Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

Science Fiction

Published in 1987 by Warner Books

Book 1 of the Xenogenesis Series (also called Lilith's Brood)

Perfect example of building alien species and cultures.

Lilith awakens to discover that a nuclear war has rendered the Earth uninhabitable. The arrival of the Oankali has prevented the extinction of humanity but at a cost that merely delays our eventual end. The Oankali evolve through what they call the trade: exchanging genetic material with other species. They have chosen Lilith to lead a group of humans as they return to Earth, but to do so, she and the rest of humanity must mate with the Oankali or be sterilized.

Things to Emulate

Dawn is the first book of the Xenogenesis Series and as a result, it spends a great deal of time establishing who and what the Oankali are. Butler has drawn the Oankali in painstaking detail, focusing not only on their physical appearance but on their language, culture, sexuality, reproduction, family structures, biological drives and morals. Unlike many created species, the Oankali are not a monolith. There are divisions and cultures within the species. These are the kinds of details that make the Oankali feel real.

Butler starts with their physical appearance:

... what had seemed to be a tall, slender man was still humanoid, but it had no nose—no bulge, no nostrils—just flat, gray skin. It was gray all over—pale gray skin, darker gray hair on its head. The hair grew down around its eyes and ears and at its throat. There was so much hair across the eyes that she wondered how the creature could see. The long, profuse ear hair seemed to grow out of the ears as well as around them. Above, it joined the eye hair, and below and behind, it joined the head hair. The island of throat hair seemed to move slightly, and it occurred to her that that might be where the creature breathed—a kind of natural tracheotomy. (Part 1: Womb, Chapter 2)

Butler places a great deal of focus on two things: the lack of a face, which both connects the description to a very human feature and emphasizes the alienness of the Oankali, and the amount of hair the Oankali has, which focuses further on a human aspect that is familiar before twisting it into something inhuman.

Once the physical appearance of the Oankali has been established, Butler expands to Oankali physiology:

"You should notice," he said, "that what you probably see as hair isn't hair at all. I have no hair. The reality seems to bother humans." ...

...Some of the "hair" writhed independently, a nest of snakes startled, driven in all directions.

Revolted, she turned her face to the wall.

"They're not separate animals," he said. "They're sensory organs. They're no more dangerous than your nose or eyes. It's natural for them to move in response to my wishes or emotions or to outside stimuli. We have them on our bodies as well. We need them the same way you need your ears, nose, and eyes." ...

... The tentacles were elastic. At her shout, some of them lengthened, stretching toward her. She imagined big, slowly writhing, dying night crawlers stretched along the sidewalk after a rain. She imagined small, tentacled sea slugs—nudibranchs—grown impossibly to human size and shape, and, obscenely, sounding more like a human being than some humans. (Part 1: Womb, Chapter 2)

This development of physical characteristics extends to standard gestures that signify mood. When Oankali are amused, their tentacles pull into their bodies, making their skin smooth. This is their equivalent of a smile or laughter. The smoother the skin, the more amused they are. Butler has also developed reflexes for the Oankali based on their biology. Small details like this make the Oankali feel organic and not constructed.

Butler has also taken great care in developing a comprehensive culture for the Oankali, with a distinct language and societal structure. As with the physical characteristics, Butler reveals these details to the reader in gradual steps.

Dawn's narrative is focused on a single aspect of Oankali culture, but Butler hints at what exists beyond the parameters of this book. She starts with their names, which are carefully constructed to reflect their societal structure. The first Oankali Lilith encounters is named Kaaltediinjdahya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso. The first part of the first word, Kaal, is the family name. The last part of the first word, is the Oankali's given name: Jdahya. The middle is his female mate: Tediin. The third word is his ooloi mate: Kahguyaht. The final word designates the community he belongs to: Dinso. Dinso mate with other species so the Oankali can evolve. Since Oankali names are built around their family units, they change as the Oankali become adults and mate. This has some parallels with the human custom of a woman taking her husband's name after marriage, but in the case of the Oankali, each sex has its own name construction and everyone undergoes a name change after mating, regardless of their sex.

Biological sex and mating are a big part of who the Oankali are. It contains the impetus for their evolutionary drive, which is central to their culture.

"I don't mean any offense," she said, "but are you male or female?"

"It is wrong to assume that I must be a sex you are familiar with," it said, "but as it happens, I'm male." (Part 1: Womb, Chapter 2)

The existence of a third gender, the ooloi, in addition to male and female heavily informs the family structure of the Oankali. Family units are made of all three, and all three are required to create children. The male and female members are usually biological siblings while the ooloi come from another family. The ooloi collect and store genetic material that they can manipulate to create offspring. Oankali children are born like humans, grown inside the womb of a bilogical female, but they are consciously constructed by the ooloi parent who selects their genetic blueprint using the DNA from all three parents. Ooloi are the glue that connects the family together and they cannot live without their mates. Children bond closely with their same-sex parent. They retain these properties as they "trade" with humans.

Ultimately, Butler uses all these details of the Oankali to place them as both a mirror and a contrast to humanity. The best science fiction has always been used to examine present-day humanity, and Butler uses Lilith to reaffirm human values, placing them in direct contrast to what the Oankali believe to show the vitues and attrocities on both sides.

The Oankali are a collectivist species. They evolve by mating with other species that have characteristics they find useful. In the case of humanity, it is our ability to grow cancerous cells that intrigues them. This increases their alienness—a part of our DNA that we have spent generations trying to escape is the very thing they covet. There is also the patronizing, colonial intent of the Oankali: they believe that the heretical nature of humans dooms us as a species and that only they can save us from outselves.

Like humans, the Oankali are curious and place a great deal of stock in science. But the Oankali's culture is built around the physical in a way that human cultures are not. Their physical aspects define them over everything else. It is the perfection of their physical form they are looking for. It is in the reconstructing of their DNA that they create and express themselves. While there is some of this inclination in humanity, we also place a great deal of importance in creating things outside of ourselves for understanding—human culture is built on artistic works, architecture, music and story.

"There must be ruins," she said softly.

"There were. We've destroyed many of them."

She seized his arm without thinking. "You destroyed them? There were things left and you destroyed them?"

"You will begin again. We'll put you in areas that are clean of radioactivity and history. You will become something other than you were."

"And you think destroying what was left of our cultures will make us better?"

"No. Only different." ...

..."You were wrong," she said. ... "You destroyed what wasn't yours," she said. "You completed an insane act."

"You are still alive," he said. (Part 1: Womb, Chapter 5)

The strangeness of this alien culture is unsettling and feels perverse, but as the narrative progresses, there are things about their culture and philosophy that make sense. The Oankali value life in a way that humans don't. They only kill under extreme duress and, in most cases, will choose to die themselves rather than kill another living thing. However, they have little respect for the desires of those they consider lesser, such as humans. They believe in forced sterilization and confinement to protect humanity from its darker impulses, carefully controlling human reproduction and preventing fully human children (and initially any males) to be born to human mothers. They ignore every human who tells them they would rather die than become something less than human. For the Oankali, life takes primacy, regardless of the quality of life. For humans, destruction of culture is its own form of death.

It's a fine balancing act that has the reader sympathizing with both Lilith and the Oankali. In some ways, human atrocities feel less horrifying than the "kindnesses" of the Oankali. Their alienness is unsettling, but the reader comes to understand them, forcing the examination of both the Oankali actions and the human ones they parallel. By creating a fully realized alien culture, Butler has created enough distance from humanity to take a clear look at how we exist and how we aren't so different from an alien culture most find repulsive.