These are stories that drop you right into the world without much explanation, allowing you to pick up context as you go, which is a technique I really appreciate as being a bit disoriented adds to the overall effect. We are guided through the stories by the late-great Butler herself with an afterword to each tale for added authorial context and insights, as well as two essays that examine her journey of being a writer. The title story snagged the Hugo, Nebula a Locust Awards and each story in Bloodchild (I read the expanded edition that contains two additional stories to accompany the original stories and essays) probes concepts of connectedness, imprisonment vs freedom, and violence, often with human and alien species walking a tightrope of fragile co-existence. ‘ The truth is,’ writes Octavia Butler, ‘ I hate short story writing.’ However, for someone who dislikes writing them she did craft marvelous and imaginative short stories such as the ones collected in Bloodchild. ‘ It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.’ Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state.
Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.Īfter her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.
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