This creates a great deal of tension and strain as the humans consider their lives meaningless without reproduction, especially as they see themselves being outbred by the Oankali-human constructs. The Ooloi have made all humans infertile, so the only children born are those made with Ooloi intervention. Some humans have accepted the bargain and live with the Oankali, giving birth to hybrid children called "constructs." Others, however, have refused the bargain and live in separate, all-human, "resister" villages. Humans and Oankali live together on Earth, but not in complete peace. The second book, Adulthood Rites, takes place years after the end of Dawn. Nikanj uses Joseph's collected DNA to impregnate Lilith with the first Oankali/human child. The humans rebel against Lilith and the proposed "gene trade," and kill Joseph, Lilith's new mate. They are particularly attracted to humans' "talent" for cancer, which they will use to reshape themselves. They perceive the interbreeding as mutually beneficial in particular, it will solve what the Oankali think is the humans' fatal combination of intelligence and hierarchical tendencies. In exchange, the Oankali want to interbreed with the humans to blend the human and Oankali races, a biological imperative they compare to a human's need to breathe. The Oankali have made Earth habitable and obtain Lilith's help in awakening and training humans to survive on the changed Earth. Lilith eventually bonds to Nikanj, an Ooloi. Oankali have the ability to perceive genetic biochemistry, but the Ooloi manipulate genetic material to mutate other beings and build offspring from their mates' genetic material. Stranger still, the Oankali have three sexes: male, female, and Ooloi. The Oankali have sensory tentacles all over their bodies, including locations of human sensory organs, with which they perceive the world differently than humans. Lilith has awakened 250 years after the war on a living Oankali ship.Īt first, she is repulsed by the alienness of her saviors/captors. The few survivors were plucked from the dying Earth by an alien race, the Oankali. She learns that the nuclear war had left the Earth uninhabitable. She is then visited by humanoid beings whose appearance terrifies her, even though they behave well.
She remembers a nuclear war and an earlier traffic accident in which her husband and child had been killed. She has no idea who this is or what they want. She has memories of this happening before, with an enigmatic voice that asks strange questions. The first novel in the trilogy, Dawn, begins with Lilith Iyapo, a black human woman, alone in what seems like a prison cell. The collection was first published under the current title of Lilith's Brood in 2000.
The three volumes of this science fiction series ( Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago) were previously collected in the now out-of-print volume Xenogenesis. Lilith's Brood is a collection of three works by Octavia E.
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