A Portrait of Octavia E. Butler 2015
Sanguine pastel pencil on cream colored paper 10″ x 14.5″

This post and portrait drawing is a tribute to the memory of Octavia E. Butler, a brilliant, uniquely unconventional, multiple award wining, science fiction and speculative fiction novelist. She was born on June 22, 1947. After a nearly thirty-five year writing career, she died suddenly, tragically, on February 24, 2006.

I did not personally know her. I had only three conversations with Octavia Butler over a span of about three years. But when she died, I felt as though I had lost a long time friend. Many other fans felt the same way.

After all these years, I miss her dearly.

• • •

Octavia Butler was the first African American woman to professionally publish literary science fiction. She used the genre’s unlimited vistas as a vehicle to explore the complexities of the human experience. With her exceptional imagination and unique perspective, she explored “race,” gender, otherness, religion, relationships, hierarchical behavior, slavery, hybrid beings, extrasolar aliens, vampires, what it means to be human, and whether we can even survive as a species.

She matched her peers in the meticulous and challenging craft of worldbuilding. But in Butler’s richly imagined worlds, the protagonists are women of African descent who live in unforgiving environments—realities that demand adaptation, compromise, and collective cooperation as a prerequisite for ensuring survival.

Her haunting stories, driven by a strong narrative, are written in a style that is direct, sparse, and unsentimental. Reading Butler requires a willingness to bear witness to the human (and sometimes hybrid human) experience, an often traumatic journey of cyclical catastrophic loss, abuse, brutality, and painful transformation. But every journey is also punctuated with wonder, renewal, possibilities, and hope.

Although Butler used science fiction and fantasy to unflinchingly examine our worst failings as a species, she also acknowledged our potential for growth. And even as she pushed hard at the boundaries of science fiction and fearlessly charted new territory, she never forgot that it is the human experience and the telling of the story that ultimately engages the reader.

She was, truly, a one-of-a-kind writer, and a very hard act to follow.

• • •

Octavia Butler was born and raised in the racially integrated but culturally segregated city of Pasadena, California. Her father, a shoeshine man, died when she was seven. Her mother, a maid who had to endure the indignity of using the back door to enter white people’s houses, strongly encouraged the child Octavia to read and write.

The adolescent Octavia was shy, socially awkward, slightly dyslexic, self-conscious about her height (she was almost six feet tall by her early teens), and rejected and bullied by her peers. She found sanctuary in the public library and eventually discovered fantasy and science fiction—two genres that provided escape from the mundane world.

By the time she was ten, she was attempting to write her own stories. And by the time she graduated from high school, she was already submitting manuscripts to science-fiction magazines. After graduating from Pasadena city college in 1968 with an associate of arts degree, she worked at “horrible little jobs” to support her writing, but also attended writing workshops to hone her craft.

She experienced the usual writer’s rite-of-passage of rejection slips from publishers and magazines. But she wondered if a black woman writing about black women characters could be relevant in a mostly male genre that frequently overlooked people of color: “Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men.”

Butler persisted in writing. Eventually publishers, her peers, and her readers realized she did have something to say. Ultimately, she would publish thirteen titles, win two Hugo awards, two Nebula Awards and become the first science-fiction writer to receive a $295,000 “genius” grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In 2010, she was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Years later, her legacy continues to influence and inspire. Scholars and graduate students analyze her work, literary societies and activists embrace her tenets, and new writers of color are inspired to follow the trail that she blazed, and write their own speculative fiction and fantasy.

• • •

I have not yet read her earlier works, such as the Patternmaster series, but I can recommend some of my favorite Octavia Butler novels.

Kindred is Butler’s most popular mainstream novel. Dana, a young professional African American woman, finds herself inexplicably transported back and forth in time, from 1976 California to Maryland during the slavery era. Each visit to the past forces her to be a slave, and she soon realizes that she may have to protect an ancestor to ensure her own existence.

Butler explores the complex emotional relationship that Dana has with the slave community , as well as the interdependent relationship between the enslaved and their white owners. Kindred, which was initially rejected by many publishers, has sold more than 450,000 copies, is used as a textbook in many schools and colleges, and has been translated into ten languages.

Lilith’s Brood (Xenogenesis trilogy) The survivors of a global nuclear war and a dying Earth are rescued by nomadic extrasolar beings — for a price. Butler explores the subtle, and the seemingly literal psychological and physical rape of humanity by alien gene traders, who are simultaneously repulsive and irresistibly seductive. The aliens are truly —alien— and the conflicted emotional relationships and power struggle between the aliens, human factions, and the inevitable human-alien hybrids is truly thought-provoking.

The Xenogenesis trilogy is, in my opinion, a literary science-fiction masterpiece. One of the best explorations of an encounter between human and alien cultures, and the resulting transformation of humanity.

Parable of the Sower  In the very near future, America is a broken, lawless country. Debt slavery is re-emerging. The impoverished “middle class” live in fortified communities besieged by gangs and scavengers. States close their borders to desperate refugees. Rising sea levels erode coastal cities, punishing extreme weather is the norm, millions are  illiterate and unemployed, and a new drug causes its addicts to become arsonists.

Against the backdrop of this horrific landscape is a haunting coming-of-age odyssey of a fifteen-year-old minister’s daughter, Lauren Oya Olamina, who undertakes a journey of survival, hope, and loss — and sows the seeds of a new faith. Parable of the Talents, which won the 1999 Nebula Award for Best Novel, is the sequel.

For some, reading Parable of the Sower can be a depressing experience. The bleak and horrific scenarios depicted are all too plausible. (In many countries, some of the scenarios already exist.) However, Butler insisted the novel is not prophecy, but a cautionary tale of what could happen within our lifetime — if we continue to abuse our environment, our resources, and each other.

Butler had intended to write a third book — Parable of the Trickster— but the grim themes and the research involved overwhelmed her. Moreover, depression and periodic drowsiness, which she believed was partly caused by the side-effects of blood pressure medications, affected her ability to write.

She abandoned the Parable series and read vampire fantasy novels during her long writer’s block. “On a lark,” she decided to write her own vampire story. Seven years after her last publication, Butler published —Fledgling — her revisionist vampire tale, and, unfortunately, her last novel.

In Fledgling, Shori, a young black girl, survives a murderous attack on her family. As she recovers from a traumatic head wound and the resulting amnesia, she soon discovers that she is actually a 53-year-old vampire. Her species, who call themselves Ina, bond with their human blood donors and care for them in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. Shori has to relearn the ways of the Ina, and find the murderers of her family.

• • •

I will always remember a long conversation I had with Octavia Butler at a science-fiction convention. She sat all alone at a table promoting her most recent book. I think most of the attendees did not know who this tall African-American woman was, yet she seemed content to be alone and ignored.

But she was open and friendly when I approached her. I think we were the only two people of color there and given that she was alone, I took full advantage to ask questions of this unique writer about her perspective on the race, gender, and social power issues in her work — themes that were too often glossed over or ignored in the science fiction of that time.

It has been over 20 years, I don’t remember all the topics that we discussed, yet some moments are still etched in my memory…

I told Octavia Butler that Dawn (the first book of the Xenogenesis trilogy) was my first exposure to her work. I was intrigued by the author and her strange, beautiful tale of aliens with three genders and their relationships with their human captives.

But when I realized that Lilith Iyapo, the primary protagonist in Dawn, was a black woman and later discovered that Butler also was a black woman — I decided I just had to finish the Xenogenesis trilogy.

Butler did not let me down—there were more surprises in her later two novels. And more characters of color.

I had to meet her. To praise her for pushing at the boundaries of literary science fiction and for giving women of African descent a place in the genre.

Butler smiled appreciatively at my story, but was characteristically humble about her role in expanding the boundaries of science fiction. We both grew up reading science fiction where most black characters (if they existed at all) were incidental, cultural stereotypes, or whitewashed. And they were usually male. Butler said she was determined to correct that flaw in the genre and create characters that reflected her own gender and ethnicity.

I asked then how she felt about the cover illustration of an early edition of Dawn, depicting two women, apparently of white European descent, when the primary protagonist was a dark-skinned woman of African descent. She replied, unsurprisingly, and with exasperation in her voice, that she was very unhappy with the book cover. When I asked her what she did about it — she said she looked for another illustrator. (Later editions of the trilogy accurately illustrated the black and “biracial” characters in the series.)

I could understand her frustration and perhaps anger over the early illustration. Even though she was beginning to enjoy mid-career success, she was still somewhat of an outsider, and had to deal with the indignity and insult of whitewashing — the end result of a publisher’s lingering fear that potential readers would not read science fiction that featured prominent black characters.

Continuing on a lighter note, I told her that I was surprised, but pleased, that some of the characters in her Xenogenesis trilogy actually spoke. . . Spanish. She smiled again, and said of course there would have to be Spanish-speaking people in the future. Octavia Butler embraced diversity, and was adamant about inserting that diversity in her future scenarios.

What else? We reminisced about the massive amounts of science fiction we both read as we were growing up, and how some of it had juvenile tendencies. She lamented the fact that it was common for avid science-fiction readers to read only science fiction — and to ignore other forms of “beautiful literature.” She thought a writer she admired was a good story-teller, but was “too wordy” — she believed stories could be told with an economy of words. When I mentioned a friend was reading Survivor, one of her very early novels, she cringed and asked me to tell my friend to please stop reading the book, because it was “not very good.” She enjoyed Star Trek TNG, and loved how the character of Worf evolved. She loved Indian cuisine, because it had the best vegetarian dishes. . . (Our conversation wasn’t always about science fiction.)

I could go on, but In short, Octavia Butler was personable, displayed a wry sense of humor and a nimble mind, and seemed to genuinely enjoy conversation with another fan of speculative fiction.

Toward the end of our talk, she surprised me by asking me if I had a creative outlet. At the time, I told her I was primarily a precious metal artist and had only experimented a bit with painting and drawing. She nodded her approval, and seemed relieved that I had some outlet for creative expression, but I think she wanted me to expand my boundaries.

She did not know me, but her concern for my creative expression, which she believed was absolutely essential for my growth and well-being, is something that I will always cherish.

Her concern for others manifested in other ways. A close of friend of mine met Butler at a book signing, and told her about her difficulties in writing and her depression. Butler said, “call me.”

My friend did call — several times. She had long conversations with Butler, who graciously gave her free time and advice on becoming a writer. She asked for nothing in return. She just wanted to help a budding writer.

• • •

Lastly — the portrait. It was this morning, during the very early pre-dawn hours of Octavia Butler’s birthday, that I finally finished my portrait of her and my reading of the Parable of the Sower. Both the drawing and reading took about a week. As I drew, I would think about that haunting, bleak novel. Then I would read. Then draw again.

Initially, in the early planning stages, I referred to photographs and videos of Butler at different stages in her life, and then used the traditional three-quarters viewpoint to create a rough composite image. But I still had to decide at what age to portray her. During the early years of her career? Mid-career? Or during the last years of her life?

In the end I decided to draw her as I last saw her, when she was at the peak of her career and believed she would be writing well into her eighties. . .

Octavia Butler is gone now — at least in this universe. But her portrait is now displayed in my studio — to remind me to always stay on the creative path, always expand my boundaries, and always, always — persevere.

Thank you, Octavia Butler, for that one long memorable conversation, your perseverance and inspiration, and, of course — the gift of your stories.

Quotations from Octavia Butler

“Who am I? I am a forty-seven-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer. I am also comfortably asocial—a hermit. . . A pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” — Parable of the Sower

copyright © 2014–2019 by Norman Guy. All rights reserved.