I believe that Bloodchild by Octavia Butler could have benefited from being longer. It seems to me that Butler began to craft a complex and incredibly different world, but with the story only being 25 pages or so, this world was unable to be fully developed. If Bloodchild was longer, Butler could have expanded on the relationship between the Terran and the Tlic. We could have known what existed outside the Preserve and other aspects of Terran-Tlic relations that we are currently left guessing about. Additionally, the increased length would have allow Butler to discuss more of the “pregnant man” aspect of Bloodchild. In her afterword, Butler describes this story to be, to some degree, a story about what would happen if a man became pregnant. After reading the story, I noticed the effects of a man becoming pregnant were not really discussed, at least from a social perspective. If the story was longer, perhaps Butler would have written about the social consequences among the Terrans of men being pregnant- how would Terran social order be different now that both genders could bear children?
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