Just a quick note - could I ask you to please click through TWICE when receiving my blogposts in email? Follow It, the service I use, has now put two levels in front of my actual website, but provides you with all the content before getting to my site. This means none of you who are reading it are actually reading it on my blog, and I cannot capture any numbers for traffic to the site. It's like you never read it.
So, if you would be so kind as to click the green button in your email, then before reading the content on the plain white page, scroll down to the bottom and click "Continue Reading." This should take you to my blog, with its pretty pink background, and then your "click" will count towards my analytics! Thank you!!
I bought these two books from a local bookmobile during the Charlotte Book Crawl last year. I have read Kindred by Butler and loved it (more of a time travel story), and love that she is the first African American woman to have published a sci-fi-novel! This story, originally meant to be one book, is a post-apocalyptic survival story told through the journals of a young black woman named Lauren Olamina. The US has fallen for an unnamed reason (fate?) and crime rules. There is no law enforcement to be had unless you pay them, and even then they just shrug. Lauren spends her teenage years listening to her preacher father and decides she believes in a different type of God - a system she calls Earthseed. She believes the only hope for our Earth is to live among the stars. When the thugs finally overrun her neighborhood, she is forced to run, and gathers an eclectic group of people around her. Where her life goes after this is such an incredible story that it might actually sound more like truth. The second novel adds a second point of view and blends timelines brilliantly.
These books were written in the 1960's but are set between 2027-2090. Which is basically TODAY. Very scary. There is a tyrannical leader, there are fires everywhere, there is no infrastructure. And one phrase will jump out at you early in the second book. The desire to make America great again. I am not getting political here, but remember when these were written. Could it be that the real sci-fi aspect is really just predicting the future? Or someone in that campaign is well read, haha!!
All that aside, I was entranced by this story. If you like post-apocalyptic novels, these are classics that should not be missed. However, DO NOT read the introductions in the more recent editions first. WHY these writers of introductions think it is ok to spoil a novel or a plot point before the novel even begins is beyond me. Grrrrr.
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