Butler, Octavia E(stelle)

Butler, Octavia E[stelle] (1947–2006), born in Pasadena and educated at Los Angeles colleges, writes science fiction from the unique vantage point of the only African‐American woman in the field. Her main characters are oftener than not black women and her themes social, sexual, and racial interrelationships. Her best‐known novella, Bloodchild (1985), features human males transported to another planet and used to procreate with the aliens. Other works are novels: Patternmaster (1976), about a society run by telepaths, with sequels in Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), and Wild Seed (1980). Another series, the Xenogenesis trilogy, has aliens mating with the few survivors of a nuclear holocaust to repopulate earth with a better gene pool than heretofore. The books in the trilogy are Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). Set in Southern California in the year 2024, Parable of the Sower (1993) is a gripping tale of survival and a poignant account of growing up sane in a disintegrating world, as seen through the eyes of its teen‐age heroine. Lilith's Brood (2000), like many of Butler's novels, imagines a future specifically informed by the historical experience of black American women. Kindred (2004) is a time-traveling book that mixes Civi War-era history and science fiction.