Bloodchild and Other Stories

Bloodchild and Other Stories gathers five stories and two essays by Octavia Butler. The collection is anchored by "Bloodchild," Butler's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella, or her "pregnant man story" as she called it. In her afterword, Butler explains that it was also written to work through a fear of botflies before traveling to the Peruvian Amazon for research. Also included: the Hugo Award-winning "Speech Sounds," conceived on a bus ride while visiting a dying friend, depicting a society devastated by a pandemic that destroys the ability to read, write, and speak; "The Evening and the Morning and the Night," built around a fictional genetic disorder combining elements of Huntington's disease, PKU, and Lesch-Nyhan disease; "Near of Kin," a quiet, unsettling story Butler traces to her childhood reading of Biblical accounts of incest; and "Crossover," her earliest published story, written at the 1970 Clarion workshop. The two essays: "Positive Obsession" (originally published in Essence as "Birth of a Writer") and "Furor Scribendi" reflect on her development as a writer and offer practical craft advice. Each piece is followed by a brief afterword in which Butler discusses its origins and intentions. Likely a small print run, and many copies were later remaindered and marked with a remainder stripe.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, mustard paper-covered boards. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995. ISBN: 156858055x. #10779.
Fine in fine dust jacket.