Octavia Butler
Parable of the Sower is among the works that most often brings readers to Butler's writing, and it sits alongside Kindred, Lilith's Brood, and the Patternist series as part of a body of fiction she built across her career as an American novelist.
Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California, and attended John Muir High School there before going on to Pasadena City College and then California State University, Los Angeles. She wrote in English throughout her career, producing novels and shorter fiction that earned her recognition across several award categories. Among those honors were Hugo Awards for Best Short Story and Best Novelette, a Nebula Award for Best Novel, a Nebula Award for Best Novelette, a Locus Award for Best Novelette, a Bram Stoker Award for Best Graphic Novel, and the Premi Ictineu award.
Beyond awards tied specifically to fiction, Butler received the MacArthur Fellows Program award, the Langston Hughes Medal, and was inducted into both the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. She also received the Ignyte Award for Best Comics Team, suggesting that her work extended across more than one format during her lifetime.
Butler died on February 24, 2006. Her induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame stands as one of the more formal recognitions the field extended to her, and her receipt of the MacArthur Fellows Program award remains a concrete marker of the regard in which she was held as a writer.
Quotes by Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler's insights on:
People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn’t bother me. It’s other people doing the calling that bothers me.
Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.
Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you’re hurt, you’re really on your own. You’re alone, and there’s no one to help you.
The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing.
I would never have been a good scientist – my attention span was too short for that.
Life is getting better, but that won’t stop a war if politicians and business people decide it’s to their advantage to have one.
No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we’ll do what we’ve always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.
Third, for people who aren’t doing it already, take classes – they’re worthwhile. Workshops or classes – a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day.
