Kindred is one of those classic novels that is both ground-breaking science fiction, important social commentary, and an engaging, satisfying read in its own right.
Why ground-breaking? Because, when it was first published in 1979, Kindred was the first science fiction novel written by an African-American woman and it swiftly became an important foundation of black American literature. Even the usually hard-to-please Harlan Ellison praised it, calling it “a rare magical artefact”. Let’s face it, when the architect of Star Trek’s City on the Edge of Forever is in your corner, you must be doing something right.
Why social commentary? Because this tale of a young black woman who travels back in time from 1976 to save a white boy’s life in antebellum Maryland is also about the complexities of slavery. The first time she meets Rufus, Dana rescues him from drowning. But even though she is suddenly transported back to her own present, the two are destined to meet time and time again (literally) and on each occasion, our heroine is yanked back into the past to save Rufus from another life-threatening dilemma. Why are the woman and the boy bound so tightly together? Dana finally realises that Rufus is her ancestor and that if he dies her family line – and herself – will never have existed. Just as harrowingly, Dana watches the child she first met become master of his father’s plantation and a slave owner. Will Dana be able to keep him alive and also influence the choices he makes? As her jaunts into the past become more frequent Dana’s white husband Kevin finally manages to tag along for the ride, and together they learn that ethnic bias is a common nemesis regardless of the century they end up in. Perhaps we have not evolved so far after all.
And why is it an engaging, satisfying read? Because, despite its complexity and its frequently harrowing subject matter (nothing graphic, but the underlying themes are enough to raise a chill), it’s a book that’s impossible to turn away from once you’ve devoured the first few pages. Author Octavia E. Butler slams us full-tilt into her story from its opening moments and tells a heartbreaking tale while avoiding the romantic sentimentality of more recent time travelling efforts like The Time Traveler’s Wife, which was a great book in its own right but shares none of Kindred’s relevancy and power.
After almost forty years, Kindred refuses to age. Maybe that’s because our global attitudes haven’t changed as much as we’d like to believe and what Butler has to say still strikes to the bone, or maybe it’s because the author manages to avoid most of the tiresome time travelling tropes and just immerse us in an extraordinarily involving adventure? Whatever the answer, Kindred remains one of sci-fi’s most lauded time-slip novels for a very good reason.
KINDRED / AUTHOR: OCTAVIA E. BUTLER / PUBLISHER: HEADLINE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
