Octavia Butler
Blood Child is a collection of science fiction short stories by Octavia Butler. I can't remember the last time I felt so immediately unsettled in the first few sentences of a book. (I was hooked, of course.) Growing up, most of the sci-fi I read was brimming with optimism, confidence, derring-do. Not these stories. Butler channels and condenses human doubt, struggle, limitation, and disappointment. She puts us up against immense challenges and sees how our failures play out, how we manage to make do and survive when that might be all we can hope for. While some of those other stories I read a few decades ago feel jarringly sweet and out of sync now, Butler's somber stories feel all too relevant. There are some victories and hints of optimism in some endings, but nothing qualifies as a simple happy ending.
Each story is followed by an afterward where Butler explains some of her thinking and how her experiences have shaped her stories. Normally I'd gloss over this kind of thing, but these struck me as hard as the stories themselves. Butler's background isn't that of a stereotypical sci-fi author and her experiences in life shape the themes and patterns in her stories.
Probably Butler's best-known novel, set in a near-future California in a slowly but irreversibly decaying United States. The novel follows a ragtag collection of neighbors and acquaintances who make their way across this landscape and learn to accept and adapt to change when change is inescapable.