After reading Bloodchild by Octavia Butler, my first thought was in realizing how similar the ideas in this book were to the weekly reading, Dawn. Butler's interests lie in things like what the effects would be in having a human/alien hybrid child and how the concept of gender is blurred by aliens. I also felt saddened by seeing how Butler makes humanity seem so hopeless and trapped when an alien species comes to "domesticate" them in a way. But at the same time, it's not entirely depressing, because humans are allowed a certain kind of freedom within their confinement. I'm talking about Bloodchild, but the same thoughts could be applied to Dawn. Butler puts humans in situations where they should be happy living a comfortable life, but they never are.
I can't seem to back away from relating Bloodchild to Dawn, because I feel like they're so similar and almost seem to bounce ideas off of one another. For example, the idea of having something harmful to one group be something beneficial to another. Like parasites in human bodies becoming the Tlic's offspring in Bloodchild or cancer being a healing mechanism for the Oankali in Dawn. I also saw a strong connection between Bloodchild to the movie Alien. Specifically, the birthing scenes, which could be seen as C-sections. Something about it just has a very displeasing but necessary quality to it, and I think that idea definitely ties into the alien theme.
If I were to translate the reading onto another medium, I would make it into a radio story. It's short and gets to the nitty gritty of the story quickly, which is perfect for a radio story. Once aliens get visualized, they lose some of their mystery, but just hearing the types of noises they make would be enough to spark people's curiosity. Changes I would make would be to take away some of the background information given to us in third person, and I'd figure out a way to incorporate it in the dialogue within the characters in order to make it only dialogue and no narration.
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