Butler, Octavia (1947-2006), became the first African American woman to achieve recognition writing science fiction. Many of her novels and short stories feature future societies and characters with superhuman powers. Several of her leading characters are African American.
Butler’s first novel was Patternmaster (1976). It is the first book in the “Patternist” series about a group of characters with linked powers of telepathy. Telepathy is the ability of minds to communicate with each other without using any of the senses, such as speech, hearing, or sight. Butler’s other novels in the series are Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), and Clay’s Ark (1984). Butler also wrote the “Xenogenesis” trilogy, consisting of the novels Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). The trilogy deals with human beings forced to interbreed with alien species in order to survive. She also wrote the novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and its sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998). The novels portray a community trying to survive the economic and political collapse of the United States in the 2000’s.
Butler’s best-known single work is the time travel novel Kindred (1979). The story combines fantasy, historical fiction, and a slave memoir. The narrative follows a Black woman who travels back in time from 1976 Los Angeles to a plantation in Maryland before the American Civil War (1861-1865). There, she is enslaved and saves the life of her white, slave-owning ancestor. The story was adapted into a graphic novel by Damian Duffy and published in 2017, after Butler’s death. An adaptation of the story as a television series premiered in 2022. Butler’s short stories have been collected in Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995) and Unexpected Stories (2020, published as an e-book in 2014).
Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. She earned an associate’s degree at Pasadena City College in 1968 and attended California State University in Los Angeles in 1969 before devoting herself to writing. She received the support of the American science fiction writer Harlan Ellison early in her career. Butler moved to the Seattle, Washington, area in 1999. She wrote little during her final years because of poor health. In 2005, she published her last novel, Fledgling, about a young girl who realizes she is a 53-year-old vampire. Butler died on Feb. 24, 2006. The Library of America published a collection of two of her novels and a number of her short stories and essays in Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories (2021).
