Adulthood Rites: Xenogenesis 2

MacArthur Foundation grant recipient Octavia E. Butler's award-winning novels have earned her an acclaimed place in women's fiction, African-American literature, and speculative fiction. The Xenogenesis Series is an evocative, sensual — and disturbing — epic of human transformation.

Adulthood Rites

Lilith's baby, Akin, looks human. He is not. The alien Oankali, driven by irresistible need, have genetically merged with us. But there are rebels who resist the Oankali tide. Childless humans desperate to regain their world, they seek to "cleanse" the "alien taint" by kidnapping hybrid children like Akin. The raiders are blind to the truth: Earth's new children love all their parents. Babies destined to touch the universe, they are growing starships from the Earth that will eventually take the planet with them, leaving nothing behind.

Only an infant can make his despairing captors see that humankind's future is already lost. And won.

"Impeccably crafted...satisfying....Butler's literary craftsmanship is superb." Washington Post Book World

"This is vintage Butler....Excellent fodder for her followers and a perfect introduction to her work for the unfamiliar. Butler sets the imagination free, blending the real and the possible." United Press International

"A minor masterpiece....Her prose is lean and literate, her ideas expansive and elegant." Houston Post

"What 'cyberpunk' author William Gibson does for [white readers], Octavia Butler does for people of color. She gives us a future." Vibe

From the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower After the near-extinction of the human race, one young man with extraordinary gifts will reveal whether the human race can learn from its past and rebuild their future . . . or is doomed to self-destruction.
In the future, nuclear war has destroyed nearly all humankind. An alien race intervenes, saving the small group of survivors from certain death. But their salvation comes at a cost.

The Oankali are able to read and mutate genetic code, and they use these skills for their own survival, interbreeding with new species to constantly adapt and evolve. They value the intelligence they see in humankind but also know that the species-rigidly bound to destructive social hierarchies-is destined for failure. They are determined that the only way forward is for the two races to produce a new hybrid species - and they will not tolerate rebellion.

Akin looks like an ordinary human child. But as the first true human-alien hybrid, he is born understanding language, then starts to form sentences at two months old. He can see at a molecular level and kill with a touch. More powerful than any human or Oankali, he will be the architect of both races' future. But before he can carry this new species into the stars, Akin must reconcile with his own heritage in a world already torn in two.

Told in the haunting voice of Lilith, the heroine of Dawn, this book is the story of Lilith's only son, Akin. Though he resembles a normal human, Akin is the first "construct" — part man/part alien.

Akin, the son of Dawn's heroine Lilith, is part human, part Oankali alien. Kidnapped by the last generation of humans that is sinking into savagery and suicide, it is up to Akin to save the future of humanity by becoming something he is not — completely human.

Octavia E. Butler is the author of many novels, including Kindred, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Nebula Award, and she has twice won the Hugo Award. She passed away on February 24, 2006, at the age of 58.