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Octavia E. Butler: Lilith's Brood: the Xenogenesis Trilogy (LOA #393) by Octavia E. Butler

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Octavia E. Butler: Lilith's Brood: the Xenogenesis Trilogy (LOA #393)

Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

Octavia E. Butler, Imani Perry

Library of America · Print & ebook · October 14, 2025

Reading lane: Genetic Engineering SF

Octavia E.

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At a Glance

Who It's For

Good for readers interested in short storiesGood for fans of Science FictionGood for readers who enjoy Genetic Engineering SF and Apocalyptic & Post‑Apocalyptic.

Book Details

Authors
Octavia E. Butler, Imani Perry
Publisher
Library of America
Published
October 14, 2025
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Genetic Engineering SF · Apocalyptic & Post‑Apocalyptic
Reading lane
Genetic Engineering SF

Series

Book 393 in the LOA series.

Affinity

Publisher Categories

  • SF Short Stories & Anthologies

  • Apocalyptic & Post‑Apocalyptic

  • Genetic Engineering SF

About This Book

For the first time in a deluxe, hardcover collector's edition, the landmark post-apocalyptic trilogy from the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award-winning author of Kindred , the Parable novels, and “Bloodchild” From the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award-winning author of Kindred , the Parable novels, and “Bloodchild,” here in its spellbinding entirety is Octavia E. Butler’s epic of human survival and transformation. Conceived against a backdrop of Reagan-era nuclear brinksmanship, Lil...

Read full description

For the first time in a deluxe, hardcover collector's edition, the landmark post-apocalyptic trilogy from the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award-winning author of Kindred , the Parable novels, and “Bloodchild” From the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award-winning author of Kindred , the Parable novels, and “Bloodchild,” here in its spellbinding entirety is Octavia E. Butler’s epic of human survival and transformation. Conceived against a backdrop of Reagan-era nuclear brinksmanship, Lilith’s Brood: The Xenogenesis Trilogy —a classic of Afrofuturist speculative fiction—offers profound reflections on race, biology, colonialism, resistance, consent, sexuality, community, hybridity, technology, power, and the future of humankind. At the beginning of Dawn , Butler’s heroine Lilith Iyapo is awakened in a white cell, after centuries of suspended animation. She is a survivor, as is gradually revealed, of a nuclear apocalypse—and is now being healed, aboard an alien spaceship, by the terrifying and yet awe-inspiring Oankali. Searching the galaxy for new combinations of genes and DNA to acquire and trade, these advanced, uncanny beings are drawn to Lilith’s cancer, which will give them new powers: but should she, and the few of her kind that remain, agree to become one with their extraterrestrial saviors? Adulthood Rites tells the story of Lilith’s son, Akin, as he comes of age on a newly repopulated Earth. A “construct”—part-human, and part-Oankali—he is raised among human “resisters,” who live apart from Oankali technology. Negotiating the complexities of interspecies politics and his own hybrid identity, he emerges as a leader, forging a new path on Mars for the human/Oankali future. Imago follows another of Lilith’s hybrid progeny, Jodahs, through the jungles of a regenerating Earth. Raised as a male child, he discovers in his adolescence that he is becoming the first part-human ooloi, a member of the Oankali’s shapeshifting, astonishingly powerful and perceptive third sex—a discovery with intense personal and planetary consequences. Continuing the Library of America’s definitive edition of Butler’s works, this volume offers authoritative texts of the novels, helpful notes, and a chronology of Butler's life and career.

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