Butler (2016) for a brilliant analysis of the childhood genesis of the Patternist stories, her comic book inspirations, and relentless rewrites (in one draft Kindred fit into the Patternist sequence).
Recommended for fans of Butler and sparse, brutal, and intense 70s SF.
1. Mandrake, Susan Cooper (1964)
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Michael Busselle’s cover for the 1966 edition
3/5 (Average)
Before Susan Cooper (1935-) published Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) (the first in The Dark is Rising Sequence), her only SF novel for adults Mandrake (1964) hit the shelves. Both novels were started in her free time while she worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times under Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame. In 1963, the year before Mandrake was published, she left for the United States. I emphasize the final point as Mandrake is all about the almost magical anchor that home pulls on one’s being. Cooper channels the most disturbing elements of nostalgia for place.
In her near-future dystopia, Cooper traces the slow collapse of all vestiges of UK democracy and the shadowy forces, harnessed by the titular Mandrake, that compel people to return to their place of birth. The story follows David Queston, an anthropologist studying cave dwellers in Brazil, after he returns to the UK. A man tied to no place, Queston is an oddity. He observes unusual changes at Oxford when he visits his mentor–there’s disquieting silence and restricted movements in and out. His mentor proclaims: “We’re an ancient country, David. I’ve always thought the old kingdoms still existed under the skin. Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and so on” (14). With the UK’s shrinking global position, the rhetoric espoused by the figure of Mandrake emphasize the worship of the original land. The Ministry of Planning begins enact policies that exclude foreigners and return people to their places of birth: “Real London families, born and bred. You’re not a Londoner, now, are you?” (33). Queston, tied to no place, avoids serving Mandrake and retreats to write his magnum opus about his Brazilian cave-dwellers–their fate echoes the fate of the UK. But when he emerges he finds a world beyond recognition.
Fascinating ideas. Some intriguing moments. Too insubstantial in its final interweaving. Somewhat recommended for fans of British dystopias or those curious about Susan Cooper’s earliest work.
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