"Diverse Position" Science Fiction is very much new to me, as I have always seen sci-fi as a good excuse to read about aliens, creatures, and new worlds. But thanks to such works as War of The Worlds, District 9, and this short story, Bloodchild, I am now beginning to see the science fiction genre very differently and with a new mindset for other possible stories of my own.
Bloodchild started off as a lot of science fiction stories that I have read in my time have started out: we have these humans or at the least human-like beings that are for any reason or another far away from their origin of place ("home planet"), and we the readers come to find out that the beings are rules over by these twisted creatures. And the "twist" in this story is that our rulers, or their rulers, seem to treat them more like tools rather then food as one might expect from an stronger alien race. This sort of "twist" in the story is a trait that I have come to notice the most in a work of "Diverse Position" Fiction, and thus I see it as the most important characteristic of the this sub-genre. And just like in District 9 where we find that the space alien population to be in the position of enslavement as our story's twist, we see a similair fate to the human-like aliens of Bloodchild, where the reproductive role is reversed between male human(-like) beings and female aliens, thus creating a hidden message regarding the horrors of childbirth from the point of view of the usual sufferers of this unfortunate condition.
In conclusion, this means that from reading this and other fine works of Diverse Position Science Fiction, you will see that this relatively uncommon subgenre is really quite revolutionary in its ability to portray a clear message through the use of role reversals. Also, I will be delving further into the engenious works of Octavia Butler this summer.
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