Monday, February 27, 2006

The Seattle Times: Local News: Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58

The Seattle Times: Local News: Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58

Octavia Butler was one of my personal heroes. As an African American female science fiction writer, she was one of a kind and faced an uphill battle to be who she was, full stop. I loved her scifi series, one on a walled utopian community under seige (Clay's Ark, etc), and one on the family of a vampire (Patternmaster); both were of the social science genre and both dealt with emotional and physical slavery, although that word isn't quite right.

But mostly, I loved her essays. In one published in Blood Child in 1996, she wrote describing her career choice and the objections of her friends and family who felt she was wasting her talents. "Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts."

And oh boy did she ever nail it. I'll miss her greatly.

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