In May, Octavia E. Butler was awarded the inaugural Infinity Award, which aims to award writers who’ve passed but whose legacies continue to inspire. To celebrate her legacy, I wrote a small piece about her works in the library’s monthly newsletter about diversity of social and family situations, All Kinds of Lives. I have expanded that here on Staff Picks to go into a little more detail about each of her major works. Since Butler’s work is so expansive and explores many subgenres within the much broader genre of speculative fiction, there is an Octavia Butler book for almost any reader.
The Earthseed series (which contains Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) is a great read for fans of dystopian fiction. It depicts environmental, economic, and social collapse starting from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old with the daughter of a pastor, who creates her own new philosophical system, Earthseed, as things continue to get worse. The sequel is set after the protagonist’s death partially from the perspective of her estranged daughter about the country’s continued collapse as Christian fundamentalists begin trying to cleanse the country of non-Christian faiths, including Earthseed. These books explore many themes, some of which are religion, power and social hierarchies, and sexual and gender-based oppression.
Kindred is a stand-alone novel that fuses historical fiction and speculative fiction, following a young black woman who involuntarily and uncontrollably travels back and forth in time and space from 1976 Los Angeles to a pre-Civil War plantation in Maryland. It can be a dark and grim book with realistic depictions of slavery and slave communities, exploring social hierarchies and heavy themes related to the lasting trauma of slavery in America.
The Seeds to Harvest series (also known as the Patternist series) is an epic series of four (although there is a fifth book Octavia Butler later disowned called Survivor) that spans continents and centuries. The first novel, Wild Seed, starts in Ancient Egypt, following the adversarial relationship between two immortals and how they over centuries create a society of networked telepaths. Over the length of the series, society and culture gradually changes and shifts into something unrecognizable. The series explores gender-based and racial oppression, the ethical implications of biological engineering and its ties eugenics, and the power dynamics within social hierarchies, just to name a few of its themes.
The Lilith’s Brood series (also known as Xenogenesis series) also spans generations. It starts with a woman, Lilith, being woken up in a cell after a nuclear apocalypse. It is slowly revealed to her that she, and some other humans, though not her family, were saved by an alien race, who helps to heal and keep them alive, but also forces them to fuse genetically with their own alien race. The trilogy follows Lilith and her offspring for generations as humanity fuses semi-unwillingly with the alien race and both society and biology shift and change due to the fusion. This series allegorizes slavery and colonization and explores themes of power dynamics within social hierarchies, the ethical implications (including benefits) of genetic engineering, and more.
There’s even a stand-alone novel perfect for vampire and sci-fi fans- Fledgling. Fledgling explores the culture of vampires, Ina, a different species that lives symbiotically with humans. The dynamics between the species works as an allegory of racism in this novel, although race itself is a major theme, as the main character is black and darker skinned than the vampires within the world of Fledgling, but also darker skinned than vampires tend to be in media in general. It also explores other themes racial and genetic purity and power dynamics in social hierarchies.
Despite the variety in subgenre and subject matter, there is obviously much cross-over thematically in Butler’s writings. She tends to explore the power dynamics in social hierarchies, especially through the lens of racial and patriarchal structures; she positions her stories from the perspectives of black characters in black communities; her narratives are intricately plotted with rich imagination; and her works include incisive social critiques of cultural dynamics.
As the Infinity Award notes, Butler’s work continues to have a significant impact on literature and culture today. Parable of the Sower and Kindred both have their own graphic novel adaptations. Kindred has also been made into a series on Hulu. Her legacy can also be seen today in the authors of many modern speculative fiction writers, especially black writers such as. Next week, I will be publishing a Reading List of authors who have been inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s legacy.