Survivor.

BUTLER, Octavia E.

Item Number: 126083

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1978.

First edition, review copy of Butler’s early novel with Doubleday’s review copy slip laid in. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To David Best Wishes Octavia E. Butler.” The recipient, David G. Hartwell, was the editorial and publishing force behind two key science fiction anthologies: Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. Butler was a contributor to his 1992 Foundations of Fear anthology, and would contribute her story Amnesty to Year’s Best SF 9, and The Book of Martha to Year’s Best Fantasy 4. Fine in a fine dust jacket without wear. Jacket design by One Plus One Studio. Rare, as this work was never reprinted.

Although set within the broader plot of the Patternist series, the entire plot of Survivor is largely separated from the events of the other books in the series. The novel follows the early contact between the Missionaries, a group of human colonists fleeing a plague on Earth, and the Kohn, intelligent natives of the planet on which the Missionaries have arrived. In particular, the plot focuses on Alanna, the adopted daughter of the Missionaries' leader, as she attempts to prevent the Missionaries' destruction or assimilation at the hands of a dominant local culture. During the course of the novel, Alanna's experiences assimilating and negotiating with the Kohn draw upon her earlier, similar experience joining the Missionaries themselves, and Alanna's ability to interact with the various cultures becomes the key to their survival.