Butler, Octavia E. - Patternmaster and Mind of My Mind

[oyceter]

I am woefully behind on comments, reading LJ, book posts and TV posts, and will probably remain so as I scramble to get through the last two weeks of school! Of course, I may also spam LJ obsessively in a desperate attempt to avoid studying. Who knows?

I've read Clay's Ark and Wild Seed before, which sort of ruined my attempt to read the Seed to Harvest series in the order it was published. Still, I gave it a shot. I think Wild Seed is the best of the series, though I will have to reread it to be sure. Mostly, reading Patternmaster was interesting largely because Butler wrote that one first, then used the other three books in the series to explain how the world got to where it was in Patternmaster.

Patternmaster is set in a future in which most humans are telepathic and linked to the Pattern, non-telepaths are called "mutes," and everyone is threatened by the clayarks, once-humans who were infected with a mutating virus from outer space. Mind of My Mind is set in a not-too-distance future and details the rise of the Pattern and the telepathic race of people.

I... have absolutely no idea what to write for these books, since many of the surprises and twists in worldbuilding were completely unsurprising to me, given that I had read Wild Seed and Clay's Ark, or I felt like there was no tension because I knew the outcome from Patternmaster. I was particularly disappointed because I read Wild Seed first, many years ago, and none of the characters in the other books come close to being as fascinating as Doro and Anyanwu. Mind of My Mind was odd reading because Anyanwu in particular doesn't get much development; of course, this is also not a valid complaint on my part because Wild Seed was written after Mind of My Mind, and Butler probably developed Anyanwu's character much more then.

So overall, this was a rather confusing experience, although Butler's worldbuilding and characters are interesting and complicated nevertheless. I especially like Mary in Mind of My Mind and wish the book had gone on for a bit longer instead of ending where it had; I wanted to see the development from Mary's Pattern to the Pattern in Patternmaster.

I think I'd recommend that people read this in the order it was published, although I'd also recommend that people skip Clay's Ark entirely for the violence and gratuitous depressingness.

Comments

[the_rck]

I read Wild Seed first, during high school, because it was the one Butler book that the library where I lived then had. I liked it a lot but suspect that I missed a lot of nuances.

I then found Mind of My Mind and Patternmaster and struggled with them. I don't think I ever read all of Patternmaster even though, not having read Mind of My Mind or Clay's Ark at the time, I had no idea it connected to Wild Seed.

I did read Clay's Ark later largely because I got it autographed. If I hadn't done that, I might have given it up as too anxiety inducing, but normally, I won't ask for something autographed if I haven't read it first, and that time I did. Not reading it would have felt like a cheat.

[oyceter]

*nods* Yeah... I think it's an odd series, and it'd be interesting to see what someone who read it in publication order thought.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

WILD SEED is my favorite of that series, too.

I wonder if there are any essays comparing CLAY'S ARK to PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

[oyceter]

Huh! I have no idea, and it's been so long since I've read Parable that I can't even think of anything... I think I will reread that Butler next.

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

That's odd -- I found Clay's Ark to be the only truly hopeful one of the whole series. Violent and horrible, yes. But at least the Clayarks aren't mind-raped slaves *or* incestuous sociopathic child-phobes; they may be changed physically, but mentally they're still closer to human than any of the prior two groups.

It was Mind of my Mind that's both my favorite and the most depressing to me, because it shows clearly how humankind (sorry, "Patternkind") will inherit Doro's warped, downright evil ways. Science fiction spends so much time positing that the development of psychic powers is a good thing and will advance us as a species. I love how Butler just eviscerated that notion. And it makes me sad that I find her way of depicting it so much more believable than, say, Anne McCaffrey. (http://www.steelypips.org/reviews/towerandhive.html) (Hey, Kate Nepevu!)

[oyceter]

That's odd -- I found Clay's Ark to be the only truly hopeful one of the whole series.

No, that makes sense! I think had I read Mind of My Mind and Patternmaster before Clay's Ark, I wouldn't have found it so violently depressing because it wouldn't be the end of the human race as we knew it. Er. In some ways at least, although I do still find the biological urge to propagate with the virus a bit horrifying (at least, the way in which it leads to violence). Although I probably would still have been horrified by some of the violence, but I have a pretty weak stomach for that.

And I probably would have found Patternmaster and Wild Seed much, much, much more depressing had I read them after reading Mind of My Mind, especially because I kept thinking Anyanwu would have something to do with the Pattern in the future and that it would arise as a contrast to Doro's plan instead of being a network of sociopathic people and/or mind-raped slaves. Mind of My Mind really is incredibly depressing!

It's just such an odd series... it feels a little like she wrote the society in Patternmaster, and while it had some skeevy things going on in it, it wasn't fully fleshed out until the latter books.

[larryhammer]

I liked Wild Seed the best, as well, and struggled with Clay's Ark. And agree with going in publication, rather than internal chronologic, order.

---L.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I think it would have been very interesting reading it in publication order. The way I read it was a little anticlimactic...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love Wild Seed-- it's probably my favorite of Butler's novels-- but I didn't like the related ones enough to re-read them even once. (Whereas I've read some of Butler's novels about once per year.)

[oyceter]

I know! I think I was just so disappointed in the rest of the series because I thought Anyanwu would be the protagonist of all of them! Or they would be all about her descendants and how they were different from Doro's or something, which... sadly was not the case.