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Written in September of 2000 by David Bock, university of colorado student.
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Octavia Butler
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I'm the only black woman writing science fiction today because I'm the only woman writing science fiction today. I don't mean to be facetious, but it's true.
Octavia Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. While she was an infant her father died, leaving only her mother to raise her. Because of this, Butler went to work with her mother, who was a maid, and experienced first-hand the racism of America's 1950s. Butler said, "I used to see [my mother] going to back doors, being talked about while she was standing right there, and basically being treated like a non-person." These experiences during her childhood would provide a basis for future works such as Kindred, a novel about a woman who travels from the future to the 1830s where she learns--painfully--about slavery.
I didn't decide to become a science fiction writer. It just happened.
Butler started writing when she was ten years old. She was not interested in the "Dick and Jane" books her teacher taught to everyone, but instead, she asked her mother to get her a library card. "I was a regular at the fairy tale shelves. I also explored, read anything else that looked interesting, got hooked on horse stories for a while, then discovered science fiction." Butler did not do well in high school because of her dyslexia and a fear of public speaking, of which her teachers took advantage by occasionally bringing this to the attention of the entire class. However, some of her grade-school teachers encouraged Butler by taking time to carefully read and then critique the stories she had written.
Octavia graduated from John Muir High School in Pasadena, California, in 1965. She then went to Pasadena City and took a class taught by Harlan Ellison, a well-known science fiction writer, who offered to include one of her stories in an anthology, which later wasn't published. He also suggested that she go to the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop in Pennsylvania, a six-week intensive course for begining science fiction writers. While active in the workshop, Butler worked as a temp--as a typist and telephone solictor--and her experiences helped her create a tapestry of detail for her 1988 novel, Kindred. In a passage from Kindred, the narrator--a black woman--says: "I was working out of a casual labor agency--we regulars called it a slave market. . . . It was always nearly mindless work, and as far as most employers were concerned, it was done by mindless people." After the workshop, an anthology was released with Butler's story "Crossover."
A science fiction writer has the freedom to do absolutely anything. The limits are the imagination of the writer.
In 1976, Butler finally had her first novel, Patternmaster, published. The novel, the first in a five-part series, is thematically based on experiences and observations Butler had about how the world works, including the structure of society, the domination of one group over another, and the roles of women. "I don't write utopian science fiction because I don't believe that imperfect humans can form a perfect society." One critic, Carol Cooper of Vibe magazine, commented aptly on Butler's portrayal of women in Patternmaster, stating, "Her lead characters--whether telepaths or human/alien half-breeds--remained assertive black homegirls with attitude." The next four books in the trilogy were Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1979), and Clay's Ark (1980).
Butler then went on to write probably her most popular novel, Kindred (1988), which is about a black woman from the future who must travel to the past and, consequently, learns intimately the harshness of slavery. "I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people had to live through in order to survive." Butler then went on to write the "Xenogenesis" trilogy, which includes the novels Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). The series primarily deals with one race that must breed with another race--and if they don't mate, they'll become extinct.
Every story I create creates me. I write to create myself.
In 1984, Butler was awarded a Hugo for her story "Speech Sounds." In 1985, she was also awarded a Nebula, a Hugo, and a Locus Award for "Bloodchild" and was nominated for a Nebula for "The Evening and The Morning and The Night." During the creation of this biography (September 2000) Butler currently lives in California where she drafts her work on a manual typewriter, preferring it to a word-processor.
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