Lilith's Brood, by Octavia E Butler

I recently posted an article about the aftermath of the 2015 Hugo Awards, and all the Sad Puppy drama that swirled around them. Lots of authors' names were cited in all the articles I read on the subject, many of them unknown to me. Hey! I started reading SFF fifty years ago, and have only reluctantly moved on from those first authors I knew... basically because they all died ...

Those people did train my tastebuds, though. Including the women: Leigh Bracket and André Norton, who were just as "hard-core space opera" as the guys.

But let's not be too Manichean... rousing good space opera does not prevent the development of personalities. Lazarus Long is a fascinating and complex man in Heinlein's Time Enough for Love . The terrified robot in Asimov's fabulous story Liar!  The whole cast of characters in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. And everything -- everything -- that Connie Willis has written.

So I decided to try some of the author's derided as "Social Justice Warriors" by the Sad Puppies.

(Remember: I have bought several hundred books from the Puppies' preferred publisher, Baen Books, including many by John Ringo and at least one from... MadMike himself, Michael Z Williamson.)

Which brings us to Octavia Butler . A Black woman. Ouch. That's about as far from MadMike as a human being can be...

Lilith's Brood was originally published as three novels ( Dawn , Adulthood Rites , and Imago ) but as I listened  to Brood , I did not notice any breaks in continuity.

Humanity has fought WWIII. The Earth is dying in the war's aftermath when aliens arrive, sweep up the survivors, and put them to sleep, to wait for the planet to recover enough to support life again.

Lilith is the first human to be revived. The oankali want her to take charge of the revival of the first group to be released onto the once again survivable Earth. The oankali are bipedal, but otherwise alien indeed. They have no eyes or nose or ears, but rather sensory tentacles at seemingly random places on their bodies, to accomplish the same tasks. They have three sexes, one of which has four arms. Or tentacles. Sort of.

But as strange as these creatures are, physically, they are even stranger psychologically. Or perhaps it is the humans who are strange. Which is the central subject of the book.

The oankali travel between the stars, finding other species and "merging" with them, absorbing the "worthwhile" parts of their genome into their own. The third sex, ooloi, can "see" into beings, right down to the gene level. They are convinced that humanity as a "pure" species is doomed by its competitive, hierarchical imperative. At the same time, humans are intensely creative and inventive, and would be an excellent addition to the oankali gene pool.

So... after a great deal of soul-searching, Lilith has children. A whole brood, over time. (She ages very slowly, thanks to genetic engineering by her ooloi mate.) Lilith has children who are kinda sorta male, kinda sorta female... and... neither. Lilith's Brood follows these children as they grow to adulthood and struggle with all the contradictions of their human/oankali heritage... and with the feral humans who roam the jungles.

These are adventure stories. Lilith's children go out into the world and are challenged by all that they find there.

Oh, and... Lilith is Black. I didn't realize that until I was half-way through this opus. I guess that when there are aliens to be dealt with, race is pretty insignificant...

Lilith's Brood works on both levels: it is a fun adventure story of the birth of this new hybrid oankali/human species, with all the false starts and incomprehensions that make life... interesting... And it is also a very cool reflection on what makes us what we are. What separates us, what unifies us.

Recommended. Highly!