Voices

Octavia E. Butler

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]: 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. "Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles," Butler stated, "and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together." Butler's writing is courageous, stimulating and infused with a rare purity of intention. Crushingly, she died at the height of her powers. [Bloodchild and Other Stories] is a good place to begin discovering her work.Read the rest

Biography from Open Library, CC BY-SA

The Stacks

The Books

In the Margins

What Readers Said

The most recent reviews of Octavia E. Butler's books, newest first.

Kindred reviewed by @the_slow_reader
8 out of 10
Finished on a Sunday and couldn't speak to anyone until the evening. Two nights of desvelo after. Butler wastes nothing at all. The Spanish title, Parentesco, is flatter than Kindred, and nothing can be done about it.
Kindred@the_slow_reader9 Jun 2026
Kindred reviewed by @libbyoverdrive
9 out of 10
Stayed up. Worth it.
Kindred@libbyoverdrive30 Apr 2026
Kindred reviewed by @mx_marginalia
9 out of 10
Time travel as a delivery system, not a puzzle box. The nine is for the last stretch, which I read standing up in the kitchen.
Kindred@mx_marginalia6 Apr 2026

Octavia E. Butler

The Books

What Readers Said

Kindred

Parable of the Sower

Dawn

What Readers Said

Kindred reviewed by @the_slow_reader

Kindred reviewed by @libbyoverdrive

Kindred reviewed by @mx_marginalia

Kindred

Parable of the Sower

Dawn

Kindred reviewed by @the_slow_reader

Kindred reviewed by @libbyoverdrive

Kindred reviewed by @mx_marginalia