Seed to Harvest (2007)

These books are excellent. I very much enjoyed the first two books, in which the psychic abilities of a group of people increase due to enforced selective breeding. The person doing the enforcing, Doro, is amazingly understanding of his subjects yet cold. This particularly shows through contrast with Anyanwu, the woman who causes him such struggle. The third book I found disappointing. I didn't understand what link it had to the previous books. In a way, I suppose it didn't have one: it had a link to the fourth book. Where in the first two books the patternists appear, people with psychic abilities that are tied to each other in a psychic pattern, in the third book their antagonists are explained, the so-called Clayarks. The Clayarks are based on humans as well, but through a disease are impervious to most of the patternists abilities. The fourth book, which I understand was the first one written, ties both groups together in a struggle for resources. On top of that, the patternists struggle amongst themselves, when their leader is about to die...

I thought Butler's characterization had something distant about it, since a lot revolved about an almost rational struggle. This by no means stopped me from being engaged in the story. In this way, it reminds of John Wyndham's writing. The stories were most intriguing and raised a lot of issues surrounding slavery and free will that are relevant to this day. ( )

Grand Central Publishing has been reissuing Octavia Butler's novels in attractive trade paperbacks, which I think is a great thing. It enables readers -- meaning me -- to catch up on Butler's work, particularly her series, which are each collected into one volume. Seed to Harvest is comprised of all of the novels in the Patternist series, including Butler's first published novel, Mind of My Mind. The only Patternist novel that is omitted is Survivor, which Butler herself disowned.

The novels are all rather short, so it makes sense to read them through in one long volume. They are also presented in chronological order in the collection, rather than in the order in which they were originally published in the 1970s: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark and Patternmaster. They relate a secret history spanning all of human history, from ancient times to the far future when humans have evolved to a nearly unrecognizable state. The novels follow two immortal telepaths, struggling to co-exist while one attempts to create an evolved version of humanity through selective breeding.

I was already a fan of Butler's when I picked up Seed to Harvest, and I found this series to be the weakest of her works, which makes sense, considering they were her earliest publications. Clay's Ark, set in a near-future similar to that of Parable of the Sower, was my favorite of the lot: dark, violent and ultimately rather hopeless. Still, none of the novels felt really complete on its own. It was clear that Butler was honing her chops with these early efforts. All that being said, even her mediocre books are fast and entertaining reads, with lots of interesting concepts to chew on, and I can recommend them. I'm also glad that these reissues can bring Butler to the attention of a whole new generation of readers.

Read because I like the author (2007). ( )

This is an omnibus of four of the five novels of the Patternist series, Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark and Patternmaster. For some reason unknown to me, the third book in the series, Survivor, is not included in this omnibus.

The first novel, Wild Seed, was by far my favorite. It is the story of Doro, a man with a special power that allows his spirit to jump from body to body, leaving the discarded bodies dead. He quickly discovers that it gives him more pleasure to occupy the body of a person who also has some sort of special power, be it telekinesis, telepathy, shapeshifting, or the power to heal self or others. He starts collecting these people and breeding them, creating offspring with greater and greater powers for his personal use. Eventually he comes across a woman who is as long-lived as he and more powerful than any he has come across before. He realizes that she is more useful to him alive as breeding stock than the short-term pleasure he could get from her by occupying her body, and realizes that she already has many children who could also be useful to him. But she won't submit easily. She only agrees to do his will if he agrees not to harm her children. But Doro is not to be trusted and conflict ensues. This breathtaking story spans several centuries. I was blown away by the writing style, I felt the author was speaking directly to me. By the end of the novel I found Doro's single-mindedness a little disturbing, but otherwise this was an awesome novel.

The second novel, Mind of My Mind, picks up a few hundred years after the first leaves off. Doro's creations have gotten stronger--strong enough to begin challenging him. This book was still quite good but somehow not quite as good as the first one. I was left at the end wanting to know what could possibly happen next, but that will be left to the imagination.

The third novel, Survivor, is not included in this omnibus and I have not read it.

The fourth novel, Clay's Ark, is completely different from the first two. One of the minor characters from the second novel is briefly mentioned in the third novel, but otherwise it is completely unconnected (perhaps explained by the missing third novel). This could easily have been a stand alone novel and I quite liked it. This is set in the dystopian near future. The first starship (named Clay's Ark) ever to carry humans to another planet has just returned to Earth, but it is bringing with it a highly infectious microorganism that changes the very essence of those it infects. Infected people are compelled to spread the disease to as many as possible and to reproduce as quickly as they can. The first infected people try desperately to retain their humanity--they live in the middle of a desolate desert and kidnap and infect only enough people to quiet their compulsions in an attempt to protect the rest of the world from their disease. This works for several years until one of the people they capture and infect escapes and heads straight for LA. A very chilling story and my second favorite in this omnibus.

The last novel, Patternmaster, was definitely my least favorite. This is set even father in the future when most of the people on the planet are either powerful descendants of Doro or are infected with the Clayark disease from the previous novel. These two factions are at constant odds and each would like nothing better than to wipe the other out. The descendants of Doro, with all of their amazing mental powers, have lost almost all of their mechanical ability. The future has developed into what is almost a typical fantasy world. Everything is low tech and "magic" is common. Outside city walls are evil creatures, the Clayarks, that want to kill everybody. The story involves the interaction of some very powerful brothers vying for leadership positions in this setting. Somehow I just didn't find it to be very interesting. It's ok and this is a very short novel so if you've read the first three novels I definitely recommend finishing this one too, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend picking up a copy of Patternmaster on its own.

Over all I definitely enjoyed this omnibus. I loved the first story and really enjoyed the fourth. The second was good and the fifth was ok. I really wonder, though, what happened to the third story? ( )

This omnibus contains Butler's Patternist series: Wild Seed (1980), Mind of My Mind (1977), Clay's Ark (1984), and Patternmaster (1976). These books take place on Earth, following a group of people with supernatural abilities from their origins to the distant future.

Quick, non-spoilery summaries:

Wild Seed begins in 1690 with the first meeting of Doro, an immortal being driven to "breed" psychic abilities into human populations, and Anyanwu, a long-lived woman with extraordinary healing abilities who genuinely cares for her own people. Their fraught relationship fosters Doro's goal of creating a people more like himself.

Mind of My Mind takes place in the present, on the American West Coast, and focuses on Mary, a powerful heir of Doro's breeding program. She becomes the first Patternmaster.

Clay's Ark, in the early 21st century, makes no reference to the Patternists, as they come to be called (except that Clay Dana, inventor of the spaceship Clay's Ark that makes the plot possible, appeared in Mind of My Mind as one of Doro's people who did not become part of the Pattern). Rather it tells the story of Earth's invasion by an unstoppably contagious disease that transforms those who contract and survive it into not-quite-humans.

Patternmaster, in the far future, returns to the Patternists to tell a story from a world ruled entirely by warring Patternists and "Clayarks" (carriers of the disease from Clay's Ark).

Some thoughts, not particularly spoilery:

Each book is very self-contained, but each one also adds to the interpretation of the rest. This works differently from ordinary series, in which the same characters appear again and again in sequential adventures--each of the Patternist books is about a different group of characters, related to one another (except for Clay's Ark) but different in attitude and context. On a character level, Anyanwu is the most sympathetic character in Wild Seed, the one the reader is most likely to identify with, but in Mind of My Mind, she's a minor character whom Mary (the subject of the only first-person passages in the series) rather dislikes. Someone reading the series in order of publication would have a very different experience of Anyanwu's character compared to that in Seed to Harvest. Likewise, the Patternists as a group exist throughout the series, but in each book they're different--in Wild Seed they're embryonic; in Mind of My Mind newly born, with attendant exciting possibilities; in Clay's Ark, to the reader of previous books, they're unmentioned but clearly up to *something* in the background; in Patternmaster, they have power and a culture of their own.

For me the best result of this looking at aspects of the story from different angles was the room it left me as the reader to make my own judgments and assessments of characters and events. Understanding the Clayarks' origins from their own perspective in Clay's Ark left me able to question what the viewpoint character in Patternmaster left almost totally unquestioned--the Clayarks' apparent lack of humanity. Seeing Anyanwu's and Doro's and Mary's different ideas of what the Pattern could and should be gave me a greater appreciation of how morally ambiguous and troubled its manifestation in Patternist really was.

I think this is one of the things Butler does very well--unsettle her readers, make us aware that she and her characters are not telling us everything, are ultimately incapable of telling us everything, and leaving us with a responsibility to interpret and almost write answers for ourselves.

I just finished re-reading the series, as someone bought this book as a gift for me. The first time I read Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, I really hated Doro. Re-reading the entire series I found more empathy for his character--my what his isolation and loneliness drove him to!

When I first read the series, I read them in the order published...which is backwards from how the story takes place. Reading it from beginning to end I also found the story had a different feel to it. I found that I had less empathy for Mary in this series, mainly because I had read her story after coming down from Doro's and Anyanwu's journeys.