Accomodation and paying the rent

So I have finished my re-reading jag and received 3 new books in the mail.  Next up will be Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker.  But since I have only read the first 5 pages this post is about The Children of God and the Octavia Butler short story "Bloodchild" and my emerging interest in how we (can? do? should?) expand our understanding of what it means to live together fruitfully: how do we sustain real community?  What I liked about this reread of CoG was the in your face recognition of how difficult community can be and the myriad ways in which we divide from one another -- over misunderstandings and legitimate concerns (as, for example, when one member of the community subists by eating the other).  And we divide over how we can live with one another -- what will be the conditions of that living together?  How shall we distribute what might be scarce and share what we might rather foist on someone else?  And what if those basic conditions simply suck?  Can we still think about justice under circumstances where mere survival (or even revenge) seem ever present? 

So in Butler's story, humans have arrived on a distant planet right about the same time the dominant inhabitants of that planet have realized that their gestational practice of using the bodies of a local gazelle like creature were not working.  And so the humans arrive and their appropriateness as possible host bodies for alien worm/slug babies (who can be removed before any 'eat your way out of the womb' moment -- can be, but timing matters).  The story concerns a second generation human who has been raised with the knowledge of what he will do, but no real experience of what this means.  After he witnesses a less than ideal birth situation he demands of his alien impregnator that the aliens really explain the birthing system and give the humans a chance to really choose the life to which they are now bound.  The story is not particularly hopeful; Butler notes in a commentary that she meant the story both to counter the usual colonizing voctories of science fiction tales (as does CoG) but also that the story is about "paying the rent." (As is CoG.)

Now this is one of my moments of being a someone obtuse political science professor.  I teach the "Bloodchild" story every semester and every semester we talk about paying the rent and in the back of my head is this little voice saying:  to whom is the rent being paid?  Who set the price?  What is being rented?  And my literal fixation on the metaphorical ties me up in knots.  But I try and work through these moments, relying on my students who are often far more innovative readers than I.  But last night while finishing CoG I thought that in fact that book is about paying the rent: the obligations we owe to those whose space we inhabit.  And what science fiction can do is expand our mind to think about how we accomodate ourselves to the lives and living spaces of those with whom we are thrown together -- by will or force or chance.