Octavia Butler (1947-2006)
By Keith Boykin, in books
Tuesday, February 28 2006, 9:28AM
I have not read a lot of science fiction in my life, but I did take a college course on science fiction authors. We read many of the most famous authors in the genre, including Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov and Samuel Delany. And we were also introduced to female authors like Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler. Butler was one of very few African American women writers in speculative fiction or science fiction, and she paved the way for others like Tananarive Due. The news of Butler's death at just 58 years old comes as a blow to the literary community.
A few years ago, she described herself as "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." She added, "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."
Comments conceal
James
February 28 2006, 12:09PM
This is really sad. I cannot tell you the places that her fiction has taken me. One of my favorite writers ever, and the one who I always went out of my way to share with others.
Jeff Hobbs
February 28 2006, 12:33PM
I live in Seattle and knew nothing about her. Jasmyne Cannick lists her as a lesbian. You didn't. whats up with that?
mr
February 28 2006, 1:44PM
I was very sad when I heard about her death yesterday. Felt like I lost a relative.
This was written by her in 1998:
from Parable of the Sower.
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
mr
February 28 2006, 1:45PM
I was very sad when I heard about her death yesterday. Felt like I lost a relative.
This was written by her in 1998:
from Parable of the Sower.
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
vince
February 28 2006, 3:58PM
What a literary loss! I was introduced to Octavia Butler's novels a few years ago when a friend recommend that I read "Kindred." What an amazing writer! From there...I picked up several of her other novels and was immediately drawn to her discriptive style and longed for the day to meet her , hear her spoken word and have a book signed. God Bless you Ms. Butler.
Jonathan David Jackson
February 28 2006, 6:02PM
To Jeff Hobbs, a kind note: It's okay not to mention that Octavia Butler was a lesbian. She never hid her lesbianism but neither did she trumpet it. In interviews, she poke quite often about being reclusive and it is my small notion that part of her specialness came from her alone-ness and the purity of her work as a person who made a living and a life first and foremost as a writer and not as a political activisit. This is not to say that her work did not excavate racial and sexual politics (it certainly did). Mr. Boykin's tribute was just right.
NancyP
March 1 2006, 5:00PM
Tragic for her and her loved ones. Those who didn't know her will wonder what books have not been written - I know I would have loved to see her books written when she was 80 years old. She had a unique voice and a voice of moral seriousness in a genre that is all too often rather superficial.
Regan DuCasse
March 2 2006, 10:46AM
I grew up with her books and she's one of the reasons I became a writer. When I was a senior in high school, I entered a science fiction writing contest for young people. The prize was to meet and spend the day with Ray Bradbury.
I fulfilled the goal of meeting Bradbury, many time over now.
The other writer I wanted to meet was Octavia Butler. She wasn't much older than me, she seemed so striking and remarkable.
Now, the day to meet her will never come.
I am surprised saddened by her passing...
When the heavens opened...to welcome this enlightened soul...
What then?
Is her journey there...?
Or somehow still here,
To whisper into another soul yet unborn?
Cecil L Young
March 2 2006, 3:17PM
I met Octavia Butler at a literary award given by Marygrove College here in Detroit(southeast Michigan), and at a local science fiction convention.
I found her presence to be striking in part due to her height, and in part due to her being a Black female author in a highly white male genre.
When I met her I was still in the habit of not casually outing myself, so I can hardly fault her for not proclaiming her lesbian identity.
I remember in "Patternmaster" her treatment of a pivotal seconday character was far ahead of the time in that the character was so matter of factly a lesbian/bisexual.
Octavia spoke with careful deliberation and in a mellow deep rich voice. This speaking style further impressed me with her careful consideration of ideas, issues and feelings.
I believe she struggled with her childhood religious training - though I think she was growing toward of an intrinsic humanist-agnostic-atheist viewpoint. ( or maybe that is my projection!) But I base this in part on comments she made after her 'formal presentations' and on my reading of her two "Parable" books.
Still I treasure the books that she wrote - her first two books Patternmaster and Mind of My Mind, are still two books I try to recomment to my largely Gay White Male science fiction friends to read.
Science Fiction will be poorer for her death, and I will miss her presence, compassion, passion and intellect.