Books

First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "To ReGena Moore. Best wishes, Octavia E. Butler". It is the second instalment in the Xenogenesis trilogy, the others being Dawn (1987) and Imago (1989), and all were nominated for a Locus award. An omnibus edition, Xenogenesis (1989), was later reissued under the title Lilith's Brood (2000). The trilogy begins with the death of humanity, brought about by increasing environmental abuse, international hostility, and eventual nuclear holocaust. Lilith Iyapo, an African American woman, is resurrected from the embers of post-apocalyptic Earth by the powerful alien race of Oankali, who offer her the choice to continue the future of her people by interbreeding with their species. Adulthood Rites is the story of Lilith's son Akin, a hybrid "construct" of human and Oankali birth who must come to terms with his dual heritage and negotiate for humanity's right to live and breed on Mars without Oankali intervention. Butler was the first Black woman to receive both the Nebula and Hugo awards, as well as being the first science fiction author to be granted a MacArthur fellowship. Her work "creates powerful images of black women in a genre in which and from which they have traditionally been marginalized and excluded" (Boutler, p. 170). Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, spine lettered in gilt, board sides and endpapers red. With dust jacket. Jacket bright, creasing to edges, unclipped: a fine copy in near-fine jacket. Amanda Boulter, "Polymorphous Futures", American Bodies: Cultural Histories of the Physique, 1996.

Adulthood Rites, the second book in Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis series, explores themes of identity, transformation, and human-alien coexistence.