Octavia E. Butler

24 featured booksOctavia E. Butler

An American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. [Comment by Tricia Sullivan, on The Guardian][1]: Octavia E Butler (1947–2006) > I was teaching in New York when I came across Octavia E Butler's Kindred in a secondary-school catalogue of novels recommended to support diversity. It caught my attention because Butler was described as a science-fiction writer. I thought I was familiar with science fiction, but I'd never heard of her – nor have a great many other readers, I suspect. For many years, Butler was the sole African-American woman novelist in science fiction. Kindred tells the wrenching and unforgettable story of a young black woman who time-travels and saves the life of her slaveholder ancestor, but it is, in Butler's words, "a grim fantasy", not science fiction. > Beginning in the 1970s, Butler wrote three sequences of novels: the Patternist books, the Lilith's Brood series and the Parable novels (incomplete at her tragic death in 2006). Critically respected, she won the Hugo and Nebula awards, received a Clarke nomination, the PEN lifetime achievement award and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. A serious writer working in a field that is seldom taken seriously, Butler addressed biological control, gender, humanity's relationship with aliens, genetics and even the development of a fictional religion. Her narratives leave space for the reader's involvement while exploring the nature of change. They gaze unflinchingly on power dynamics. "Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles," Butler stated, "and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together." Butler's writing is courageous, stimulating and infused with a rare purity of intention. Crushingly, she died at the height of her powers. [Bloodchild and Other Stories][2] is a good place to begin discovering her work. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice [2]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL35621W/Bloodchild_and_other_stories

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24 representative editions

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Display name
Octavia E. Butler
Personal name
Octavia E. Butler
Source identifier
OL30802A

Featured books

Representative editions for works actually authored by this person.

Works in catalog

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Parable of the Sower
Representative edition published 2024
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Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents
Representative edition published 2023
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Parable of the Sower
Representative edition published 2023
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Bloodchild and other stories
Representative edition published 2022
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Octavia E. Butler
Representative edition published 2021
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Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the sower
Representative edition published 2021
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Unexpected Stories
Representative edition published 2020
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Mind of my mind
Representative edition published 2020
Open Work
Kindred
Representative edition published 2019
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Wastelands--Stories of the Apocalypse
Representative edition published 2015
Open Work
Conversations with Octavia Butler
Representative edition published 2010
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Lilith’s Brood
Representative edition published 2008
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Seed to Harvest
Representative edition published 2007
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Fledgling
Representative edition published 2005
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Year's Best SF 9
Representative edition published 2004
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2000X
Representative edition published 2003
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Griots Beneath the Baobab
Representative edition published 2002
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Wild seed
Representative edition published 1999
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Rockhound's Guide to California
Representative edition published 1999
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Parable of the Talents
Representative edition published 1998
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Imago
Representative edition published 1997
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Dawn
Representative edition published 1997
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The New Hugo Winners, Volume I
Representative edition published 1991
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The evening and the morning and the night
Representative edition published 1991
Open Work