Pasadena on Her Mind: Exploring Roots of Octavia E. Butler’s Fiction

Extract

Octavia Estelle Butler published her first science fiction story in 1971, at age twenty-four, and built an increasingly successful and important writing career until her death in 2006, winning major science fiction awards and a MacArthur Fellowship. In her dozen novels, this California native crafted stories about the struggles of mutants and misfits to build community, about the symbiotic coupling of humans and alien species, about a time traveler discovering how to survive in a past society, and about a visionary rebuilding society around a new religion.

An African American woman who pioneered in the historically White and male field of SF, Butler has become a model and inspiration for younger writers who have produced collections with titles like Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements and Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler.¹ When the Huntington Library opened her voluminous papers to researchers in 2014, they immediately drew scholars and artists. One of the Library’s most heavily used collections, the papers have already provided the basis for scholarly articles, a literary biography, and significant public programming ranging from an exhibit at the Huntington to a year-long program in 2016 called “Radio Imagination” in which artists and writers artists responded to her archive.²