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Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, in 1947 to a family that made her access to education a priority. Her mother, also named Octavia, had only three years of formal schooling before her family needed her, along with several siblings, to work during the Great Depression, a situation many older children of that period faced. Butler recalls that her mother felt glad to know that her daughter was “in the house reading” because education and survival were twinned in her mother’s understanding.
From an early age, Butler had her mother’s support for her desire to write. When Butler asked, at age ten, for a typewriter—an expensive item for the family—her mother bought it for her without hesitation. This support, and that of some teachers, mattered greatly to Butler, who was more often discouraged by teachers and editors from pursuing a writing career. She was interested in science fiction and speculative writing, genres then dominated by white male authors writing about white male heroes. Butler broke into the genre and made it her own by combining its characteristics with elements of myth, history, social commentary, and spirituality.
Butler attended several colleges, including UCLA, and began publishing her work in the early 1970s, guided in part by a mentor relationship with influential writer and screenwriter Harlan Ellison. Her Patternist novel series appeared beginning in 1976 and allowed her to become a self-supporting writer. But it was the Hugo Award, in 1984, for “Speech Sounds” and Nebula Award, in the same year, for her novella Bloodchild that launched Butler to fame. Butler continued to produce novels and, in 1995, received a MacArthur Foundation grant to support her writing. The Foundation had not, before that grant, awarded a fellowship to any science fiction writer. Other honors followed as Butler’s publications drew more attention, including the prestigious PEN Award for lifetime achievement in 2000 and, posthumously, induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Butler died in Seattle, Washington, in 2006.
In an interview, Butler described her writing not only as science fiction but also as what some people call “save-the-world” fiction. She argued that works of literature cannot save the world. They can, however, “call people’s attention to the fact that so much needs to be done.” Her stories deal with problems that arise from the damage done by forms of discrimination and dominance, among other important social issues.
Butler’s work not only stands as a body of achievement on its own but has been the inspiration for other writers of science fiction, speculative fiction, and dystopian fiction, especially for women and for people of color interested in these genres. These writers have on occasion been referred to as “Octavia’s brood” or “Octavia’s children,” underscoring the significance of her breaking into these genres for writers who follow her, some of whom consider her work a mentorship in absentia.
