Author · 1947–2006
Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler was an American science fiction writer (1947-2006). Born in Pasadena.
Our catalogue lists 7 books by Octavia E. Butler, mostly epic fantasy, dark fantasy and time-travel fiction. They span 1976 to 2005. The most-read is Kindred (1979).
Books by Octavia E. Butler
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler, SparkNotes
Wild Seed
Octavia E. Butler
Fledgling
Octavia E. Butler
Adulthood Rites
Octavia E. Butler
Mind of My Mind
Octavia E. Butler
Clay's Ark
Octavia E. Butler, Neal Ghant
Patternmaster
Octavia E. Butler, O E Butler
Awards
- ✦Otherwise Award 1998 — Overall, Parable of the Talents (nominee)
- 🏆Hugo Awards 1985 — Best Novelette, Bloodchild (winner)
- 🏆Hugo Awards 1984 — Best Short Story, Speech Sounds (winner)
- 🏆Nebula Awards 2000 — Best Novel, Parable of the Talents (winner)
- ✦Nebula Awards 1995 — Best Novel, Parable of the Sower (nominee)
- ✦Nebula Awards 1988 — Best Novelette, The Evening and the Morning and the Night (nominee)
- 🏆Nebula Awards 1985 — Best Novelette, Bloodchild (winner)
- ✦Locus Awards 2009 — Best Anthology, Wastelands (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 2006 — Best Fantasy Novel, Fledgling (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 2004 — Best Novelette, Amnesty (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1999 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Parable of the Talents (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1996 — Best Collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1995 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Parable of the Sower (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1990 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Imago (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1989 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Adulthood Rites (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1988 — Best Novelette, The Evening and the Morning and the Night (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1988 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Dawn (nominee)
- 🏆Locus Awards 1985 — Best Novelette, Bloodchild (winner)
- ✦Locus Awards 1985 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Clay's Ark (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1984 — Best Short Story, Speech Sounds (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1981 — Best Science Fiction Novel, Wild Seed (nominee)
- ✦Locus Awards 1980 — Best Fantasy Novel, Kindred (nominee)
- 🏆Bram Stoker Awards 2017 — Best Graphic Novel (winner)
- ✦Arthur C. Clarke Award 2001 — Overall, Parable of the Talents (nominee)
- 🏆Ignyte Awards 2021 — Best Comics Team (winner)
Biography
An American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. [Comment by Tricia Sullivan, on The Guardian][1]: Octavia E Butler (1947–2006) > I was teaching in New York when I came across Octavia E Butler's Kindred in a secondary-school catalogue of novels recommended to support diversity. It caught my attention because Butler was described as a science-fiction writer. I thought I was familiar with science fiction, but I'd never heard of her – nor have a great many other readers, I suspect. For many years, Butler was the sole African-American woman novelist in science fiction. Kindred tells the wrenching and unforgettable story of a young black woman who time-travels and saves the life of her slaveholder ancestor, but it is, in Butler's words, "a grim fantasy", not science fiction. > Beginning in the 1970s, Butler wrote three sequences of novels: the Patternist books, the Lilith's Brood series and the Parable novels (incomplete at her tragic death in 2006). Critically respected, she won the Hugo and Nebula awards, received a Clarke nomination, the PEN lifetime achievement award and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. A serious writer working in a field that is seldom taken seriously, Butler addressed biological control, gender, humanity's relationship with aliens, genetics and even the development of a fictional religion. Her narratives leave space for the reader's involvement while exploring the nature of change. They gaze unflinchingly on power dynamics.