Stranger still, the Oankali have three sexes: male, female, and Ooloi. The Oankali don’t have eyes, or ears, or noses, but sensory tentacles over their entire bodies with which they can perceive the world much better than a human can. She meets her saviors/captors and is repulsed by their alienness.
The title character Lilith (a black human female) awakens centuries later from stasis on an Oankali ship. The few survivors are plucked from the surface of their dying world by an alien race, the Oankali. The story begins after the United States and the Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons and their actions resulted in a terrible nuclear war that left the earth uninhabitable. The first novel in the trilogy, Dawn, was published in 1987. The collection was first published under the current title of Lilith's Brood in 2000. The three volumes of this science fiction series ( Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago) were previously collected in the now out of print volume, Xenogenesis. Review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E.Lilith's Brood is a collection of three works by Octavia Butler.Review: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.Review: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold.The clash arises from their definition of what that rescue would entail and what means should be used to achieve it. They both want, essentially, the same thing-to save humanity. They are simply two very different species with two very different ways of looking at the world. I liked how neither humanity nor the aliens were set up as a villain. Despite their failures, they remain smugly confident that they know what is best for humanity. As a result, many of their efforts at guidance end up causing great, sometimes irreversible, harm.
They understand the biology of humanity incredibly well, but they can’t really understand our psychology. They are very fond of humanity, and they want to help and care for us. The Oankali are a little too certain about their understanding of humanity and its needs, and that certainty leads to some situations that are very uncomfortable to read. The dynamic between the two species makes Lilith’s Brood one of the most interesting alien contact stories I’ve read.
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