OCTAVIA BUTLER’S BLOODCHILD AND OTHER STORIES: Read this over my Thanksgiving blog-hiatus, on recommendation from my sister among many others. Unflinching science fiction about compromise, power and its lack, necessity…. The worlds in these stories are very hard–when Butler, in an afterword, says that one of her stories is partly about “paying the rent,” she isn’t fooling around–and hope is hard-won at best. The people feel very, very real. I think the story I found most powerful was “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” because of its portrayal of two people facing up to hard truths. Anyway, you absolutely should read these stories. I’ll be reading, at least, her novel The Parable of the Sower and also her short story “Amnesty,” which (sigh) isn’t in this collection.