Sci-fi Author Butler Passes

By News Editor     March 03, 2006
Source: Film Fodder

Last week sci-fi author Octavia Butler passed away. She was one of very few African-American women in the field.

Butler was born in Pasadena, California. Her father, a shoeshiner, died when she was young; her mother, also named Octavia, raised her in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood, working as a maid to support the family.

Her first book KINDRED catapulted her to sci-fi writing fame. She described the book as a "grim fantasy" about an African-American woman who is thrown from 1976 to the antebellum South, where she is forced to deal with life in a culture based on slavery. It remains one of her most popular books, with a quarter of a million copies currently in print.

She won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, received an award for lifetime achievement in writing from the PEN American Center, and was the first science fiction writer ever receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant."

Her other works include Bloodchild and Other Stories, Survivor , and Parable of the Trickster.

Thanks to Jaleel for the note.