MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY

Recognizing the Alien: Science Fiction Storyworlds and the Reader’s Reality
By
Audrey Leaurie Jamieson

A PROJECT
SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (Honours, English)

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

CALGARY, ALBERTA
December, 2020

© Audrey Jamieson 2020

ABSTRACT
This project is a critical study of the science fiction storyworld as the platform for the
genre to contribute meaningfully to the literary canon. In the process of world-building, the
author weaves a fabric of world elements in the categories of nominal, natural, cultural, and
ontological. Through the crafting of an alien, secondary world, the author creates binary parallels
between the reader’s reality and the fictional world. The reader is encouraged to engage with the
text by filling the gap between worlds, and thus critically think about their own status quo. The
secondary world is formed using departures from the current reality and these departures
juxtapose the unfamiliar elements with the familiarities that go unchecked because of their
ubiquitous nature. The science fiction storyworld disembodies social issues from their human
categories and allows the reader to reconsider perspectives while distanced from the self.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Recognizing the Alien: Science Fiction Storyworlds and the Reader’s Reality
Introduction

3

Scholarship

4

Storyworld and Literary Gap

9

Analyzing Bloodchild

18

Conclusion

26

Works Cited

28

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Recognizing the Alien: Science Fiction Storyworlds and the Reader’s Reality
Introduction
Storyworld is the defining feature that distinguishes science fiction from other genres.
Especially with the genre’s rise in visual media, science fiction (SF) is associated with a certain
aesthetic, with conventions such as innovative technology and Alien encounters making the genre
easily recognizable. Marketing genre is about setting up expectations, creating a sense of
familiarity between the text and the potential reader. Both familiarity and unfamiliarity lie at the
heart of science fiction.
SF’s unique interplay of familiar and alien within its world-building is the genre’s key
addition to the literary canon. World-building is accomplished through a series of departures
from the reality which the reader occupies. These departures create a literary gap between the
reader’s reality and the storyworld which the reader must fill, to some extent, in order to engage
with the text. Because the reader is engaged, there is a willingness to reflect on their reality and
expose the status quo, a current status quo that is filled with limitations due to its preoccupation
with binaries. The SF storyworlds I will discuss in this essay are built from binaries, using them
as tools to reflect critically on the familiar. This includes Octavia Butler, whom I reference
frequently for her excellence in the craft of writing, and to honour her contributions to SF, as her
writing opened doors for female writers, black writers, and SF writers (Grigsby-Bates) because
her storyworlds allow for the deconstruction of these labels.
The SF storyworld is an incubator for both the author and the reader to explore topics
while being distanced from themselves. The unfamiliar nature of the storyworld, though also the
block that discourages many readers from serious consideration of the work, is the prime tool for
SF authors to extricate issues in reality from their human categorical bindings which negate
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productive discourse. Science fiction allows the author to craft an “alien” storyworld, using
departures from the reader’s reality to expose what is familiar in juxtaposition to the alien, thus
inviting the engaged audience to contemplate the nature of the status quo.
Scholarship
The contentious history between science fiction and literary fiction (a reductive binary in
itself) has been reproduced countless times. Scholars debate the origin of the genre, most
attributing it to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while others attribute the earliest SF to “the origins
of recorded history” (Menadue and Cheer 1). “The Golden Age of Science Fiction,” largely
considered to be the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, cemented genre conventions still used today to deride
the entire genre, namely, space/ time travel, Alien encounters, and innovative technology. These
elements will recur throughout this essay, as they are part of the aesthetic associated with SF, as
well as conventions that contribute to the genre’s strengths. According to Mary Hemmings, who
analyzed the cover art of Golden Age pulp magazines, these covers “generally presented
adventure, strange machines, bizarre alien creatures and other images designed to attract male
readers” (Hemmings 83). Though the Golden Age presented women in the categories of Virgins,
Amazon Queens, and Good Wives, it also must be acknowledged “that male protagonists tended
to be equally as flat and stereotypical, since authors were busy churning stories for pennies a
page” (88). Hemmings’ statement exemplifies why the dominant association with SF is this
Golden Age flatness. It was an oversaturated market concerned with quantity over quality. Now,
the market for SF has changed but many of the preconceptions have not. It is considerably more
difficult to publish SF, and to reach a wide audience with it, because most literary publishing
houses explicitly reject submissions of science fiction. This is based on a survey I performed on
the submission guidelines of Canadian, American, and other international literary publishing

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houses. The academic world seems to have caught up with SF, with many texts published
exploring its critical contribution to fiction. However, publishers, writers, and readers of
exclusively literary fiction appear to be left behind, perpetuating a Golden Age image of SF.
Meanwhile, the literary techniques specifically afforded to science fiction because of its
conventions are overlooked.
Sarah Ditum synthesizes the “genre snobbery” that authors often emit as they perpetuate
outdated criticism by publishing novels with clear ties to SF tropes while insisting that the text
“isn’t science fiction.” The insinuation of this claim is that science fiction cannot accomplish the
same thematic relevance to human experience that literary fiction can. Household names in
literary fiction—such as Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood—are/ have been ardent in their
denial of a relation to “lesser” genre fiction (Ditum). Though not a scholarly source, Ditum’s
article in The Guardian reaches a wider audience and exposes the socially-felt, “de facto”
derision, which cannot always be qualified by scholarly evidence. In other words, there are not
many articles by scholars tearing down the genre, but authors of speculative fiction are not
always treated as writers of “real literature.” Ditum does lean on critical theory from Ursula K.
Le Guin and Roger Luckhurst to bolster her argument, creating the bridge needed between the
rigorous method of scientific/literary studies, and the larger audience who enjoys or wants to
enjoy good literature, an act similar to science fiction itself.
Some critics claim hack genre conventions such as space or time travel have narrowed
science fiction’s scope and the genre is only enjoyed by the SF “addict,” the reader so absorbed
in the conventions of SF that they are willing to overlook mediocre characterization in order to
be immersed in the divergent storyworld, the individual technology being incidental to the
experience (Huntington 347). Another camp of critics and readers find the jarring unfamiliarity

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of the SF storyworld to be a brick wall of terminology and technology. I have also experienced
the SF brick wall, which made William Gibson’s Neuromancer almost unreadable to me, despite
being regarded as a classic of the genre and the birthplace of the cyberpunk subgenre. Both of
these camps raise some good points about the standard of good science fiction. However, any
genre can become weighed down by the expectations of what has been done before, resulting in
recycled and uninteresting writing. Each genre also has its strengths, which stem directly from
the nature of the medium.
Currently, SF’s greatest obstacle is the expectation of genre. Genre is about
categorization in order to familiarize. Science fiction is about the unfamiliar. In 2017, Gavaler
and Johnson demonstrated how genre expectations are an obstacle for SF when they performed a
scientific study using a sample of 145 participants, dispersing four versions of the same core text,
altered by setting and Theory of Mind application. In this study, theory of mind is defined as
“‘the inference and representation of others’ beliefs and intentions,’” (found in Gavaler and
Johnson 81). Two versions of the core text were set in a diner, one with and one without
expository thinking statements that allowed the reader to access the character’s state of mind.
These were deemed narrative realism stories because of their storyworld, proving my assertion
that the world is the largest factor separating literary and science fiction.. The other two texts
were set in a space station gallery, both with and without insight into character thoughts,
distinguished by their adherence to SF tropes with words like “airlock” and “antigravity.” The
study determined that the narrative realism story set in the diner with no thinking statements
garnered the same level of audience immersion as the SF story with thinking statements. The
authors state that “science fiction with high inference demands may also constitute literary
fiction” (Gavaler and Johnson 79). Using the energy requested of the audience to define literary

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fiction does not exclude SF from this genre, though the authors of the study conclude that
inference demands may be less to blame for lack of reader immersion than reader expectations of
the SF story (100). Words like “airlock” insinuate science fiction and the reader turns off their
engagement because of preconceptions of genre tropes, associated with an overall lower quality
of story (98).
Sometimes genre expectations and familiar conventions are the object of desire, as they
are for the ardent SF fan. Writing in 1975, John Huntington distinguishes the literary reader from
the SF “addict.” The stereotype of the “SF addict” is generally used to deride the genre as a
whole, fueling criticism that SF appeals to readers not looking for more substance than space
stations and time machines (Huntington 346). Huntington finds “value even in the mediocre hack
work” (346) and his essay on “Science Fiction and the Future” is not meant to attack SF, but
rather counteract the apologists who have touted SF as an exercise in preparing for the future,
saying it “probably does not have the educational value that is claimed for it” (345). He states
that SF is a conventional and conservative genre, not because of political alignments, but because
of its representation of the now and “its ability to engage a particular set of problems to which
science gives rise and which belong, not to the future, but to the present” (345). Addicts and
apologists of the genre claim that “SF trains its readers to anticipate the unexpected and helps
them to encounter change,” but “rather than assaulting the unknown by bold risks of the
imagination, [SF] tames the threat of the future and in doing so articulates one aspect of our
present human situation in a way no other literary form can” (345). The SF storyworld provides a
means for both author and reader to critically engage with human phenomenon. The scientific
elements that define the genre are not obstacles for the author or reader to overcome, but integral
to the work’s ability to engage with the reader’s reality. As a more contemporary critic, Marie

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Jakober, asserts, SF allows the audience to “look at [the story] in some way where we are not
distracted by particular cultural context, where we can consider [reality] for itself, simply as a
phenomenon of humankind” (29).
If the difference between science fiction and literary fiction is science, is this the
qualifying feature that apparently precludes the genre from serious consideration by many
publishing houses? Huntington argues that the SF storyworld and the science/technology within
it “is usually as magical as it is scientific” (347). Joanna Russ, a prominent science fiction writer
of the 1970s, disagrees, writing that SF “must not offend against [or ignore] what is known”
(114). In fact, science fiction which does so is “bad science fiction” (Russ 114). Russ is openly
critical of books which have “degenerated into outright adventure story with science fiction
frills” (113). While Russ adamantly defends the preservation of science in SF, Huntington
acknowledges the paradox created in the very name of “science fiction”: “Whereas science deals
with necessities, fiction offers freedoms. Whereas science explores and explains what absolutely
must happen, fiction creates its own sequences and consequences” (347). The science fiction
paradox “that unites…scientific necessity and imaginative freedom” (348) is where the SF reader
derives pleasure, finding that freedom in place of necessity “permits us to transcend nature’s
limitations through control, prediction, and invention. By understanding the law of gravity we
can escape Earth” (Huntington 347).
Because of the genre’s unique intersection between science and fiction, Russ argues that
it must be met with its own conventions of literary criticism. She outlines the limitations of
criticism designed for entirely different subjects, and identifies the critic’s improper set of tools
as a leading cause of the genre’s status of inferiority; “[a]pplying the standards and methods one
is used to can have only three results: the dismissal of all science fiction as non-literature, a

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preference for certain narrow kinds of science fiction… or a misconceiving and misperception of
the very texts one is trying to understand” (Russ 118). I agree that a separate set of critical tools
is necessary to properly approach SF, but rather than this being based on rigorous scientific
research, our critical tools should allow us to appreciate how an SF storyworld can represent a
“human phenomenon, and compel the reader to understand it better by living it through story”
(Jakober 28). This particular critical lens can apply to all fiction, but in SF, there is the additional
factor of how well the narrative “makes us re-imagine things we thought we knew” (30) by
demonstrating the familiar as alien, and vice versa. SF’s strength is intersecting the observable
natural world with imaginative storyworlds, and as Jakober writes,“by lifting [the world] out of
its familiar contexts [we can search] for the elements that might be universal” (29).
This essay does not intend to proclaim SF as the ultimate mode of storytelling, but rather
reasserts Jakober’s idea that “factual works, realistic fictions, and speculative fictions all lie
along a continuum of meaning, each fulfilling a function the others cannot, each adding to the
total of human understanding” (28). Additionally, this essay does not defend all science fiction
which has been written, as every genre has contributions on a spectrum of quality. I do, however,
wish to provide a basis for the legitimate consideration of SF, not despite its genre conventions,
but because of how they are, according to Ken Simpson, an “opportunity to create worlds that
[call] contemporary political realities into question [and offer] an indispensable strategy for
social change” (56).
Storyworld + Literary Gap
For the purposes of this essay, I will be discussing the reader’s reality, or the world in
which a text exists and is interpreted by an audience. Though I want to acknowledge that
individual reader realities differ immensely and this diversity of experience impacts the reading

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process, this goes beyond the breadth of this essay. Additionally, SF’s implementation of the
Alien puts humans into perspective as a unified species, and thus this essay will define the reader
reality as the collective history and experiences of humans as a whole.
Similar to our own reality, the well-crafted fictional storyworld is inspired and informed
by a dynamic and complex collection of history and culture. From the perspective of its
characters, the storyworld is reality. All of the complicated and nuanced social conditions that
form our reality also make up the well-crafted storyworld. These conditions form the fabric of
the world. The image of fabric captures the idea of different strands weaving together to form a
cohesive whole. This fabric directly influences (or is influenced by) themes discussed within the
world’s story. This bidirectional influence occurs in the worldbuilding process.
It is critical to define both storyworld and world-building, as they have both been used in
different contexts frequently. World-building can describe three actions that occur around the
text: “the construction of an imaginary world carried out by an author; the re-construction of this
world that a reader performs; and the way in which a world is presented through a text” (Ekman
and Taylor). Storyworld does refer to the physical place in which the text is set, but more
importantly, it embodies “many varied building-blocks” and can “comprise anything from
geographical and topographical details, to flora, fauna, and ecologies, to social groupings and
behaviour, political factions and ideologies, and cultural traditions” (Ekman and Taylor). These
elements all contribute to the fabric of the storyworld.
As David Gerrold explains in his instructive text Worlds of Wonder, “everything you add
to the [world] tells us more about the civilization that built it.” For example, in Butler’s Dawn,
the Alien species lives in a symbiotic relationship with the organic, living space ships on which
they travel. This element of setting demonstrates the convention of innovative technology. It also

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shows how the Aliens wish to live in a symbiotic relationship with humans as well. Through
interactions between humans and the living ships, the world’s fabric contributes to the story
question of what it means to be human. The text’s dynamic fabric must be understood by the
author in order to craft a compelling and verisimilitudinous world, even if this world includes
Aliens or time travel. But the author is only one side of the world-building process. The world
needs a reader.
The storyworld exists fundamentally as a literary gap, “an opening in the text that is
either permanent or requires some degree of filling in order for the text to do its work” (Abbott
107). However, for the argument of this paper, it is easier to visualize the storyworld as its own
construct beside the reader’s reality, with a gap between them where information is exchanged
both ways. This concept is illustrated in the figure below. Abbott explores the idea of the
unknown in narrative and the reader’s role in filling (or not filling) the gap. His theories can be
adapted to my discussion of the distance between storyworld and reader reality. Gail de Vos
states that a “crucial aspect to storytelling is its use of the audience to help develop visual detail,
to fulfill and co-create the story” (92).

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The reader enters any storyworld with the inherent principle of minimal departure, where
the storyworld is assumed to operate the same as the reader’s reality unless told otherwise
(Abbott 109). The reader brings their experience—their reality—to the storyworld. The author
has created a storyworld through a series of departures from the reader’s reality. This is the
process by which the reader is distanced from the self. If an author sets their story on the moon,
“the first and most obvious difference is gravity,” which means “physical activity that we take
for granted on Earth must be adjusted for lunar gravity” (Gerrold). In Gerrold’s statement, the
word “adjusted” implies the author is not simply building a radically different world from
nothing, but starting from our malleable reality and remodeling it to serve the story. The

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audience is not completely baffled by the idea of gravity because it is familiar, taken for granted
even, but the reader is now made to think of their own gravity because they are faced with this
force in an alien context. This is the power of the SF storyworld.
Science fiction allows for a greater gap between worlds; the audience is entering the
genre with a higher suspension of disbelief because they know there will be departures. An
author, through their worldbuilding, asks the reader to suspend their disbelief and “imagine what
the world would be like if it actually existed” (Wolf 25). Any storyworld should connect with the
reader in such a way that it appears as a functioning reality in itself. Regardless of what
technology contributes to the fabric of the world, it must engage the reader and compel them to
keep reading and continue understanding theme through storyworld. Appealing to Russ’ desire
for new critical tools, those in the scholarly field of SF have adapted new language for SF
criticism.
Critics of speculative fiction distinguish between primary worlds—“the material,
physical world, as opposed to imaginary worlds made within it” (Wolf 380)—and secondary
worlds, which exist apart from our natural laws, history, cultures, and people (Ekman and
Taylor). The term primary world is similar to that of the reader’s reality, but differs in that it does
not account for the individual experience brought to the text by the reader.
The secondary world does not operate by the same laws as the reader’s reality, but this
does not mean it is random. The storyworld is beholden to an internally consistent logic which
accounts for its history, cultures, and ideologies; in other words, it “sets up fictional necessities
and then obeys them” (Huntington 348). The secondary world resides on the other side of the
literary gap and engages the audience in a juxtaposition of the alien and familiar.

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The human capability of categorization through contrast and comparison, described by
the psychological theory of schema, is at its highest in SF storyworlds where extreme jumps in
reality or story logic incite the reader to consider “the toxicity of binary thought, especially in its
various configurations of self/Other, center/margin and power/powerless” (Schroeder 14).
Because they are faced with the unfamiliar, the reader must re-perceive the familiar. In other
words, the reader must actively engage with the storyworld in order to perceive the departures
and understand how they correlate to their reality. Jakober defines “the phenomenon of
Othering” as “ the process by which humans decide that another is an Other, both different and
inferior” (29-30). I wanted to bring up this definition because science fiction’s application of the
Alien and other binaries, as Schroeder expands on, contribute to the genre being a platform to
portray and deconstruct certain “us versus them,” or “Othering” ideologies, if a reader is willing
to cross the gap and reflect on their own reality. Certain “storytelling forms require the audience
to actively participate in the understanding of the story” (de Vos 93) and science fiction
necessitates that the reader reflects on the similarities and differences between their world and
that of the text. For example, in Butler’s Dawn, Nikanj—one of the Oankali (Aliens)—says “she
was like a fourth parent to my siblings and me” (79). The line’s implication is that Oankali
parents usually occur in threes. This is a departure from the audience’s traditional two parents
(biologically speaking), and thus leads the reader to consider how their reality is constructed
around a binary idea of parenthood. The gaps between worlds have different purposes per text, as
they are constructed for and contribute to each text’s individual theme.
The cyberpunk future of William Gibson’s Neuromancer is a very distant gap as the
world is almost beyond conception, especially for the reader unfamiliar with hard SF genre
conventions. Other authors choose a smaller gap between themselves and their written world.

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Iain Reid presents a more familiar world in Foe, setting his story in an old farmhouse, in a time
when people are recruited to populate Mars and synthetic humans replace them while they are
gone. The futuristic technology of Foe is perceived as alien, outside of the reader’s realm of
possibility, yet the reader can relate to this world, and relate to Junior as he goes to his mundane
job at a feed mill. The reader then implicitly agrees to fill the gap between themselves and the
alien aspects because they can attach to some level of familiarity. Both Gibson and Reid utilize
the first lines of their novels to prepare the audience to enter their storyworld. Gibson begins
with “The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel” (3),
immediately placing the audience inside the port, staring upwards at an atmosphere of neon
static. The mention of television hints that this storyworld will be predicated on innovative
technology, but with a signature sci-fi rot around the edges. The scholar Lars Schmeink would
call this “[tipping] over into the dystopian” (155). Alternatively, Reid begins with “Two
headlights…. Odd because of the distinct green tint” (3). The first image is familiar, imaginable,
but perverse and unnerving due to its unnatural colour. Reid replicates this twisting of the known
into the disturbing throughout his novel as departures from reality are introduced to the audience,
demonstrating how this is an SF storyworld.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s first lines in Never Let Me Go are subtle in their introduction of the
science fiction storyworld, but simultaneously replicate the rest of the novel’s style of dispensing
departures from the reader’s reality: “My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve
been a carer now for eleven years” (3). Being a first person narrative, the opening lines of the
book introduce the speaker in an innocuous manner and only the second-time reader will identify
the peculiarity of her introduction with only a letter for a last name, symbolic of the
dehumanization inflicted on children who were genetically constructed to grow and eventually

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donate their organs. Similarly, Ishiguro nonchalantly introduces the term “carer,” and later the
“donor,” without definition. The narrator already steeped in the storyworld does not need this
exposition, and thus the audience must engage with the storyworld in order to uncover the
words’ meaning.
In the discussion of crafting storyworld, it is important to identify what I distinguish as
entrance stories and immersion stories. In entrance stories, the protagonist is brought into the
new storyworld and thus acts as a surrogate for the reader in discovering how the world operates.
Octavia Butler’s Dawn is an example of the entrance story, as the protagonist wakes up among
an Alien species, and the audience learns some storyworld details alongside the main character.
Immersion stories, on the other hand, are crafted with protagonists who already understand the
world, and thus the author must find alternative methods for constructing the storyworld on the
page of the text. Returning to Ishiguro, the journey through Kathy’s childhood narrative
replicates disjointed memory in its nonlinear reveal of information; the audience only fully
understands the science fiction nature of the storyworld at the climax of the novel, when it is
revealed that Kathy herself is not exactly human, merely a walking petri dish for the cure to
cancer. Gibson, Reid, and Ishiguro implement the gap between reader reality and storyworld in
dramatically different ways. However, each constructs their storyworld by intentionally
departing from the reader’s reality, utilizing science fiction’s dimension of possibility.
In discussing any fiction, it must be disclaimed that authorial world-building cannot be
fully known by anyone other than the author, and all subsequent assertions about storyworld are
interpretive (Ekman and Taylor). Secondly, the audience’s reactions towards world-building that
I discuss come from “an ideal reader who understands and reacts to information in the text as we,

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the critics, would have them do” (Ekman and Taylor). Thus, this essay will focus on what SF
storyworlds have the potential to accomplish by utilizing their conventions.
SF storyworlds are criticized for recycling conventions of the genre without sufficient
adaptation to make it unique. A heavy leaning on traditions of Aliens or time travel can be
derivative, but it can also be used to focus the audience’s attention on the text’s core meaning.
Soft science fiction is not always concerned with properly conveying the quantum mechanics
behind space travel, and instead dwells in the relationship between characters and the storyworld
they are exploring. Within writing, “[t]he use of stereotypes… assists in the immediate
transmission of information about the characters or setting without having to furnish a great
amount of detail” (de Vos 93). Obviously, in both writing and real life, stereotypes can be lazy or
used to discriminate. In literature though, stereotypes, archetypes, and conventions are traditions
used for economic storytelling. Conventions can be utilized to balance the text in terms of what
is and is not known. The role of the author is to selectively release information, presenting
enough familiar that the reader can engage with the material, and enough unfamiliar that they
engage with their own reality.
By familiar, I mean the subjects which spark a connection to the reader, such as in Foe,
where the story is set in a farmhouse and we follow Junior’s morning routine of getting coffee. I
am also referring to the deeper-set familiarities that go unchecked because “all cultures and all
histories encourage us to accept certain givens—certain assumptions, certain beliefs, certain
ways of thinking” (Jakober 30). The SF storyworld has the power to disassemble these “givens”
by presenting what could be, and inviting the reader to reflect on what is.
In Foe, the audience’s expectations are overturned when we discover that the protagonist,
the character we have been rooting for, is actually a synthetic recreation of the real Junior. By

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telling the story through the lens of a synthetic human, Reid invites us to question how we
connect and empathize with other beings whom we may assume have no similarities to us. The
innovative technology of synthetically recreated humans indicates the goals of this futuristic
society while simultaneously adding to the fabric of the storyworld. This fabric also contributes
to the theme of Othering, as throughout the story the idea of synthetic humans is viewed as
uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Yet, they are shown through the replica Junior’s perspective to be
living, feeling beings with emotions with which the audience can empathize. In this way, the
genre conventions that often contribute to the fabric of an SF storyworld also directly influence
theme.
To summarize thus far, the science fiction storyworld is one that is alien, unfamiliar,
based on science, and constructed from our current reality. The storyworld must adhere to an
internally consistent logic or set of storyrules constructed around the fabric of the world. This
fabric must be known by the author, and given to the reader through story. The reader then
brings their own knowledge and experience (which make up their reality) to the text, and thus
both parties contribute to worldbuilding. This action, the process of filling the gap between
worlds, is the critical momentum of the SF storyworld to inspire reflection on the status quo, or
the familiarities taken for granted. Marie Jakober writes, “We rarely concern ourselves with
entrenched patterns of behaviour until we are persuaded that there is something wrong with those
patterns” (30). Science fiction presents a dynamic storyworld that does not just show dystopian
consequences of world issues, but persuades the audience to enter the world and believe these
possibilities and consequences to be true.

Analyzing Bloodchild

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Though the storyworld may present as bizarre to the reader stuck in their reality, Mark
J.P. Wolf appreciates “fiction’s truth-value” and “its unique position between actuality and
unreality” (18). In his instructive text Building Imaginary Worlds, Wolf uses a model similar to
mine to distinguish the storyworld from the reader’s reality. He adapts Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s idea of the Primary and Secondary Imagination. The Primary Imagination “allows us
to coordinate and interpret our sensory data, turning them into perceptions with which we make
sense of the world around us” (Wolf 21). This concept relates back to the psychological theory of
schema, and the idea of lifting issues out of their categorical bindings of context. Once we
perceive something in a specific way, it is difficult to change that perception. This is why the
familiar becomes numb; we are no longer needing or trying to perceive. Thus, the familiar must
be disembodied, and the reader’s perceptions shaken, in order to decontextualize and criticize the
status quo. The Secondary Imagination affords this decontextualization, as it “‘dissolves,
diffuses, dissipates’ the concepts and elements of the world around us so as to recreate something
new with them” (21-2). These two imaginations give rise to the primary and secondary worlds.
Butler’s “Bloodchild” offers a classic example of constructing a complete secondary
world, where humans have become submissive to an Alien species called Tlic. The humans enter
Tlic families as designated hosts of the Tlic eggs, fertilizing them until they are ready to be
removed painlessly. The story centers around Gan, a boy designated from birth to be a host, as he
witnesses a birthing process go wrong.
Butler demonstrates the creation of storyworld through departures within the first two
lines: “My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sisters had given us two
sterile eggs” (499). The opening line introduces the reader to the familiar theme of growing up or
a loss of innocence. The audience is brought into the story through a recognition of familiar

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expectations. However, Butler immediately demonstrates the unfamiliar, introducing the idea of
people giving away sterile eggs casually. And Butler isn’t talking about chicken eggs. In this
way, Butler destabilizes expectations from the opening paragraph.
But how does Butler recontextualize the familiar? She portrays the nuanced relationship
between Lien, who is Gan’s mother, and T’Gatoi, the Tlic who claimed Gan to be her host. Lien
jokes that she “‘should have stepped on [T’Gatoi] when [she was] small enough,’” hinting at a
jovial kinship between them (Butler 500). But Lien is also protective of her son, saying
“‘Nothing can buy him from me’” (501). These opposing emotions set the foundation for their
relationship. This relationship informs the interaction between T’Gatoi and Gan as well, as she
prods him with one of her many limbs, saying that Gan is “too skinny” (499). In light of Lien
and T’Gatoi’s relationship, the interaction reads like a stereotypical aunt or family friend
commenting on healthy weight. However, as the true nature of Gan and T’Gatoi’s relationship is
established, this line is recontextualized by the fact that T’Gatoi is priming Gan for what is
essentially pregnancy, but in an alien context where the babies can eat their host from the inside
out if not removed in time. A pleasant image, to be sure.
The SF details of Bloodchild classify it firmly within the genre, but more importantly
they establish a world that feels full, complete, and known by the author. Wolf articulates that a
storyworld feels full when “enough information is present both to raise questions and suggest
answers about the missing pieces in the world’s history and organization” (198). We can bring
this into conversation with Abbott’s definition of the literary gap, described as “an opening in the
text that is either permanent or requires some degree of filling in order for the text to do its
work” (emphasis added 107). A storyworld does not need every hole filled with expository
detail. In fact, this is discouraged. But through the text, the reader should gain a sense that this

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secondary world stretches beyond what is written. According to Wolf, the “completeness of a
world is what makes it seem as though it extends far beyond the story, hinting at infrastructures,
ecological systems, and societies and cultures whose existence is implied but not directly
described or clearly shown” (42). For example, Gan tells of how his mother taught him “to be
respectful and always obedient because T’Gatoi was the Tlic government official in charge of the
Preserve, and thus the most important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans” (Butler 499).
There is a lot to unpack in this short segment. Firstly, the reader gets a sense of the overarching
laws that govern this society where Aliens rule and humans are cordoned off to a private piece of
land. Humans being designated as “Terrans,” in reference to their planetary origins, suggests that
this world is not set on Earth and we are entering a very divergent secondary world. However,
every detail of this alien world contributes to the story, which in turn invites reflection on the
reader’s reality.
In order to fully unpack Butler’s storyworld, I want to use the framework of Wolf’s four
realms of world-building departures, or ways the storyworld diverges from the reader’s reality
(35). These realms are the nominal, natural, cultural, and ontological, and are instructive in both
criticism and creative writing. The nominal realm describes the changing of names. This can be a
powerful tool of the SF storyworld as “[n]ew names may call attention to different aspects of
familiar things, or even define new concepts, since language bears an inherent cultural
worldview within it” (Wolf 35). Butler uses the word “host” to describe the carriers of Tlic
young. The word carries a clinical, detached tone, which alludes to the almost business-like
transactions of hosts being sold to Tlic families. T’Gatoi, as ambassador of the Preserve, “[sells
humans] to the rich and powerful for their political support” (Butler 500). Gan’s character arc is

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about disillusionment and critically considering whether he is just a commodity to T’Gatoi. As
Butler signaled in her opening line, this is a story about a loss of innocence.
Returning to the idea of immersion stories, Gan is already aware of the ontological
workings of his own world. His position as child allows him to sometimes work as a point of
entrance for the reader, but mostly Butler must find alternative ways to deliver world through
story. When T’Gatoi brings a sick man, Lomas, inside, she calls him “N’Tlic.” This is the first
time the audience is introduced to this term. Gan, already a part of the world, only asks, “‘Here?
Alone?”’ (502). The audience is cued that something is wrong, but it is only when Gan
comments that Lomas “was thinner than he should have been” (502), that the audience recalls the
priming information I discussed earlier about hosts needing a healthy weight. The term N’Tlic,
thus referring to a host, indicates the submission of the human species, where they adopt the title
of their sovereigns. A contradictory reading of N’Tlic could propose that the name indicates “the
joining of families, putting an end to the final remnants of the earlier system of breaking up
Terran families to suit impatient Tlic” (500). In either reading, or in any other interpretation a
reader may have, the audience pieces together the information, rather than it being directly
stated. If the name’s meaning was explained, there would be less of a gap, and less room for the
reader to bring their own reality to the reading, thus having a less unique reading experience.
Moving into the natural realm, departures of this kind “include not only new land
masses…but new kinds of plants and animals, and new species and races of creatures” (Wolf
36). The term “storyworld” is often associated only with geographical details, but Butler actually
does very little to build the physical world. T’Gatoi speaks of Gan’s “ancestors, fleeing from
their homeworld” (Butler 510), confirming this is not Earth, but very little else is done to
topographically map the world. On the level of new creatures, achti are domestic animals with

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“about three times as many teeth” as Gan, which his mother raises for their fur (503). This detail
adds a sense of economy to the world, and in just this small mention, alludes to a greater world
than is on the page. But this worldbuilding also directly drives the story (or the story drives the
worldbuilding), as Gan shoots the achti with a gun so that T’Gatoi can use it as a host for the
worms hatching inside Lomas’ body. The killing of the achti is an impactful step in Gan’s
character journey towards self-actualization, while also a departure that contributes to the fabric
of the secondary world.
Next, the cultural realm “consists of all things made by humans (or other creatures), and
in which new objects, artifacts, technologies, customs, institutions, ideas, and so forth appear”
(Wolf 35). As I already mentioned, Lien is not willingly sacrificing her son’s body, but is
following the customs as per the culture established in this world. Her resistance to this culture is
to “[promise] T’Gatoi one of her children,” as Lien “would have to give [one] to someone, and
she preferred T’Gatoi to some stranger” (Butler 501). These customs are informed by the violent
past hinted at between Terrans and the Tlic, when “whole Terran families [were] wiped out in
reprisal back during the assassinations” (504). Again, Butler interweaves worldbuilding with
story when Gan sees “a car coming toward the house….[but since] Terrans were forbidden
motorized vehicles except for certain farm equipment, [he] knew this must be Lomas’ Tlic
with… a Terran doctor” (506). Prohibiting humans from motorized vehicles reinforces the theme
of cages and being trapped, which I will discuss shortly. The mention of farm equipment also
indicates an economy where the Terrans are subjected to this physical labour for survival.
Alternatively, it could be read as the Tlic and Terrans having a symbiotic relationship. The gap
between the cultures of Gan’s and the reader’s realities means both of these interpretations, and
many more, are valid, depending on what the reader is bringing to the text.

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Finally, we enter the ontological realm of departures, “which determines the parameters
of a world’s existence, that is, the materiality and laws of physics, space, time, and so forth that
constitute the world” (Wolf 36). In this world, Tlic cannot reproduce by themselves, requiring an
external host, whether this is an animal or Terran, but Gan states that “Tlic from Terran bodies
were always larger as well as more numerous” (Butler 507). The natural laws of this storyworld
propel the story into being. Though it appears that there is a choice between using a host animal
and a Terran, this is really an illusion. All Gan wants is a choice. In an argument with T’Gatoi,
he confronts this desire, saying, “‘No one ever asks us….You never asked me”’ (510). Gan’s
internal struggle is externalized, mapped over the storyworld. Gan’s brother, Qui, “began
running away” when he was young, “until he realized there was no ‘away.’ Not in the Preserve.
Certainly not outside” (507). Both brothers are running in a cage where the only possibility is to
return home and face a choice that was made for them. How is this a reflection of the reader’s
reality? The cage storyworld allows Butler to explore themes of reproductive rights and their
limitations on choice.
Bloodchild is a science fiction narrative about the gendered nature of parenthood and a
woman’s choice to create a family, despite a male protagonist and a setting among an Alien
species. The storyworld’s alien setting allows for the story’s content to be separated from gender
issues plaguing culture at the time Butler was writing, and that continue to affect people today.
The default expectation of motherhood placed on women limits choice. The storyworld removes
this discourse from the turbulent context of “men vs women,” a reductive binary within our
reality, and instead isolates the issue to the role of “birther” and how this person, in this case
Gan, should be given a choice in the matter. Context cannot be completely detached and thus still
interacts with the text to make parallels and observations. The extremification of the birthing

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process makes it alien, but also, if the reader reflects on their own reality, alludes to the parasitic
nature of human pregnancy. I mean this in the truest sense of the term. Even Gan knows “birth
[is] painful and bloody, no matter what” (506).
As Gan was marked from a young age as T’Gatoi’s host, he “had spent most of [his] time
with T’Gatoi while [his] brothers and sisters were learning the family business” (503). This
correlates with women’s designated role as birther and how the stereotypes attached to this role
preclude them from other roles in society. Butler uses the departure from the reader’s reality to
demonstrate the ridiculousness of this expectation. When there is a need for Gan to protect his
family—when he must kill the achti—he struggles because he was never taught those skills, due
to his assigned position from birth.
Juxtaposing alien with familiar, Butler also imbues the story and the birthing process with
elements of the grotesque to give perspective to the expectation so casually asked of women.
Lomas’ “babies” are much more insidious to their host than their human parallels, as “they
would eat any flesh except its mother’s” (505). In Lomas’ stomach, T’Gatoi sees “movement on
the right side—tiny, seemingly random pulsations moving his brown flesh” and when she
removes the first grub, it is “fat and deep red with his blood—both inside and out” (505). Only
because of the science fiction storyworld and horror elements is Butler able to capture this birth
scene which might otherwise be portrayed as beautiful and ethereal. The birthing process is
marketed as a natural part of a woman’s life in the reader’s reality, but when Gan sees the
consequences of being a host, he realizes he just wants a choice in whether or not he partakes.
By tying Gan’s emotional arc to the parameters of the storyworld, Butler proves that
world-building and theme are inextricably linked in science fiction. Wolf also points out that
“world information that does not actively advance the story may still provide mood and

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atmosphere, or further form our image of characters, places, and events” (29). In this assertion,
the word “may” should be replaced with “must.” Everything on the page still needs to have
purpose. World-building should accomplish one of the tasks Wolf mentions in order to be
considered appropriate to the story and the text, even if the information is not driving the plot.
Returning to Bloodchild, Butler shows T’Gatoi reading Lomas’ name from an arm band
and Gan “[feeling his] own arm band in sympathy” (503). This ultimately extraneous world
detail is an easy way to learn the unconscious man’s name, but it also contributes to the idea of
Terrans being a caged, segregated, and patrolled group. Butler thus references the countless
times in primary world history where people have been given identity markers, encouraging the
reader to reflect on their reality. Wolf admits to a common criticism of speculative fiction, saying
these “works often exhibit an ‘encyclopedic impulse’ for explanatory interludes; points at which
the narrative halts so that information about the world and its inhabitants can be given” (30).
These expository statements should be kept to an absolute minimum. As Butler proves, there are
so many other ways to build the world into the story while keeping the reader immersed. The
audience has to fill the gap for themselves in order to interpret and engage with the storyworld.
This is the epicenter of science fiction’s entertainment, as well as its contribution to the Literary
canon.
Conclusion
In science fiction, the author presents a storyworld that has elements of the alien,
unfamiliar, and scientific, and is ultimately inspired by the reader’s reality. Wolf’s framework of
four realms offers concrete critical tools and terminology for the study of science fiction worlds,
as Joanna Russ wanted, along with much emerging scholarship in speculative fiction studies.
Early scholarship obsesses over SF’s placement within or outside of the literary sphere, and the

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strengths or weaknesses of genre tropes that traditionally categorize SF as “genre fiction.”
However, contemporary critics have more room to discuss the reflection SF has on our reality, as
it is becoming recognized as a respectable topic of study. This critical reading appropriately
illuminates the science fiction elements which are its greatest assets for representing reality in a
disembodied state, where it can be considered for itself. SF’s objective ability to discuss the
“Other” feels like a meta-commentary on both its turbulent history in the literary sphere, and the
labeling and categorization that seems to fund human behaviour. The binary between primary
and secondary worlds is the foundation for portraying other binaries, deconstructing the toxicity
of their perpetuation.
I have now laid the groundwork for the theory that a gap exists between the reader’s
reality and the storyworld, one which encourages the reader to engage with the text by filling in
said gap. Every secondary world is divergent from the primary world. Though the alternative
reality of science fiction storyworlds allows current societal issues to be disembodied from their
human categorical bindings, that human context is inseparable from the fictitious parallels. The
storyworld is considered successful when it presents and adheres to an internally consistent logic
or set of story rules. To use Wolf’s terminology, departures of the nominal, natural, cultural, and
ontological realms must be consistent. The author must understand this fabric of the world in
order to craft a coherent and verisimilitudinous world, even when writing about spaceships and
alternate realities. After the author has their world on the page, world-building becomes a
process between the text and the reader. The author, the reader, and the text are all integral
players in the world-building process. The reader brings their own knowledge and experience, or
in other words, their reality, to the text. The reader supplies the necessary momentum for the SF

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storyworld to reflect on the status quo, or the familiarities taken for granted, as they actively
engage with the text and fill the gap, making connections between worlds.

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