I’m shocked by how quickly this month has gone by and that October is tomorrow. Since March I have felt like time has slowed down, and I’m liking the normalcy it brings, just wish this month wasn’t so chaotic.

I was able to get the reading I wanted done for my First Contact month, I just wish I had written a couple of more posts. That’s probably my biggest goal for next month, is to write a total of eight posts. I think that’s a good number per month.

Before we leave aliens behind I wanted to write a quick review of Dawn by Octavia Butler. I was unable to give this book the in-depth review it deserved, but I wanted to talk a little about how much I loved it. All Sci-fi fans should read Butler’s books, but this one was a gem. 

In pop culture we see a lot of hostile aliens who come to Earth to make first contact, but this isn’t the case with the Oankali. The aliens think that they are doing what’s best and they’re benevolence ends up becoming a weapon. The Oankali, after saving humanity from a dying Earth, want to genetically cross breed with the inferior human race. That’s the way they evolve, but in doing so this will end humanity as we know it. 

The story has many parallels to colonialism and how the ‘superior’ kind excuses awful behavior by condescendingly saying they are doing ‘what’s best’ for the ‘savages’, all the while stripping them of their agency. The Oankali act like they are human experts, after studying us for so long, but the amount of trauma they put the humans characters through in the story is staggering.

After I read books 2 and 3 in the trilogy I will be able to give the trilogy the in-depth review it deserves. That being said, I also couldn’t leave this month without giving it a hearty shout-out. Highly recommended.