Octavia E. Butler

Novelist

• Born: June 22, 1947
• Birthplace: Pasadena, California
• Died: February 24, 2006
• Place of death: Seattle, Washington

Butler is considered the first African American female science-fiction writer. In a field historically dominated by white men, Butler brought a fresh perspective to the genre. Throughout her novels, Butler examined the psychological and societal ramifications of gender, enslavement, race, and sexuality.

Early Life

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, to Laurice Butler and Octavia M. Butler in 1947. Her father, a shoeshine man, died while Butler was young. After his death, Butler’s mother supported the family through domestic service. Raised in a Baptist household in a racially mixed neighborhood, Butler started writing at the age of ten. A shy and solitary child, Butler wrote as a means of escape.

Butler began writing science fiction and fantasy at twelve years old. She had seen the 1954 British science-fiction film Devil Girl from Mars and, unimpressed with the plot, decided that she could write a better story. Thus began her interest in the genre. Soon after, Butler began reading popular publications such as Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy.

Butler earned an associate’s degree from Pasadena City College in 1968. Shortly after, she enrolled in the Screen Writers Guild’s Open Door Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. Designed to mentor African American and Hispanic screenwriters, the program introduced Butler to Harlan Ellison, the controversial but prolific Jewish American science-fiction writer. Ellison encouraged Butler to attend the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop.

Established in 1968 by Robin Scott Wilson and Kate Wilhelm, the six-week-long Clarion Workshop uses mutual criticism to improve writing skills. Butler attended the 1970 workshop in Michigan and through Ellison met Samuel R. Delany, a notable figure in the science-fiction genre. Butler mentioned on several occasions how valuable the Clarion Workshop, as well as the Open Door Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, had been to her development as a writer.

Butler published her first story, “Crossover,” in the 1971 Clarion anthology. In addition, Ellison purchased a second story named “Childfinder” for his proposed anthology The Last Dangerous Visions. Ellison’s anthology fell through, however, and “Childfinder” was not published. Butler had her first publication, but it would be five years before she published again.

Life’s Work

Butler published her first novel, Patternmaster, in 1976. Although it was Butler’s first published book, the novel became the fifth of the Patternist series. The other four novels were published over the next eight years, though the publication dates do not match the series’ narrative order. Wild Seed, the first novel in the narrative sequence, was published in 1980.

Wild Seed and the subsequent novels in the Patternist series tell the stories of two immortal beings named Doro and Anyanwu. Both characters strive to create families, but in entirely different ways. Doro, the male character, starts a breeding program to generate human beings for food and companionship. Anyanwu, the female character, begins her family by building villages. Despite their clear ideological differences, however, the characters need each other—they are the only two immortal beings in the world. Throughout the Patternist series, Butler explores the psychological and emotional dynamics of gender and power.

Butler’s next series, Lilith’s Brood (also known as the Xenogenesis Trilogy), tells the story of Lilith, one of the few human survivors of a missile war that has destroyed most of Earth. The survivors meet the extraterrestrial Oankali, whose species possesses a third gender, the ooloi. With Lilith’s Brood, Butler examines the ambiguity of sexuality and gender.

Parable of the Sower (1993) was Butler’s next work. It focuses on a futuristic United States that has collapsed into warring regions because of a scarcity of food and resources. The narrator, a young woman named Lauren Olamina, suffers from “hyperempathy”—she experiences other people’s pain. When the security of her fortified neighborhood is breached and her family is killed, Lauren travels to Northern California to begin a new, spiritual odyssey. She ultimately forms a religion named Earthseed. Butler’s second novel in the series, Parable of the Talents (1998), received the 1999 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

An interesting development occurred after publication of Parable of the Sower. Earthseed, a fictional religion described in the novel, inspired a real-life counterpart called SolSeed. Considered a social movement rather than a religion, SolSeed embraces values such as self-love, wisdom, and empathy and is founded upon the motto (taken from Parable of the Sower) “Life Is Precious.”

After Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Butler switched gears and published Fledgling (2005), a vampire novel. Centering on an amnesiac child named Shori who wakes with no memory of where she is, or why, the novel examines her process of rediscovery. Although Butler stated that Fledgling (2005) was a lighthearted endeavor, the novel can be read as a commentary on diversity.

Although Butler wrote some short fiction, she was primarily a novelist. She published one collection of short stories, Bloodchild, and Other Stories (1995), before her death on February 24, 2006. Butler died of complications from a fall outside her home in Lake Forest, Washington.

Significance

Butler brought an African American woman’s voice to science fiction, a genre traditionally dominated by white men. Her novels examined gender, race, and sexuality through the lens of fantasy.

Butler’s work was widely honored; she received the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for science-fiction works. In 1995, Butler received the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Grant, which included an award of $295,000. In addition, Butler received the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award—a prestigious honor that recognizes the work of a highly influential writer. After her death in 2006, the Carl Brandon Society established a scholarship fund in Butler’s name for writers to attend the Clarion Workshop.

Bibliography

Butler, Octavia, and Consuela Francis. Conversations with Octavia Butler. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Provides insight into Butler’s personal and professional life. Includes index.

Mitchell, Angelyn. The Freedom to Remember: Narrative, Slavery, and Gender in Contemporary Black Women’s Fiction. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Examines the legacy of slavery in contemporary African American women’s literature.

Shinn, Thelma J. “The Wise Witches: Black Women Mentors in the Fiction of Octavia E. Butler.” In Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, edited by Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Chapter examines Butler’s characters and puts Butler in the context of the African American female literary tradition.

Spaulding, A. Timothy. Re-forming the Past: History, the Fantastic, and Postmodern Slave Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Discusses literary conventions used throughout African American literature to analyze the cultural understanding of slavery.