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Octavia Estelle Butler is "the first African-American woman to gain popularity and critical acclaim as a major science fiction writer" (Hine 208). She was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California, to Laurice and Octavia M. (Guy) Butler. Of five pregnancies, Butler was the only child that her mother was able to carry to term. Her father, a shoeshine man, died when Butler was very young. Most of her memories are actually stories that she heard from her mother and grandmother. Her mother and she lived in a very racially mixed neighborhood. The unifying factor was the struggle to make ends meet. Butler "never personally experienced the more rigid forms of a segregated society" (Smith 144). She was very shy in school and describes herself as a daydreamer. These factors made it very difficult to succeed in school. She overcame dyslexia, and "began writing when [she] was 10 years old...to escape loneliness and boredom." (Locher 104). At age twelve she became interested in science fiction.
Butler received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College. She then attended California State University, Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. She credits her success to nonacademic programs, though. Two of these programs are the Open Door Program of the Screen Writers Guild of America and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. While attending school Butler held down a lot of odd jobs. Her work experiences come through in the character of Dana in her novel Kindred (as quoted above). Butler also spends time researching developments in biology, the physical sciences, and genetics.
Butler has won several awards for her writing. In 1984 she won a Hugo Award for her short story "Speech Sounds." In 1985 she won the Hugo for her novella "Bloodchild." "Bloodchild" also won the 1984 Nebula Award. The Hugo and Nebula Awards are considered science fiction's highest awards. They are decided on by other science fiction writers and fans. In 1995, Butler won the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" which pays $295,000 over 5 years.
Butler's Patternists series, published between 1976 and 1984, tells of a society that is run by a specially-bred group of telepaths. This is an elite group who are mentally linked to one another in a hierarchical pattern. These telepaths are trying to create a superhuman race. This series includes the books Patternmaster, Mind of My Mind, Survivor, Wild Seed, and Clay's Ark. Patternmaster deals with the struggle between brawn and brain. It also comments on class structure and the role of women. Wild Seed "incorporates a great deal of the Black experience, including slavery" (Hine 209). Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago are the three novels that make up the Xenogenesis trilogy. These stories are about the near destruction of humankind through nuclear war and gene-swapping by extraterrestrials. The extraterrestials observe the humans as being hierarchical, which causes them to be prejudiced, and to have class divisions and conflict. These characteristics make it inevitable that mankind will eventually destroy itself without the aliens' help.
Octavia Butler has been well received by the critics. Burton Raffel had this to say about Butler's work: "initially drawn on by the utterly unexpected power and subtly complex intelligence of her extraordinary trilogy Xenogenesis, but sustained and even compelled by the rich dramatic textures, the profound psychological insights" (454). "Butler's work is both fascinating and highly unusual," Rosemary Stevenson writes; "character development, human relationships, and social concerns predominate over intergalactic hardware" (208).
"I'm not writing for some noble purpose, I just like telling a good story. If what I write about helps others understand this world we live in, so much the better for all of us," Octavia Butler told Robert McTyre. "Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow ... Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself"
A potted bio in Butler's own words:
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I'm a 53-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also 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.
I've had eleven novels published so far: Patternmaster, Mind of my Mind, Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents as well as a collection of my shorter work, entitled Bloodchild. I've also had short stories published in anthologies and magazines. One, "Speech Sounds," won a Hugo Award as best short story of 1984. Another, "Bloodchild," won both the 1985 Hugo and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette. My most recent novel Parable of the Talents won the 1999 Nebula for Best Novel
I've read 2 of her novels so far:
Parable of the Sower is set in an overpopulated near-future, in 2025 in fact. The protagonist is a young balck woman who lives in a besieged residential enclave. An empath, she is able to sense the rage and frustration of masses around her to a painful degree. When her community is invaded and torn apart by homeless people looking for a place to live, she has a revelation and gathers together a group of people to her new faith, Earthseed. It's a powerful story about a sense of faith and belonging being born out of times of great turmoil. The Earthseed faith itself makes for an interesting philosophical element.
Mind Of My Mind: A centuries-old immortal has been secretly breeding a mutant master-race, to be dedicated to his service. However, when the powerful telepath he has been attempting to create is born and comes into her abilities, she confounds his abilities by bringing together growing nunbers of telepaths into a mental Pattern that fosters a thriving, self-contained community that has no use for its Macchiavellian creator.
Both books are elegantly and economically written, vigorously explore the ideas they are based on and present us with interesting, well-realised characters and a rich sense of community.
Butler's writing reminds me in parts of both Ted Sturgeon and Ursula Le Guin. Well worth reading. HAs anyone here read anythingby her?
