Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the story:


Amnesty by Octavia Butler


This story is part of the group discussion of Octavia Butler's short story collection Bloodchild and Other Stories. (See the discussion hub topic for more info.)

This story only appears in more recent additions of the collection.

I liked this story of a woman (Noah) whose job is liaison between aliens and humans. Unlike in Bloodchild, this time the aliens came to Earth. Like Bloodchild, the aliens clearly have the upper hand. They appropriated large desert areas of the planet and built domes.

This story seems to have a lot more exposition than the other Butler stories in this collection. Part of that's because a huge chunk of the story is Noah's history, first being abducted by the aliens as the aliens were experimenting on humans to try to figure out what they were and how to communicate with them, and then after she was released by the aliens, being abducted and tortured by some shadowy human organization, possibly part of the government, in order to extract intelligence about those aliens.

It's interesting in the Afterword, Butler relates know what to Wen Ho Lee.

One quibble with the story is that a couple of the interviewees didn't really seem to be the kind who would apply for a job with the aliens.

I was struck by some similarities to Butler's Xenogenesis. Both are about women who have lengthy exposure to aliens who find it their job to explain/represent the aliens to other humans who are skeptical/hostile.

Butler's characters here and in Bloodchild & Xenogenesis, all seem very forgiving of alien mistreatment.

G33z3r wrote: "One quibble with the story is that a couple of the interviewees didn't really seem to be the kind who would apply for a job with the aliens..."

I just re-read this last night and this was the part that stuck out for me. Only two of the applicants didn't show outright hatred for the aliens. I know they are desperate for work but I can't imagine people with those opinions applying for or being hired for these jobs. And why didn't Noah say this to them? Perhaps she felt the aliens would put things into perspective with a couple of electrical zaps later.

Butler's protagonists tend to be very strong women who are forgiving, empathetic, and extremely patient. In Amnesty's case, if that were me, I would have lost it on the applicants with a rant about what happened to me and how dare they get upset when they never went through a fraction of what I did.