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Clay's Ark (1996)

Clay's Ark (1996)

Book Info

Series
Rating
3.88 of 5 Votes: 4
Your rating
ISBN
0446603708 (ISBN13: 9780446603706)
Language
English
Publisher
warner books

About book Clay's Ark (1996)

At first I expected Clay's Ark to have more ... human interest? for me than Mind of My Mind.Both novels concern a sort of new development for humanity -- Mind of My Mind has people with psychic abilities who are gaining power by working as a group, and Clay's Ark has an isolated set of people infected by an alien disease which changes them completely. All of the major characters in Mind of My Mind were part of the in-group of psychics; there was no real voice for the ordinary humans whom the psychics were able to use and prey on. I think this had a purpose in the novel, but one of the effects was to make it cold -- the psychic characters are difficult to sympathize with.More than half of Clay's Ark is told from the perspective of three people who are kidnapped by the disease carriers. The disease, like a souped-up Selfish Gene, changes its victims' behavior and thoughts, driving them to infect other people so that the disease can survive and spread. The carriers remain in some control of themselves, able to choose to stay in an isolated ranch instead of going into a city and infecting a vast population, but most of their decisions do revolve around the propagation of the disease, making them selfish in ways similar to the psychics of Mind of My Mind. So, the three kidnapped people, not yet changed by the disease, are able to struggle against it and speak loudly about the problems it will cause for humanity.I thought that these viewpoint characters would give the book a warmer, easier feeling -- a heartier and more obvious sense of moral indignation, maybe. But they don't. Perhaps because it's so clear that they cannot avoid being infected and eventually becoming just like the other carriers of the disease -- since this is certain, their goal of escaping is foolish, because it will be almost impossible to do so without acting as vectors. I can't really root for them; it's too frustrating.There's a temptation to root for the disease. It makes its carriers (the ones who survive) stronger, faster, more perceptive, immune to most other illnesses. As with the psi powers of Doro's children, it suggests "The next stage in human evolution!!" (warning: TV tropes link, don't get sucked in), a concept with all kinds of problematic baggage. Clay's Ark offers much to feed curiosity about a humanity changed by the disease, but even the confirmed carriers who are driven to spread it -- even when actually acknowledging, "We are the future" -- do so with a sense of grim inevitability instead of hope.Another unpleasant thing about Clay's Ark is that the disease can be spread sexually, and it strengthens the (heterosexual) sex drive. Carriers feel driven to have heterosexual intercourse with uninfected people. (I think the reasoning is that the disease is affecting reproductive mechanisms in order to produce offspring who are carriers, because anyone can catch it through just a scratch. Still, there are no test cases of strictly homosexual or asexual people, prepubescent children, or postmenopausal women. I wouldn't want to inflict this situation on more characters, but the result is a bit sloppily heterosexist.) Some of these characters fear they may be driven to rape. Butler carefully avoids having any of the carriers rape with physical force, but given that none of them would be having sex without the disease, it's not exactly consensual at best.The sexual spread of the disease in Clay's Ark compares with the development of populations with psi abilities in Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind. Those abilities are strictly genetic, but again, their transmission is forced; Doro breeds his people like pedigree animals. People with strong psi abilities repel each other, so Doro resorts to murderous measures to coerce them into reproducing. This masterminded eugenics is just as much rape as the uncontrollable sex drive produced by the disease. They're two sides of the same coin that pays for The Next Stage in Human Evolution -- which is one of several good reasons to find it too expensive.

I loved Butler's work as a young adult, particularly the Xenogenesis series, but I recently read Clay's Ark during a book club and was sorely disappointed. Firstly, there is genuine horror and dread in this story -- dread that stacked upon itself and kept me disturbed as the plot unfolded. But it unfolds exactly as I dreaded all along; what happens feels inevitable given the set-up, unless some heroic effort might change things -- but no hero appears. The story gets increasingly sad and the characters exhibit increasingly disturbing behavior as the story goes on, without much insight into why they do the things they do.The book goes from one action sequence to another almost without pause, and it's incredibly short; more novella length than novel. There's a sample chapter from another book in the series that pads the length of the Kindle edition out by 25%. That's not necessarily a bad thing; I read a lot of short SF and enjoy it, but in this case I feel that the author didn't take time to tell the tale as best she could.However, I found the characters flat, taking actions that were not only incomprehensible to me, but apparently to them. Butler is writing about identity and biology, and I think it's difficult to convey someone's identity becoming alien to what they know of themselves in a book that's so action-oriented. The book needs to pause to allow reflection on what's happening to the characters, but it doesn't take that time. It reminds me of a book that relies on internal narrative that's been made into a movie, in the process losing what made it interesting.The writing is unpolished, often repetitive and more tell than show, which is frustrating. Yes, you say that the characters found it impossible to take an action, but why? What happened when they tried? What did it feel like? Why, in the face of what is happening, are they unwilling to try again even though they've been frustrated before?If you look at this as one of Butler's early works, and read it for insights into her development as a writer, I think you'll appreciate it more than I did. If you were a fan of her later novels and expect to have that experience again, I suspect you'll be just as disappointed as I was.On the up side, we had a number of great discussions about the book that arose from questioning some of the implausibilities of character behavior, alien parasitology, etc. "Toxo made me do it!" (referencing toxoplasmosis) may even be an in-joke for the book club going forward.

Do You like book Clay's Ark (1996)?

I enjoyed the purity of this science fiction tale on the theme of alien possession. In this short novel of less than 200 pages, we are subjected to an intense story of survival of a single family with the fate of the human race at stake. The terrible choices they must make put it over the line into the territory of psychological horror. What makes this book stand out is its use of the story as a doorway to larger themes of what it means to be human and to be part of a community.Written in 1984, the tale is set in the California Mojave Desert in 2021, close to our present, but 40 years from then. The projection is of a dystopic future in which civilization is on the bleeding edge. The haves live in gated compounds and the have nots live in “sewers”, vast regions dominated by lawless gangs. A doctor and his two 16 year old daughters end up being kidnapped by a community of people infected by microscopic organisms brought back by an astronaut returning from Alpha Centauri. For the subset of humans who survive the infection, the alien invaders act symbiotically to change the host in certain ways to enhance their survival and the hosts. I can’t spoil the story with any details, but I can share that it puts the family in the position of having to choose whether to resign themselves to living with the altered human enclave or to escape and risk creating an uncontrollable epidemic. The book is the last in the set of four books (and second in chronology) termed the Patternist series, which started with The Patternmaster in 1976. The others (of which I have read one) deal in various ways with alien-modified humans trying to take over Earth. Whereas these others deal with the threat of beings with telepathic powers, here the threat is closer to home in that the organisms seem in a sense to be bringing the conflict down to an individual’s limbic system versus higher brain systems. The book seems to question whether our humanity lies more with our emotional or out rational selves. I was impressed with this icing on the cake of a thriller yarn.
—Michael

First off Clay's Ark has almost nothing to do with Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind. I have yet to read Survivor or Patternmaster, but from what I know, Clay's Ark provides explanation for the events in Survivor.Anyway, with that in mind, Clay's Ark should almost be viewed as a stand alone novel. Granted, all the novels in this "series" are, since everything the publication order does not fit with chronological order.Graphic scenes are abundant in Clay's Ark. I think they fit along with the plot, but still, it might be too much for some readers. If you take a pessimist view on humanity and end of the world like scenarios, the way in which people act will probably come off as realistic.It's a relatively short novel, and makes me kind of wonder, why bother going back to write this? It was published after Wild Seed, and I think the writing is much less polished. Clay's Ark reads more like an old school pulp sci-fi novel, but kicked up for a more mature audience.Because an "alien invasion" is the main focus I think it is appropriate the story be unsettling and creepy. For that, Butler achieved it. The spin on the typical invasion story is that the resulting offspring from the infected aren't necessarily evil or need to be destroyed (although not entirely confirmed nor denied) - they're just different. Albeit really, really different. This continues on main theme of humanity in the series, which began with Doro's initial quest to breed a special class of humans.What makes us human? Is it okay to have these extreme mental and physical powers, or is that something beyond human? Is humanity fine to evolve in this manner? Embrace it? Or try to kill it off?I liked that this book showed the difference in reaction individuals had to the infection. Accept, flee, or destroy? Made me ponder what I would do.Although the Patternist series brings up many intriguing questions, Clay's Ark is still a freaky sci-fi book. It's fast paced with lots of action, but also frightening.
—Casey

I am a huge fan of Octavia Butler and have to admit she pretty much single-handedly drew me into sci-fi. I know Clay's Ark is part of the Patternmaster series but I forget where it falls into the timeline. However, I did enjoy this work even though it is a bit short. Butler creates a dystopian future in which a mysterious disease infects a secluded community in California. The infected simultaneously have an uncontrollable desire to infect others and a desire to keep the disease contained so tha
—Inda

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