Name: Unexpected Stories
ISBN: 9781596069831

Octavia E. Butler

Unexpected Stories

Justin Jerome Price

This collection of stories is my first foray into the work of Octavia Butler and I can safely say that it will not be my last from what I have read. Her writing style is captivating, in part due to its sheer frankness and sincerity. Her characters are dynamic: from their thoughts that conflict with one another to their actions that are often morally ambiguous, they feel like actual people. Not just characters being controlled by a story, but people that actually play a role in the outcome, having control over their own destiny. Furthermore, I like how she intertwines background information with the situation at hand, allowing one to digest the important aspect without drowning them in an info dump. If the rest of her body of work is at all similar to these two stories, then I can see why she was such a powerful author.

There are two stories in the collection: Necessary Beings and Childfinder. Now while these two stories differ in widely in terms of theme and subject matter, they are similar in the terms of the theme of the perils of leadership. The main character of Necessary Beings find herself wanting to ensure the future of her tribe. But for her to do so, she must kidnap another being like her, a Hao, just like what happened to her father. In Childfinder, a psychic searching for others like her is discovered by a secret organization. An organization she escaped from. And they want her back into the fold. Both of these tales, are masterful and I would have liked to see their worlds explored more in a novel.

Maya Johnson

edit// Jan 23rd, 2023

I'm liking "A Necessary Being" a lot more than I did when I originally read it less than a year ago. The story is a little long but I like the social hierarchy that Butler created with these aliens. I originally gave this book 3 stars, I'm going to give it 4 stars.

----

This is a collection of two short stories by Ocative E. Butler. The first is "A Necessary Being" and the second is "Childfinder". I enjoyed "Childfinder" but I did not enjoy 'A Necessary Being". I just found ANB to be very borning and drawn out, this is the first time I've felt this way about any of Bulter's works.