Post by Lilia Rose Darkhome on Apr 9, 2010 12:55:07 GMT -5
Born: 22 June 1947
Birthplace: Pasadena, California
Died: 24 February 2006
Best Known As: African-American feminist Science Fiction author
Octavia Butler grew up in California and started writing science fiction stories when she was a young girl. She began getting published in the 1970s, then won a Hugo award for her short story, "Speech Sounds" in 1983. A year later Butler won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for her novella "Bloodchild." Her novels include Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents and Fledgling.
Butler, Octavia E. (b.1947), short fiction writer, novelist, and science fiction writer. Hugo and Nebula award—winning author, and a MacArthur Fellow, Octavia E. Butler was born on 22 June 1947 in Pasadena, California. Butler has helped to enrich the ever-expanding genre of speculative fiction by adding to it a previously excluded experience: the African American female's. She makes a way out of no way by drawing on her experiences growing up in one of America's most culturally diverse states. In struggling against the odds of racism and sexism, breaking into and publishing prolifically in America and abroad in the predominantly white and male dominated science fiction genre, Butler has made a substantial contribution to African American culture and literature.
Butler's emphasis on slavery and its cultural implications (the mixing of races and cultures) predominates from her science fiction to her critically acclaimed and only mainstream novel to date, Kindred (1979). In viewing her works we see that all of her characters try to free themselves from some system of bondage. This leitmotif of bondage situates her firmly in the African American literary tradition, which is infused with the racial memories of slavery. However, Butler not only appropriates slavery, she attempts to move beyond it.
In her first work, Patternmaster (1976), she devises a plot based on genetic evolution and vassalage, and this provides the framework for each successive novel. Several subthemes from slavery, like survival of the fittest, patterns of control and organization, sexual propagation or biological order, and allusions to African traditions, develop. In Patternmaster these subthemes situate themselves in a tier of societies based on the refinement, or lack thereof, of telepathic ability, and this pattern develops through an intricate process of breeding to evolve to a state of linked minds governed by the strongest telepath. With this pattern of mental prowess, Butler inadvertently suggests how it is ironic that the human mind can evolve and unify, and yet still rely on a slave system to maintain order.
In Mind of My Mind (1977) the slave state is shown in its protagonist, Mary, who breaks free of the bonds of poverty and racial oppression to establish the pattern of minds that will culminate in Patternmaster, Survivor (1978) picks up the strain of race stratification and enslavement by outlining an African Asian girl's experiences dealing with humans, fighting addiction to an alien drink, “meklah,” and joining the alien Garkohns, a race of furry aliens whose planet humans have colonized in an attempt to escape the Clayark invasion on earth. Butler published the historical novel Kindred next, and its subject matter positions it chronologically into a segment of Wild Seed (1980), because it explores the maintenance of the slave plantation. The encounters with systems of bondage in both works also illuminate the ethical issues of propagation, biological order, and cultural and racial interbreeding that are associated with slavery, by having their protagonists decide just how much they are willing to do to survive and make sure that their future generation succeeds.
Wild Seed continues the motif of slavery and propagation by going to the ancestral African beginning of the pattern and relating how it was conceived and instigated by Doro, a Nubian ogbanje (a spirit who cannot die and who manifests itself by continually being born into bodies that die). Butler plays with a societal order based not on race, but on a genetic capacity for telepathic power. The protagonist, a female African shapeshifter called Anyanwu, makes the Middle Passage and works to undercut Doro's need to kill. By the appropriation of the Middle Passage, an ogbanje, and an African shapeshifter and healer, Butler recreates her former works’ tension, which comes from having to decide how to free oneself from racial-biological or mental-telepathic slavery. Either, she suggests, is a slave state of mind that will destroy.
The next wave of fiction develops a paradigm of biological enslavement due to alien intervention and drug addiction. In Clay's Ark (1984); the Xenogenesis Trilogy, Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989); and Parable of the Sower (1993), the slave state is also located in the biological realm. These stories focus on humans who, through alien integration or drug abuse, are reprogrammed along a biological drive to reproduce or destroy at all costs. The price becomes cultural deconstruction and genetic mutation into something beyond human. However, what is interesting about the trilogy is how societal structure is determined not just by genetic mutation but also by the need to interact with one's environment on mutually beneficial terms that help both survive. Parable of the Sower moves to economic and spiritual enslavement caused by drug addiction. In this story Butler creates a multicultural society or family united by acceptance of a spiritual worldview of change, “earth-seed,” to combat the spiritual deterioration and cultural chaos hinted at in Clay's Ark.
In 1998, Butler continued the narrative of Lauren Olamina from Parable of the Sower with the publication of Parable of the Talents, the second novel in her Parable series. Slavery and enslavement remain key issues as Lauren and her followers try to adhere to their Earthseed philosophy in a hostile religious environment. Their opponents conquer them physically and put them in concentration camps; to further punish what they perceive as wayward Americans, they take away all the children of Earthseed believers, including Lauren's weeks-old daughter, in an effort to train the children away from Earthseed.
Like her novels, the pattern of slavery and multicultural generation resulting from a slave state derives from Butler's earlier short stories: “Crossover” (1971), “Near of Kin” (1979), and “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” (1987). Two, “Speech Sounds” (1983) and “Bloodchild” (1984), won Hugo Awards. The tie between Butler's short stories and her fiction comes from her daring to explore taboo and untouched material, for in them she travels the realms of incest, chemical poisoning and the genetic mutations that result, and the tension of bonds between men and women. And she did this well before it became fashionable to do so. Butler's works, whether viewed as science fiction or not, develop the slave state to arrive at an evolution of the mind.
Bibliography
Veronica Mixon, “Futurist Woman: Octavia Butler,” Essence, Apr. 1979, 12, 15.
Frances Smith Foster, “Octavia Butler's Black Female Future Fiction,” Extrapolation 23.1 (1982): 37–48.
Sandra Y. Govan, “Connections, Links, and Extended Networks: Paterns in Octavia Butler's Science Fiction,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 82–87.
Ruth Salvaggio, “Octavia Butler and the Black Science-Fiction Heroine,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 78–81.
Joe Weixlmann, “An Octavia E. Butler Bibliography,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 88–89.
Thelma J. Shinn, “The Wise Witches: Black Women Mentors in the Fiction of Octavia E. Butler,” in Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, eds. Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers, 1985, pp. 203–215.
Octavia E. Butler, “Black Scholar Interview with Octavia Butler: Black Women and the Science Fiction Genre,” interview by Frances M. Beal, Black Scholar 17.2 (Mar.-Apr. 1986): 14–18.
Sandra Y. Govan, “Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel,” MELUS 13.1–2 (Spring-Summer 1986): 79–96.
Octavia E. Butler, “An Interview with Octavia E. Butler,” interview by Randall Kenan, Callaloo 14.2 (1991): 495–504.
Rebecca J. Holden, “The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy,” Foundation: the International Review of Science Fiction 72 (Spring 1998): 49–56; this issue contains other articles on Butler.
Jim Miller, “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler's Dystopian/Utopian Vision,” Science Fiction Studies 25:2 (75) (July 1998): 336–360
Birthplace: Pasadena, California
Died: 24 February 2006
Best Known As: African-American feminist Science Fiction author
Octavia Butler grew up in California and started writing science fiction stories when she was a young girl. She began getting published in the 1970s, then won a Hugo award for her short story, "Speech Sounds" in 1983. A year later Butler won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for her novella "Bloodchild." Her novels include Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents and Fledgling.
Butler, Octavia E. (b.1947), short fiction writer, novelist, and science fiction writer. Hugo and Nebula award—winning author, and a MacArthur Fellow, Octavia E. Butler was born on 22 June 1947 in Pasadena, California. Butler has helped to enrich the ever-expanding genre of speculative fiction by adding to it a previously excluded experience: the African American female's. She makes a way out of no way by drawing on her experiences growing up in one of America's most culturally diverse states. In struggling against the odds of racism and sexism, breaking into and publishing prolifically in America and abroad in the predominantly white and male dominated science fiction genre, Butler has made a substantial contribution to African American culture and literature.
Butler's emphasis on slavery and its cultural implications (the mixing of races and cultures) predominates from her science fiction to her critically acclaimed and only mainstream novel to date, Kindred (1979). In viewing her works we see that all of her characters try to free themselves from some system of bondage. This leitmotif of bondage situates her firmly in the African American literary tradition, which is infused with the racial memories of slavery. However, Butler not only appropriates slavery, she attempts to move beyond it.
In her first work, Patternmaster (1976), she devises a plot based on genetic evolution and vassalage, and this provides the framework for each successive novel. Several subthemes from slavery, like survival of the fittest, patterns of control and organization, sexual propagation or biological order, and allusions to African traditions, develop. In Patternmaster these subthemes situate themselves in a tier of societies based on the refinement, or lack thereof, of telepathic ability, and this pattern develops through an intricate process of breeding to evolve to a state of linked minds governed by the strongest telepath. With this pattern of mental prowess, Butler inadvertently suggests how it is ironic that the human mind can evolve and unify, and yet still rely on a slave system to maintain order.
In Mind of My Mind (1977) the slave state is shown in its protagonist, Mary, who breaks free of the bonds of poverty and racial oppression to establish the pattern of minds that will culminate in Patternmaster, Survivor (1978) picks up the strain of race stratification and enslavement by outlining an African Asian girl's experiences dealing with humans, fighting addiction to an alien drink, “meklah,” and joining the alien Garkohns, a race of furry aliens whose planet humans have colonized in an attempt to escape the Clayark invasion on earth. Butler published the historical novel Kindred next, and its subject matter positions it chronologically into a segment of Wild Seed (1980), because it explores the maintenance of the slave plantation. The encounters with systems of bondage in both works also illuminate the ethical issues of propagation, biological order, and cultural and racial interbreeding that are associated with slavery, by having their protagonists decide just how much they are willing to do to survive and make sure that their future generation succeeds.
Wild Seed continues the motif of slavery and propagation by going to the ancestral African beginning of the pattern and relating how it was conceived and instigated by Doro, a Nubian ogbanje (a spirit who cannot die and who manifests itself by continually being born into bodies that die). Butler plays with a societal order based not on race, but on a genetic capacity for telepathic power. The protagonist, a female African shapeshifter called Anyanwu, makes the Middle Passage and works to undercut Doro's need to kill. By the appropriation of the Middle Passage, an ogbanje, and an African shapeshifter and healer, Butler recreates her former works’ tension, which comes from having to decide how to free oneself from racial-biological or mental-telepathic slavery. Either, she suggests, is a slave state of mind that will destroy.
The next wave of fiction develops a paradigm of biological enslavement due to alien intervention and drug addiction. In Clay's Ark (1984); the Xenogenesis Trilogy, Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989); and Parable of the Sower (1993), the slave state is also located in the biological realm. These stories focus on humans who, through alien integration or drug abuse, are reprogrammed along a biological drive to reproduce or destroy at all costs. The price becomes cultural deconstruction and genetic mutation into something beyond human. However, what is interesting about the trilogy is how societal structure is determined not just by genetic mutation but also by the need to interact with one's environment on mutually beneficial terms that help both survive. Parable of the Sower moves to economic and spiritual enslavement caused by drug addiction. In this story Butler creates a multicultural society or family united by acceptance of a spiritual worldview of change, “earth-seed,” to combat the spiritual deterioration and cultural chaos hinted at in Clay's Ark.
In 1998, Butler continued the narrative of Lauren Olamina from Parable of the Sower with the publication of Parable of the Talents, the second novel in her Parable series. Slavery and enslavement remain key issues as Lauren and her followers try to adhere to their Earthseed philosophy in a hostile religious environment. Their opponents conquer them physically and put them in concentration camps; to further punish what they perceive as wayward Americans, they take away all the children of Earthseed believers, including Lauren's weeks-old daughter, in an effort to train the children away from Earthseed.
Like her novels, the pattern of slavery and multicultural generation resulting from a slave state derives from Butler's earlier short stories: “Crossover” (1971), “Near of Kin” (1979), and “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” (1987). Two, “Speech Sounds” (1983) and “Bloodchild” (1984), won Hugo Awards. The tie between Butler's short stories and her fiction comes from her daring to explore taboo and untouched material, for in them she travels the realms of incest, chemical poisoning and the genetic mutations that result, and the tension of bonds between men and women. And she did this well before it became fashionable to do so. Butler's works, whether viewed as science fiction or not, develop the slave state to arrive at an evolution of the mind.
Bibliography
Veronica Mixon, “Futurist Woman: Octavia Butler,” Essence, Apr. 1979, 12, 15.
Frances Smith Foster, “Octavia Butler's Black Female Future Fiction,” Extrapolation 23.1 (1982): 37–48.
Sandra Y. Govan, “Connections, Links, and Extended Networks: Paterns in Octavia Butler's Science Fiction,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 82–87.
Ruth Salvaggio, “Octavia Butler and the Black Science-Fiction Heroine,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 78–81.
Joe Weixlmann, “An Octavia E. Butler Bibliography,” Black American Literature Forum 18.2 (Spring 1984): 88–89.
Thelma J. Shinn, “The Wise Witches: Black Women Mentors in the Fiction of Octavia E. Butler,” in Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, eds. Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers, 1985, pp. 203–215.
Octavia E. Butler, “Black Scholar Interview with Octavia Butler: Black Women and the Science Fiction Genre,” interview by Frances M. Beal, Black Scholar 17.2 (Mar.-Apr. 1986): 14–18.
Sandra Y. Govan, “Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel,” MELUS 13.1–2 (Spring-Summer 1986): 79–96.
Octavia E. Butler, “An Interview with Octavia E. Butler,” interview by Randall Kenan, Callaloo 14.2 (1991): 495–504.
Rebecca J. Holden, “The High Costs of Cyborg Survival: Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy,” Foundation: the International Review of Science Fiction 72 (Spring 1998): 49–56; this issue contains other articles on Butler.
Jim Miller, “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler's Dystopian/Utopian Vision,” Science Fiction Studies 25:2 (75) (July 1998): 336–360
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