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Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 — February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of very few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards, and was the first science fiction writer ever to be a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 1995. June 22 is the 173rd day of the year (174th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 192 days remaining. ...
1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ...
February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...
An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black) is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ...
The 2005 Hugo Award with base designed by Deb Kosiba. ...
The Nebula is an award given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years. ...
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes nicknamed the genius grant) is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 citizens or residents of the US, of any age and working in any field, who show exceptional merit...
 Butler signing a copy of Fledgling. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1380x1055, 341 KB) Summary Description: Octavia Estelle Butler signing a copy of Fledgling after speaking and answering questions from the audience. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1380x1055, 341 KB) Summary Description: Octavia Estelle Butler signing a copy of Fledgling after speaking and answering questions from the audience. ...
Background
Butler was born and raised in Pasadena, California. As her father Laurice, a shoeshiner, died when she was a baby, Butler was raised by her grandmother and her mother (also named Octavia) who worked as a maid in order to support the family. Butler grew up in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood [1]. According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literture, Butler was "an introspective only child in a strict Baptist household" and "was drawn early to magazines such as Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy and soon began reading all the science fiction classics" (p. 2515). Pasadena is a city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. ...
Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area Ranked 3rd - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²) - Width 250 miles (400 km) - Length 770 miles (1,240 km) - % water 4. ...
W. W. Norton & Company is an American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. ...
Octavia Jr., known as "Junie", was thus considered shy and a "daydreamer" and was later diagnosed as being dyslexic. She began writing at the age of 10 "to escape loneliness and boredom"; she was 12 when she began a lifelong interest in science fiction.[2] "I was writing my own little stories and when I was 12, I was watching a bad science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars", she told the journal Black Scholar, "and decided that I could write a better story than that. And I turned off the TV and proceeded to try, and I've been writing science fiction ever since."[3] This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
Categories: Movie stubs | 1954 films | Science fiction films ...
After getting an associate degree from Pasadena City College in 1968 [4], she next enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles. She eventually left CalState and took writing classes through UCLA extension. Pasadena City College (commonly referred to as PCC) is a community college located in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California, USA. Its current president is Dr. James Kossler and its sports teams are referred to as the Pasadena Lancers. ...
California State University, Los Angeles (also known as Cal State L.A. or CSULA) is a California public university located in Los Angeles, California near the city of Alhambra and the center of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. ...
The University of California, Los Angeles, popularly known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university situated in the neighborhood of Westwood within the city of Los Angeles. ...
Butler would later credit two writing workshops for giving her "the most valuable help I received with my writing" [5]:
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the collective bargaining representative, or labor union, for writers in the motion picture and television industries in the United States. ...
Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, essays and criticism. ...
Clarion is a six-week workshop for new and aspiring science fiction writers founded by Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. ...
Samuel Ray Chip Delany, Jr. ...
Career Her first published story, "Crossover", appeared in Clarion's 1971 anthology; another short story, "Childfinder", was bought by Ellison for the never-published collection, The Last Dangerous Visions. (Like other stories purchased for that volume, it has yet to appear anywhere.) "I thought I was on my way as a writer," Butler wrote in her short fiction collection Bloodchild and Other Stories. "In fact, I had five more years of rejections slips and horrible little jobs ahead of me." The Last Dangerous Visions was planned to be a sequel to the science fiction short story anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions. ...
Patternist series In 1974, she started the novel Patternmaster (reportedly related to the story she started after watching Devil Girl From Mars) which became her first published book in 1976 (though it would become the third in the Patternist series. Over the next eight years, she would publish four more novels in the same storyline, though the publication dates of the novels do not match the order of the series (see Works below). The Paternist series is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia Butler that detail an imaginary history, spanning from the 17th century to the far future, involving telepathic mind control and extraterrestrial plague. ...
Kindred In 1979, she published Kindred, a novel which uses the science fiction technique of time travel to explore slavery in the United States. In this story, Dana, an African American woman is taken from 1976 to the turn of the 19th century ante-bellum South. She meets her ancestors, Rufus a white slave master and Alice an African American woman who was born free but forced into slavery later in life. Kindred is a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler. ...
An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black), is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ...
Antebellum is a Latin word meaning before the war. In United States history and historiography Antebellum is sometimes used instead of the term pre_Civil War, especially in the South. ...
This novel is often shelved in literature or African-American literature sections rather than in science fiction — Butler herself categorized the novel not as science fiction but rather as a "grim fantasy" — Kindred became the most popular of all her books, with a quarter of a million copies currently in print. "I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you," she said of the book. [7] Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ...
African-American literature is literature written by, usually about, and sometimes specifically for African-Americans. ...
See fantasy for an account of the literary genre involving the development of common or popular fantasies. ...
Xenogenesis Butler began her Xenogenesis trilogy in 1987. The three works which comprise the trilogy, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, tell the story of Lilith (modeled after the myth of Lilith, the first wife of Adam) who is abducted by extraterrestrials (the Oankali) after a nuclear war on earth, and the children she consequently has (the Oankali are notable for having a plausible third gender, known as ooloi). The entire series was released in 2000 as the single volume, Lilith's Brood. The Xenogenesis trilogy (currently published as the one volume novel, Liliths Brood, which was released in 2000) was written by Octavia Butler. ...
Lilith is a female Mesopotamian night demon believed to harm male children. ...
Extraterrestrial life refers to forms of life that may exist and originate outside of the planet Earth. ...
The Oankali are a race of intelligent extraterrestrial aliens in Octavia Butlers Xenogenesis book trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, also published in an omnibus edition under the title Liliths Brood). ...
Ooloi is one of the biological sexes of the fictional extraterrestrials called Oankali, in the science fiction book trilogy Xenogenesis, by Octavia Butler. ...
Parable of the Sower In 1994, her dystopian novel Parable of the Sower was nominated for a Nebula for best novel, an award she finally took home in 2000 for a sequel, Parable of the Talents. The two novels provide the origin of the fictional religion Earthseed. A dystopia (or alternatively cacotopia) is a fictional society, usually portrayed as existing in a future time, when the conditions of life are extremely bad due to deprivation, oppression, or terror. ...
Parable of the Sower is the first in a series of science fiction novels written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
Parable of the Sower is a science fiction novel written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
Overview Earthseed, a fictional religion, is based on the idea that God is change. ...
Butler had originally planned to write a third Parable novel, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, mentioning her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point encountered a form of writer's block, going seven years without publishing a new novel. Writers block is the phenomenon in which a writer temporarily loses the capability to continue writing. ...
Fledgling She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in 2005 in the novel Fledgling, a vampire novel with a science fiction context. Although Butler herself passed Fledgling off as a lark, the novel is connected to her other works through its exploration of race, sexuality, and what it means to be a member of a community. Moreover, the novel continues the theme, raised explicitly in Parable of the Sower, that diversity is a biological imperative. Philip Burne-Jones, The Vampire, 1897 Vampires are mythical or folkloric creatures, typically held to be the re-animated corpses of human beings and said to subsist on human and/or animal blood (hematophagy), often having unnatural powers, heightened bodily functions, and/or the ability to physically transform. ...
Short stories She published a collection of her shorter writings, Bloodchild and Other Stories, in 1995. The collection includes five short stories spanning Butler's career, the first finished in 1971 and the last in 1993. Bloodchild, the title story, concerns humans who live on a reservation on an alien planet ruled by worm-like creatures. The worm-creatures breed by implanting eggs in the humans, who they share a symbiotic existence with. Many have suggested that the story is about slavery, though in her own afterword Octavia claims that it is her 'male pregnancy story', and also that writing it was her way of overcoming a phobia of bot flies. Common Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) in their Magnificent Sea Anemone (Heteractis magnifica) home. ...
Subfamilies Cephenemyiinae Gasterophilinae Hypodermatinae Oestridae (also called botfly or bot fly) is a family of Oestroidea. ...
In 2005, Seven Stories Press released an expanded edition. This article needs to be wikified. ...
Seattle and death Butler moved to Seattle in November 1999. In October 2000, she received an award for lifetime achievement in writing from the PEN American Center. She described herself as "comfortably asocial--a hermit in the middle of Seattle--a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive." [8] Themes of both racial and sexual ambiguity are apparent throughout her work. City nickname Emerald City City bird Great Blue Heron City flower Dahlia City mottos The City of Flowers The City of Goodwill City song Seattle, the Peerless City Mayor Greg Nickels County King County Area - Total - Land - Water - % water 369. ...
PEN American Center (PEN), founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. ...
Half full or half empty? Pessimism describes a general belief that things are bad, and tend to become worse; or that looks to the eventual triumph of evil over good; it contrasts with optimism, the contrary belief in the goodness and betterment of things generally. ...
Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
A Baptist is a member of a Baptist church. ...
She died outside of her home on February 24, 2006, at the age of 58. Some news accounts have stated that she died of head injuries after falling and striking her head on her walkway, while others report that she apparently suffered a stroke. For other uses, see Stroke (disambiguation). ...
Awards Winner: Nominated: Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel. ...
Parable of the Sower is the first in a series of science fiction novels written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes nicknamed the genius grant) is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 citizens or residents of the US, of any age and working in any field, who show exceptional merit...
// About this award According to Article 3. ...
// About this award According to Article 3. ...
Winners of the Nebula Award for best Novelette. ...
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel. ...
Parable of the Sower is the first in a series of science fiction novels written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
Winners of the Nebula Award for best Novelette. ...
Scholarship Fund The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship was established in Ms. Butler's memory in 2006 by the Carl Brandon Society. Its goal is to provide an annual scholarship to enable writers of color to attend one of the Clarion writing workshops where Ms. Butler got her start. The first scholarship will be awarded in 2007. The Carl Brandon Society is a group originating in the science fiction community dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy and horror. ...
Obituaries - Obituary: Octavia E. Butler, 58, science fiction writer - International Herald Tribune
- Technology News: Octavia Butler - Metroactive news
- Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58 - Seattle Times
- Octavia Butler: Black science fiction writer breaking barriers in America - Guardian Unlimited
- Sci-Fi Author Octavia Butler Dies - NPR
- Octavia Butler, A Lonely, Bright Star Of the Sci-Fi Universe - Washington Post
- Octavia Butler: The outsider who changed science fiction - Slate
- Octavia Butler, 58; penned own path in science-fiction - Boston Globe
- Science fiction writer Octavia Butler dies - USA Today
- Oh Octavia - Annalee Newitz, AlterNet
The International Herald Tribune (www. ...
The daily Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the second leading newspaper in Seattle, Washington, United States. ...
The daily Seattle Times is the leading newspaper in Seattle, Washington, United States. ...
Front page of Guardian Unlimited from August 16, 2005 Guardian Unlimited is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...
NPR logo For other meanings of NPR see NPR (disambiguation) National Public Radio (NPR) is a private, not-for-profit corporation that sells programming to member radio stations; together they are a loosely organized public radio network in the United States. ...
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Slate Slate is a fine-grained, homogeneous, metamorphic rock which was derived from an original sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low grade regional metamorphism. ...
The Boston Globe is the most widely-circulated daily newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts and in the greater New England region. ...
USA Today is a national American newspaper published by the Gannett Corporation. ...
Annalee Newitz is a writer based in the U.S. She covers the cultural impact of science and technology. ...
AlterNet is a popular news website that was created in 1998. ...
Works
Novels Kindred is a 1979 novel by Octavia Butler. ...
Series Butler is well known for her the Patternist series, Xenogenesis Trilogy, and the Parable of the Sower Series. The first book which she wrote for the Patternist series, Patternmaster (1976), is actually the third of the series. In fact, most of the Patternmaster novels were written and published out of sequence. Her Xenogenesis series was released in 2000 as the single volume, Lilith's Brood. The Paternist series is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia Butler that detail an imaginary history, spanning from the 17th century to the far future, involving telepathic mind control and extraterrestrial plague. ...
The Xenogenesis trilogy (currently published as the one volume novel, Liliths Brood, which was released in 2000) was written by Octavia Butler. ...
- Patternist series
- Wild Seed (1980)
- Mind of My Mind (1977)
- Patternmaster (1976)
- Clay's Ark (1984)
- Survivor (1978)
- Parable of the Sower Series
The Paternist series is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia Butler that detail an imaginary history, spanning from the 17th century to the far future, involving telepathic mind control and extraterrestrial plague. ...
The Xenogenesis trilogy (currently published as the one volume novel, Liliths Brood, which was released in 2000) was written by Octavia Butler. ...
Parable of the Sower is the first in a series of science fiction novels written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
Parable of the Sower is a science fiction novel written by Octavia Butler and published in 1993. ...
Other Fiction - Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995); Second edition, with additional stories (2006)
- Speech Sounds (1983)
Articles - A Few Rules For Predicting The Future - science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler - Essence (magazine)
- AHA! MOMENT-Eye Witness: Octavia Butler - oprah.com
Essence is an American fashion, lifestyle and entertainment magazine. ...
The Oprah Winfrey Show is the longest-running daytime television talk show in the United States, and is hosted, produced and owned by Oprah Winfrey. ...
See also Afrofuturism, or afro-futurism, is an African-American and African diaspora subculture whose thinkers and artists see technology and science-fiction as means of exploring the black experience and finding new strategies to overcome racism and classism. ...
Note that this partial list contains some authors whose works of fantastic fiction would today be called science fiction, even if they predate, or did not work in that genre. ...
The Oankali are a race of intelligent extraterrestrial aliens in Octavia Butlers Xenogenesis book trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, also published in an omnibus edition under the title Liliths Brood). ...
Ooloi is one of the biological sexes of the fictional extraterrestrials called Oankali, in the science fiction book trilogy Xenogenesis, by Octavia Butler. ...
Although the novel Frankenstein, written in 1818 by Mary Shelley, has been called the first science fiction novel, there is a persistent but false belief that women did not enter the field of science fiction writing until the 1960s and 1970s. ...
References
Biographies - Gates, Henry Louis Jr (ed.). "Octavia Butler." In The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2nd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 2004: 2515.
- Geyh, Paula, Fred G. Leebron and Andrew Levy. "Octavia Butler." In Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998: 554-555.
Scholarship - Baccolini, Raffaella. "Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler." In Future Females, the Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism, Marleen S. Barr (ed.). New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000: 13-34.
- Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," and "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991: 149-181, 203-230.
- Ramirez, Catherine S. "Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler and Gloria Anzaldua." In Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture, Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth (eds.). Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002: 374-402.
Donna Haraway Donna Haraway, born in 1944 in Denver, Colorado, is currently a professor and former chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. ...
External links
Biographies and works Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Octavia Butler - Octavia Butler homepage from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
- Voices from the Gaps: Octavia Estelle Butler; biography.
- Bibliography from Feminist Sci Fi Utopia
- Octavia E. Butler at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database; bibliography.
- Octavia Estelle Butler: An Unofficial Web Page; includes a list of resources and a biographical essay.
- Octavia Butler .net; a community fansite.
- Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, adminstered by the Carl Brandon Society
- "The Book of Martha" at Scifi.com
- "Amnesty" at Scifi.com
- Octavia Butler biography from Black Women in America at OUP Blog
- "Devil Girl From Mars": Why I Write Science Fiction, MIT Media in Transition Project, October 4, 1998
- Strange Bedfellows: Eugenics, Attraction, and Aversion in the Works of Octavia E. Butler
Image File history File links Wikiquote-logo-en. ...
Wikiquote logo Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ...
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database is a database of bibliographic information on science fiction and related genres such as fantasy fiction and horror fiction. ...
The Carl Brandon Society is a group originating in the science fiction community dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres such as science fiction, fantasy and horror. ...
Interviews - "Interview: Octavia Butler", scifidimensions, June 2004; on the 25th anniversary of Kindred.
- "Interview with Octavia Butler", The Indypendent, January 2006
- "Interview with Octavia Butler", Addicted to Race, February 6, 2006.
- "Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler on Race, Global Warming and Religion", Democracy Now!, November 11, 2005.
- "Essay on Racism: A Science-Fiction Writer Shares Her View of Intolerance", Weekend Edition Saturday, September 1, 2001.
- Interview with Locus magazine, June 2000
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