Thursday, March 2, 2006 (SF Chronicle)
Octavia Butler -- sci-fi writing trailblazer
Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff WriterOctavia Butler had the rare ability to simultaneously address social issues through science-fiction writing and explore African American history in a way no one else has.
The MacArthur "genius" award-winning author died Saturday after suffering a stroke and falling outside her Seattle home, according to friends. She was 58.
The way Ms. Butler spoke about gender and race in metaphor enthralled readers, and her ability to inject herself into her stories made strangers feel like they knew her, friends and fans said Tuesday.
She was an inspiration for excelling in science fiction, a genre that has few African Americans. In many of her 12 books, the protagonists are strong black women whose stories tackle racial and gender inequities.
"If you understand the handicaps she was carrying, both her gender and race, you can look at her work and decode it," said Steven Barnes, a friend and fellow science fiction writer. "Her work pierced the heart of the human condition in ways that no one else had ever done."
Her most popular book, "Kindred," published in 1979, takes readers back in time. Her main character, a modern black woman celebrating her 26th birthday is transported from California to a plantation in the antebellum South where she meets her white slave-owning great-great-grandfather and chooses to protect him so that he will grow up and eventually father her ancestors.
"She dealt with race in such a subtle way," said Leslie Howle, a longtime friend who works at Seattle's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. "She had a brilliant way of teaching lessons and defining humanity through fiction."
Ms. Butler was the only black woman to make a living in the field. "Science fiction was and still is a white boys' network," Barnes said. "It required courage, clarity and intelligence to sing her song and make a living."
Ms. Butler was born in Pasadena on June 22, 1947. She was an only child who began writing at age 10 and quickly moved from romance to science fiction. "Her mother believed passionately in books and education and worked really hard to ensure she was a solid reader," Howle said. By the time Ms. Butler had reached grade school, she was 6 feet tall and had a slight speech impediment, which led to teasing and humiliation, friends said. Her feeling of powerlessness and her experiences with racism led her to write fiction to nurture her emotions, Barnes said. At 13, Ms. Butler started submitting her work to writing contests, according to a biography published on a Web site for authors. She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena City College and went on to study at Cal State Los Angeles and UCLA. She began working on "Kindred" while in college, but first gained renown with her novel "Patternmaster" in 1976 and "Mind of My Mind," in 1977, the first two books in her five-volume Patternist series.
With the publication of "Kindred" in 1979, Ms. Butler began supporting herself with her writing. She won the prestigious Hugo Award in 1984 for "Speech Sounds," a short story about a fictional disease that leads the citizens of Los Angeles to lose the ability to communicate. She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as the "genius grant," in 1995, the first science-fiction writer to receive the award, which is given to those "who show exceptional merit and promise of continued creative work." Ms. Butler used some of the $295,000 fellowship to buy a home in Seattle, where she loved the weather and isolation, friends said.
Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/02/BAGR8HH3RM1.DTLMan. This one hurts. She was a treasure.
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