![]() ![]() She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.Īfter her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. The Evening and the Morning and the Night (1987) " Near of Kin", Butler's only non-SF story, describes a young woman coming to terms with the death of the mother who abandoned her.Īlso included are two autobiographical essays, " Positive Obsession" and " Furor Scribendi", about what Butler calls "the art, the craft, and the business of writing". " The Evening and the Morning and the Night" wrestles with the double-edged sword of illness and talent. ![]() " Speech Sounds", which also won the Hugo Award, and " Crossover", Butler's first published story, both describe women continuing to endure after their lives have become unbearable. ![]() After it appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, SF's highest honors. " Bloodchild" explores the paradoxes of power and inequality and starkly portrays the experience of a class who, like women throughout most of history, are valued chiefly for their reproductive capacities. Butler once gleefully described her eerie novella " Bloodchild", the title piece of Bloodchild and Other Stories as her "pregnant man story". ![]()
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