User:Starla-Nell/sandbox

The first novel in the trilogy, Dawn, was published in 1987. The story begins after a terrible nuclear war that left the earth uninhabitable. Humans are all but extinct. The few survivors are plucked from the dying earth by an alien race, the Oankali. The title character Lilith Iyapo (a black human female) awakens 250 years after the war on a living Oankali ship. At first, she is repulsed by the alienness of her saviors/captors. The Oankali have sensory tentacles over their bodies, including locations of human sensory organs, with which they perceive the world differently than humans. Stranger still, the Oankali have three sexes: male, female, and Ooloi. Oankali have the ability to perceive genetic biochemistry, but the Ooloi manipulate genetic material to mutate other beings and build offspring from their mates' genetic material. Lilith eventually bonds to Nikanj, an Ooloi. The Oankali have made earth habitable and obtain Lilith's help in awakening and training humans to survive on the changed earth. In exchange, the Oankali want to interbreed with the humans to blend the human and Oankali races. They offer to repair the fatal combination of intelligence and hierarchical tendencies. They are particularly attracted to cancer, which they will use to reshape themselves. The humans rebel against Lilith and the proposed "gene trade." They kill Joseph, Lilith's new mate. This group is sent to earth without her. Nikanj uses Joseph's collected DNA to impregnate Lilith with the first Oankali/human child.