Research Guides: Octavia Butler: Biography

Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947 - February 24, 2006)

Butler attracted the attention of science-fiction fans with her Patternist series of five novels published between 1976 and 1980. She followed with her Xenogenesis trilogy, published between 1987 and 1989. Her short story “Bloodchild” (1985) won the prestigious Nebula and Hugo Awards. Her novel Kindred (1979), published as a mainstream work, explored American slavery. Her novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) were the first two books of a projected trilogy tracing the development of the philosophy of Earthseed. Continue . . .

Source: Podolsky, Marjorie J. “Octavia E. Butler.” Critical Survey of American Literature, Dec. 2016, pp. 410–416.. From Literary Reference Center Plus database.

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Octavia Butler Official Site Octavia Estelle Butler, often referred to as the "grand dame of science fiction," was born in Pasadena, California on June 22, 1947.� She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena Community College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles.� During 1969 and 1970, she studied at the Screenwriter's Guild Open Door Program and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, where she took a class with science fiction master Harlan Ellison (who later became her mentor), and which led to Butler selling her first science fiction stories.
Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into The Story Octavia Butler used to say she remembers exactly when she decided to become a science fiction writer. She was 9 years old and saw a 1954 B-movie called Devil Girl from Mars, and two things struck her. First: "Geez, I can write a better story than that!" And second: "Somebody got paid for writing that story!" If they could, she decided, then she could, too.
In Honor of Octavia Butler The article focuses on the life and works of African American science fiction author Octavia Butler. Topics discussed include Butler's Afrofuturism, which is Black speculative fiction, featuring Black women into imaginary worlds, Butler as recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship “genius” Award in 1995, and her novels "Dawn," "Parable of the Sower," and "Fledging."
Post-Racial, Post-Apocalyptic Love: Octavia Butler as Political Theologian The African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler (1947–2006) wrote explicitly about the relationship between religion and politics in her books Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). On the surface, Butler dramatizes the catastrophes that she anticipates will result from an alignment between American evangelicalism and neoliberalism, including climate change, mass incarceration, totalitarian politics, and corporate capture of political institutions. In her pair of novels, Butler proposes New Age spirituality aligned with community-based, ecology-minded politics as a necessary response. I argue that Butler's attempt to make a literary intervention in political theological critique ultimately fails because it grows out of unacknowledged commitments to the same neoliberal cultural forces that it ostensibly rejects. This failure is particularly evident when we focus on how race and love are represented in Butler's work.
Octavia Butler: A Retrospective This article presents a retrospective about feminist African American author Octavia E. Butler. The author argues both for the need to more seriously engage science fiction/fantasy (SF/F) as a vital genre of U.S. fiction and for Butler's place as one of the most prominent and provocative feminist voices within this genre. The author suggests that readers look to the ways in which SF/F allows for good authors to address the political realities of their time and to consider the ways SF/F facilitates critical analyses of racial/gender/sexual issues. The author draws particular attention to Butler's address of race as persuasively complex and disturbing and always framed by an acknowledgment of the roots of racist fantasy in the violence of raced slavery in the U.S.
A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler This introduction to the special section on Octavia Butler provides a brief review of her significance as an author of science fiction. When Butler began to publish, the genre was dominated by tales of adventure written in the heroic mode and featuring an extension into the future of familiar racial and gender hierarchies. To address the question of whether humanity is capable of meaningful change, Butler looked to the body. From the evolutionary and biological sciences, she took the notion of the body as the foundation of social arrangements, but to that scientific base she added an understanding of race and gender—the modalities in which we live our humanity—tas historically contingent and thus alterable. In her narratives the undoing of the human body is both literal and metaphorical, for it signifies the profound changes necessary to shape a world not organized by hierarchical violence. Her narratives privilege those already schooled in adapting to hostile conditions: black or female or queer characters that know the vulnerability of the body and understand that heroic resistance will not ensure survival. With such point-of-view characters and their strategies of accommodation, Butler expanded sf to reflect the experiences and expertise of the disenfranchised. But though her futures are organized around hitherto marginal characters and communities, they are predicated on change so profound that they cannot be assimilated neatly into sf written in the nationalist mode of afrofuturism. And, because they are often grim and lack a guarantee of success, neither do they belong with popular sf's utopian mode of liberal pluralism. Butler's originality places her at the cutting edge of the genre. The introduction closes with summaries of the essays and reflections that comprise the special section.
Octavia Butler interview - transcending barriers In memory of Octavia Butler, we are posting this interview with her, recorded at Balticon 34, in April of 2000. In this interview, Ms. Butler discusses issues of race, class and sex in the science fiction genre as well as society at large. She also talks about her evolution as a writer and her experience with the Clarion Writers Workshop. We apologize for the quality of the video - this is taken from an extremely compressed version of the interview.
Why should you read sci-fi superstar Octavia E. Butler? Explore the works of science fiction visionary Octavia E. Butler, whose novels, such as “Parable of the Sower,” influenced the growing popularity of Afrofuturism.