It seems kind of unfair to give Survivor a “meh” 3-star review after Octavia Butler did everything she could to discourage me from reading it. Well, almost everything. She did publish it (in 1978), and it is part of her excellent Patternist series. But, admittedly, she did later disown it, dismissively referring to it as her “Star Trek novel.” The thing is, I always liked Star Trek.

Anyway, Survivor isn’t bad, it’s just not up to the level of Butler’s other fiction. (At this point, I’ve read all of her published fiction except her last novel, Fledgling.) It's the only novel of hers that takes place on another planet (her short story “Bloodchild” memorably does, too). It starts off slow and a little confusing, as each chapter begins in the first person, narrating events that took place before the main narrative; then it switches to a third-person telling of the central narrative. It took a few chapters before I settled into the pattern. It’s a pretty short novel (185 pages), and once it gets going, it pulled me along pretty well.

The Kohn race of aliens native to the world on which the humans are colonists is divided into factions—Tehkohn and Garkohn. The Garkohn are exploiting the human missionaries by addicting them to the local fruit, the meklah, withdrawal from which is usually fatal. But the missionaries have aligned themselves with the Garkohn against the Tehkohn, whom they fear more. The novel opens with a flashback of the main character Alanna, a wild human whose parents were killed by Clayarks, being taken in by a missionary family back on Earth, before they left for the Kohn planet. Then it switches to Alanna being rescued by the missionaries and the Garkohn after she was taken captive by the Tehkohn two years prior.—You can kind of see how it starts off confusing.—Without getting bogged down in describing the plot and themes of the book, I will simply say that none of the big ideas Butler explores in this novel are as mind-blowing or profound as her best science fiction, which I would say are the Lilith’s Brood series (or Xenogenesis trilogy), the Parable novels, and the first two, chronologically, in the Patternist series (Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind). She touches on issues of captivity, religion, survival (naturally), and interbreeding, but not as well as she does in her other books. Still, she pulls off a satisfying climax to the story.

I got hold of an old hardcover edition of the book through my library system (interlibrary loan). Otherwise, I would’ve had to spend hundreds of dollars on a used copy, which—although I’m a huge Octavia Butler fan—I was not prepared to do. Until the Butler estate decides to go against Butler’s wishes and release a new paperback and/or ebook edition of Survivor, the book is only going to get rarer and harder to find. I respect the fact that her estate is respecting her wishes. Maybe it makes sense that only someone committed to reading all of Butler’s work should read the novel she didn’t want out there any longer. But I’m glad I got the chance to read it.

I read the Patternist series almost in chronological order: 1. Wild Seed, 2. Mind of My Mind, 3. Clay’s Ark, 5. Patternmaster, and then 4. Survivor (or 3.5, according to Goodreads). It's still so weird to me that she wrote and published them so completely out of order:

5. Patternmaster (1976)
2. Mind of My Mind (1977)
4. Survivor (1978)
1. Wild Seed (1980)
3. Clay’s Ark (1984)

Clay’s Ark is no doubt the darkest of all the series, perhaps of all her books (and that is saying something). But I really wish she had been able (or willing) to expand on that side of the series. In a way, Survivor is like Clay’s Ark in that it deals with the humans who didn’t evolve telepathic powers—whereas Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, and Patternmaster all deal with that evolutionary shift. But beyond Clay's Ark, which describes the origin of the Clayarks, we only see the Clayarks, in Patternmaster and Survivor, as remote, animalistic mutations of humans. Maybe Butler just didn’t see a compelling idea in telling about the future of that species, but it does seem full of potential. Then again, Butler died at the young age of 58. No doubt she had many stories left to tell.

If you’re like me, and Octavia Butler is one of your favorite authors and/or you’ve read the other novels in the Patternist series and loved them, you should definitely try to read Survivor. (Get it from your library system, if possible, or wait until her estate finally relents.) It’s the least of her novels, in my opinion, but as someone once said in a completely different context, even bad pizza is melted cheese on bread. That is, how bad could it be? Not bad at all. ( )

This remains Butlers most awkward novel and I completely understand why she didn't want it reprinted.
Her writing style is vastly superior in her other novels.
Still, I'm grateful to have read this novel. ( )

This is the one that Butler did not want to have reissued in the Patternmaster series. I kept trying to figure out why, but there's no way to know. It's bizarre and original like most of her stuff. Alanna is the survivor who survives homelessness on a savage Earth, as a missionary child on an alien planet and as an alien amongst the inhabitants of the planet. ( )

Interesting effort. I have only the last book in this series to read, and I'd say that it's more appropriately considered as the third entry, rather than the fourth. I'd already read the Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, and Clay's Ark, before reading this one, and it seems that she intended Wild Seed to *replace* Survivor, rather than follow after it. I haven't yet reviewed the omnibus that contains them, and I have to say that I preferred Survivor to the middle two works. I'm not sure that I'm looking to reading Patternmaster (the final work), but will, for the sake of completion. Survivor is the equal of the first book in the omnibus (Wild Seed), and it's too bad that she disliked it so.

It's strange how these books are grouped in the Omnibus, considering the order of publication:

Patternmaster (1976)
Mind of My Mind (1977)
Survivor (1978)
Wild Seed (1980)
Clay's Ark (1984)

No matter, though. ( )

Octavia Butler is my fav female sci fi writer. This book was hard to find but an inter-library load finally got it in my hands. She didn't like this book. I have to admit it's not her best but it was still pretty good. I'm glad I located a copy to complete my reading of all of her books. ( )