OCTAVIA BUTLER: 1947 - 2006
A Tribute from friends, authors, and other notables
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Sheer Genius in Our Midst

For all of us who read, and particularly those of us who write in the genre of speculative fiction, Octavia Butler set the literary Olympic standard. As a young African American reader, she was my “Althea Gibson.”  As a now much older author, her work remains that quintessential “bar of excellence” that one hopes to hurdle and one hopes to achieve in like measure to “do a nation and people proud” one day.

After having met Ms. Butler and hearing her speak and read, I was awed by her quiet dignity, her statuesque presence and her brilliant mind. Rarely, do we witness sheer genius in our midst. Octavia Butler was unmistakably that—sheer genius—yet in a regal way replete with earnest humility that is also rare. She will be so missed on the literary landscape (and others) that the word devastation comes to mind. Her light was extinguished much too soon and should have had more time to burn brightly... like those living lights cast by Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison—the other grande dames of literature, the other regal matriarch standards bearers. Yet, I suppose, in her own inimitable way, Octavia went home to commune with the ancestors early, leaving a shining cosmic trail for the rest of us earthbound mortals to follow.

We shall miss you great lady. Ashe!=

—L.A. Banks, author of The Vampire Huntress Legends series
(St. Martin’s Press)


Indescribable Spirit, Talent, Brilliance

 Despite not being much of a science fiction reader, I was a huge Octavia Butler fan when she came to speak at Spelman College around 1990, when I served as public relations director for the college. After her talk, we had a special luncheon for her in the President’s Dining Room. I lobbied hard for and hustled the seat next to her, introduced myself, and told her of my dream to option the film rights for her masterpiece “Wild Seed,” my favorite of her amazing books. She smiled slightly, and then said in that famously gravelly voice, “Well, many people want to make a film of that book, but no one has come to me with the right approach.” I thanked her, gulped and humbly finished my meal. Despite her less than encouraging response, I was thoroughly charmed. And when a close friend who lived next door to Ms. Butler in my hometown of Seattle e-mailed me with the sad news of her passing, I pulled out “Wild Seed” and began to read it again, my own private tribute to her indescribable spirit, talent, brilliance and legacy. And I renewed my commitment to bringing that book to the screen.

—TaRessa, author of The Hot Spot, www.taressa.com


Science Fiction Set on a Plantation

What must it have been like to be Octavia Butler?

There she was, this woman of great intellect, of immense talent, of tremendous passion, and, it seems, so very much alone. Her death on Friday, after falling and hitting her head outside her home in Seattle, has rattled those who loved her work. She was 58.There she was, a tall, awkward and shy black girl thinking that she wanted to write science fiction, of all things. A young woman who believed the genre could deal with more than ray guns and transporters, and that she had a right to create fiction that tackled race and class and what it meant to be human in worlds where humanness had all but been obliterated. Publisher after publisher must have been puzzled. How could science fiction be set on a plantation?

Octavia Butler showed them how.

She was an African American woman claiming her space in a literary universe dominated by white men. After years of rejection, she eventually won science fiction’s most prestigious awards, the Nebula and the Hugo. Her following was loving and loyal— protective even—for they seemed to know instinctively how precious and powerful and simultaneously tender and fragile a spirit like hers had to be.

— Marcia Davis in The Washington Post, February 28, 2006


A Quiet, Shy, Humble Soul

I had known Octavia Butler was a neighbor, as she had moved into her home about the same time my wife and I moved into ours in 1999. My first opportunity to meet Octavia was at the local post office. She was struggling with bags of groceries and mail. I introduced myself as the “other African American living in our little peaceful neighborhood.” I told her I live just a block or so away and would gladly give her a ride home. She reluctantly accepted, as I reassured her it was no imposition as I would often drive by her home on the way to mine. As we drove we spoke about our respective careers, mine as a musician/producer, hers a writer of a “type of science fiction,” as she described it. When we arrived at her home, I offered to help her in with her groceries and packages. When we entered the house, I felt this sense of privilege, entering the inner sanctum of a truly great person.

She asked me if I read much. I responded, “When I get the chance.” She went to a closet and took out a copy of “Wild Seed,” and told me “I think you’ll like this one.” She signed it and kindly said thank you for the ride. This began our neighborhood meetings, where I would continue to gladly offer rides to Octavia. The sad part of her sudden passing is I never got to share with her the current project I had just finished with songwriter LeRoy Bell. I had planned on dropping off an advance copy this week so I could share my art form with her, as she had so kindly shared hers with me. She was a quiet, shy, humble soul who probably didn’t realize her greatness and huge talent. She will be missed by many.

—Terry Morgan, Lake Forest Park, WA


Strange Worlds, Well Imagined

I uncovered my first Octavia Butler novel, “Wild Seed,” while the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State in 2001. I noticed the book at a bookstore because on the cover was a picture of a mysterious-looking, dark skinned, black woman with wild hair, and this book was in the science fiction and fantasy section. A very rare combination, indeed.

At the time in the workshop, I was writing a story about an Efik woman in Nigeria who learned to fly. The story was set in the 1920s. This character was mean, selfish, promiscuous, strong-willed and quite frankly, she disturbed me. When I read “Wild Seed,” I practically cried. There, in the book’s pages, living in a remote Nigerian village long ago was Anyanwu, complex, Nigerian and mythical...Octavia’s fiction contained a lot of firsts for me: black people and people of color featured at the forefront of stories set in well-imagined, strange worlds and situations. Stories where race and gender were thoughtfully factored and woven into the type of fiction that I’ve loved since I could read. The most memorable characters I’ve ever read. And all of this was written in and rendered by sparse, bold prose that grabbed me by the neck and didn’t let go even after the story ended.

—Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, author of Zahrah the Windseeker, Houghton Mifflin.


Never the Diva

 “Wild Seed” is, of course, one of my favorite books. Like so many African American readers, until I read Octavia’s books, I had no idea that black writers—particularly sisters—were writing in this genre.

 Years after I discovered her books, I was an editor at Essence and had the great honor of interviewing her. I was struck by her shyness. She was a very humble woman despite her extraordinary talent; there was nothing of the diva in this great writer. I was also touched by her personal warmth and fierce intelligence, which sparked with every word. I will miss her voice and presence in this world.

—Valerie Wilson Wesley, author of the Tamara Hayle Mysteries, including Dying in the Dark (One World/Ballantine)
 

A Major Loss for Black Literature

When I read the Parables books, I reached out to Octavia and told her what a marvelous word wizard she was. Kindred was great but the Parables novels were incredible. As those who knew her, she was very humble and modest. We usually talked about writing, books, family and ideas. Following my completion of my collection, she was the person who recommended Tananarive Due as the writer who should write a foreword to Havoc After Dark. She thought the world of Ms. Due and her husband, Steven Barnes, as I did. Octavia thought the world of horror was an area she could explore, which she did in her last book, Fledgling….We exchanged titles and ideas. One of the last books I sent her was a book by Albert Speer, the architect of the Third Reich, as she was thinking about writing a future novel incorporating the tyranny of religion, the dark arts and the relationship between fascism and worship.

I will always value her friendship and the gracious and giving woman and spirit she was. She was highly imaginative, warm, funny and deeply perceptive. This is a major loss for black literature. I will miss her voice and soul."

— Robert Fleming, author of Havoc After Dark


A Way of Creating Worlds

On Tuesday, February 28, 2006 while sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the library where I work, my eyes fell to the open pages of a newspaper lying on one of the tables. The name, Octavia Butler, in bold print caught my eye. Was it the same Octavia Butler? The writer? I continued to read and found out that yes, it was indeed the same Octavia Butler, and sadly, it was a notice of her death three days earlier. It was the first I’d heard of her passing.

The first feeling was that of loss. Octavia Butler, dead at the age of fifty-eight, was a powerful and significant voice in the world of fiction, especially in the science fiction realm. In her books, fourteen in all, she addressed important and relevant current issues such as racism, prejudice, human nature, politics and environmental destruction, through a mostly futuristic, otherworldly lens. She had a way with words. As stated on the inside back jacket cover of her last book, Fledgling (Seven Stories Press, 2005), “Ms. Butler is widely acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations that range from the distant past to the far future.” She had a way of creating worlds, situations and characters and their lives that made her stories so plausible. Once you’ve read an Octavia Butler book, the story and message will stick with you.

A good thing about books – although the author passes on, the books remain. So the next time you are looking for an engrossing, multi-layered, thought-provoking read, why not pick up one of Butler’s books?

—Mary N. Oluonye.  Mary Oluonye is a writer in Cleveland and a Children’s Services associate at the Shaker Heights Public Library.


Octavia E. Butler Passed This Way Once

She’s gone. There may be some lingering discrepancy about the day she departed—some accounts have reported that she passed on Friday, February 24, others say Saturday, February 25. No matter, except for those who crave accuracy, the fact remains, at only 58 years old, she’s gone. The woman, the brilliant writer, the tall, warm, witty, generous, straight talking, seemingly strong and sturdy African American woman who pioneered the trail as the first black woman to take on science fiction and make the genre her own—well, she’s gone. While she was not the first African American to venture into speculative fiction, or science fiction, her preferred term, she was the first to truly open up the genre, first to mark the path others now follow—other women, other people of color, other young black people who had seldom seen themselves reflected in the genre. She held up the mirror for us. She put race and gender, persistence and power in all her stories. She consistently allowed us to see black folk as a distinct presence in the future; she gave us stories of strong capable women who were black and brown, tall and small, women who were survivors, women who were smart, women who were thinkers and actors and shapers; powerful women who followed her credo of change.

She’s gone, and life is changed. Philosophically, I suppose, we could say that each death, each person’s passing, is just another transition, just another change. This fact does not lessen our pain. Certainly, it did not mute the distress, the outraged disbelief and grief, the sheer shock, the immediate intense sense of loss so many of us felt when we heard the news. Some cursed; some cried. None of us was willing to accept the word passed by NPR, by friends on phone or e-mail. My friends in their mid-fifties protested, “But 58! That’s so young! I can’t believe it!” ….

She left us a substantial body of work: From Kindred, her 1979 “grim fantasy” about slavery, to the Patternist saga which includes Wild Seed (1980), Mind of My Mind (1977), Clay’s Ark (1984), Patternmaster (1976), and Survivor (1978). There are three books in the Xenogenesis trilogy, Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), Imago (1989); and two shaping the Parable cycle—Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). In 1999, Butler won her first Nebula in the “best novel” category for Parable of Talents. Her last novel, Fledging, was published in October 2005. Also in October 2005, Octavia E. Butler was inducted into the International Black Writers Hall of Fame at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University.

She’s gone now. The writer who did not bend her prose around the latest critical craze, who did not attempt to force her stories into the appropriate theoretical box, has left us. She left a legion of fans stunned by her sudden unexpected departure—fans who will grieve because they not only loved her work but also loved her, loved that she “represented” for us. I think that what she would ask of the folk who will continue to read her work, be they fans, fellow writers, or academicians, is that we read her work carefully, that we understand appreciate the story she was telling us, for telling a good story was central for her.

She was my friend. She invited me into her home; she visited me in mine. She’s gone now, and I shall miss her. But I will continue to read and teach her stories.

—Sandra Y. Govan, Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Click here for news story on the death of Octavia Butler
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