Imago: Book Three of the Xenogenesis Series (1989)
By Octavia Butler
Evolution; Extinction; Gender; Genetic engineering; Mutations; Posthuman; Race; Repopulation; Science fiction; Transgenics
Jodahs bridges the gap between alien Oankalis and non-modified humans.
Jodahs was not meant to become an ooloi, neither male nor female but an essential mate in the Oankali-human genetic combinations. Originally thought to be a male, Jodahs changes with subtle influence from its ooloi parent, Nikanj. Jodahs is the first – and thus unpredictable – construct ooloi, sharing both human and Oankali genes. Because Oankali have specialized organs for combining DNA and facilitating genetic modifications, Jodahs poses a special danger to himself and the entire Oankali community living on Lo. With the power it harnesses, Jodahs can irreparably damage humans, Oankali and Earth-bound species alike, so to protect its community, Jodahs and its family exile themselves to the resister-filled wilderness surrounding Lo. More than Oankali ooloi, Jodahs is irresistibly drawn to human mates, hungering for intimacy with a crippling desire. Because the new Mars colony offers humans the chance to procreate without Oankali interference, many resisters who might consider mating with a human-looking ooloi have left Earth. Jodahs leaves its family and in its wanderings finds an anomalous pair of siblings, grossly deformed by tumors and possessing the ability to reproduce. After mating with Tomas and Jesusa, it learns that their village was founded by the only woman who could give birth after Oankali sterilized resister humans. For decades, this community relied upon incest to perpetuate the human species, although the offspring of these liaisons were often malformed and crippled. Tomas and Jesusa agree to leave their village, but when Jodahs’s sibling also becomes an ooloi and dangerously hungers for mates, they risk their lives to return and recruit other humans.
In this final book of the Xenogenesis Series, Butler continues her sharp attack on humanity, completing the portrait of a species driven by remnant hierarchical urges at the expense of survival. Human resisters stubbornly refuse Oankali mates, although this means that the majority cannot reproduce. Lack of ooloi contact reactivates latent genetic disorders, including cancers and neurological diseases; ooloi mates carefully screen for these disorders when combining human and Oankali genes, to prevent recurrences in future generations. Ooloi assistance in healing wounds is rejected although it can prevent certain death. One male resister tells Jodahs’s family that ooloi have made all humans into their “women,” indicating that a human unwillingness to alter sexual roles is the ultimate impediment to Oankali-human mating. Men like this resister, seeking to assert masculinity in a world in which this identity is threatened, kidnap and rape women from other resister villages. Marina Rivas, a resister woman rescued by Jodahs’s family, is raped and held in an animal pen while her food is contaminated by the women whose husbands have violated her. Unable to assert primacy over the Oankali, the hierarchical drive directing humans cause them to brutalize one another senselessly. The Oankali mating the resisters counters this primal urge, eliminating jealousy in relationships by inducing permanent bonding between mates. Throughout the trilogy, the Oankali are presented as humanity’s only chance to ascend beyond the animalistic urges governing its destruction.
Evaluation: This novel more than others in the trilogy advocates genetic engineering as a metaphor for greater social inclusivity and acceptance. Likewise, the conflict between constructs and humans is based on a prejudice that presents much like racial prejudice, and thus this text can be applied to a variety of cultural frameworks.
– Natalie Champ