MIND OF MY MIND

The first chapter in a history that Butler has already taken up at a much later stage in Patternmaster (1976). Mind of My Mind begins with Doro, a ruthless mutant as old as the pyramids who has spent the last 4,000 years trying to breed a race in his own image. The culminating experiment is his daughter Mary. But, to Doro's astonishment, Mary's first instinct on attaining her full powers is to begin building a mental community—a pattern—out of the wretched thousands of Doro's haft-telepathic failures and partial successes. Despite some ragged moments, Butler is clearly on to a promising vein—something like Zenna Henderson's "People" stories without their saccharine silliness. There's a lot of intrinsic energy in the Pattern idea, and one wants to see where this erratic, gifted storyteller will pick it up next.