Authors B

Babbitt, Natalie

Natalie Zane Babbitt was born Natalie Moore in Dayton, Ohio, on July 28, 1932, and died on October 31, 2016 at her home in Hamden, Connecticut, after fighting lung cancer. She was a writer and illustrator of children's books. 

She received the Newbery Honor and Christopher Award, and was the U.S. nominee for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1982, and in 2013 she won the E.B. White Award for achievement in children’s literature, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Her first ambition was to be a pirate. By second grade, she decided that she wanted to grow up to be a librarian. She studied at Laurel School in Cleveland, and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and married Samuel Fisher Babbitt. The couple had three children born between 1956 and 1960.

The Babbitts collaborated to create The Forty-ninth Magician. He wrote and she illustrated. The book was published by Pantheon Books in 1966. Samuel became too busy to participate, but editor Michael di Capua, at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, encouraged Natalie to continue producing children's books. After writing and illustrating two short books in verse, she turned to children's novels, and her fourth effort in that vein, Knee-Knock Rise, was awarded a Newbery Honor in 1971.

Babbitt is best known for her 1975 novel Tuck Everlasting. It tells about a family that, having found a secret spring of water that offers immortality, discovers that living forever is not a blessing. The novel was named an ALA Notable book and continues to be popular with teachers. It was ranked 16th among the "Top 100 Chapter Books" of all time in a 2012 survey published by the School Library Journal. It was adapted into two feature films (in 1981 and in 2002) and a Broadway musical.

Another of her novels, The Eyes of the Amaryllis, was also adapted for the big screen in 1982, and as a Broadway musical, which premiered in Atlanta on February 4, 2015, and played on Broadway from April 26 to May 29, 2016.

In addition to her own writing, Babbitt also illustrated a number of books: 1966 Samuel Babbitt, The Forty-ninth Magician; 1972 Small Poems, by Valerie Worth; 1994 All the Small Poems and Fourteen More, by Valerie Worth; 2002 Peacock and Other Poems, by Valerie Worth.

Bibliography

1967 Dick Foote and the Shark

1968 Phoebe's Revolt

1969 The Search for Delicious, self-illus

1970 Knee-Knock Rise (self-illus)

1970 The Something

1971 Goody Hall, a finalist in the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

1974 The Devil's Storybook, self-illus

1975 Tuck Everlasting

1977 The Eyes of the Amaryllis

1982 Herbert Rowbarge

1987 The Devil's Other Storybook, self-illus

1989 Nellie: A Cat on Her Own

1990 "Bus for Deadhorse", illus. Jon Agee, in Ann Durrell and Marilyn Sachs, eds., The Big Book for Peace (E. P. Dutton)

1994 Bub: Or the Very Best Thing

1998 Ouch!: A Tale from Grimm, illus. Fred Marcellino

2001 Elsie Times Eight

2007 Jack Plank Tells Tales, self-illus

2011 The Moon Over High Street

2012 The Devil's Storybooks – omnibus edition of The Devil's Storybook and The Devil's Other Storybook

2018 Barking with the Big Dogs: On Writing and Reading Books for Children

https://nataliebabbittinfo.weebly.com

Brackett, Leigh

Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944).

Leigh Brackett was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her father died when she was very young; her mother did not remarry. She was a tomboy, "tall" and "athletic". She attended a private girls' school in Santa Monica, California, where she was involved in theater and began writing.

On December 31, 1946, at age 31, Brackett married another science fiction writer, Edmond Hamilton, in San Gabriel, California. Fellow LASFS member Ray Bradbury served as best man. Bradbury and Robert Heinlein were longtime close friends of Brackett's. She moved with Hamilton to Kinsman, Ohio.

Brackett died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, California.

Brackett first published in her mid-20s; the science fiction story "Martian Quest" appeared in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Her earliest years as a writer (1940–42) were her most productive. Some of her stories have social themes, such as "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943), which considers the effects on alien cultures of Earth's expanding trade empire. At the time, she was an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), and participated in local science fiction fandom by contributing to the second issue of Pogo's STF-ETTE, an all-female science fiction fanzine (probably the first such).

Brackett's first novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944), was a hard-boiled mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler. The book led to her first big screenwriting assignment. After this, Brackett's science fiction stories became more ambitious. Shadow Over Mars (1944) was her first novel-length story; though rough-edged, it marked the beginning of a new style influenced by the characterization of the 1940s detective story and film noir. It won a Retro Hugo for best novel in 2020.

Planet Stories published the novella "Lorelei of the Red Mist", in which the protagonist is a thief named Hugh Starke. Brackett finished the first half before turning it over to her close friend Bradbury, so that she could leave to work on the screenplay of The Big Sleep.

Brackett returned to science fiction writing in 1948 after her movie work. Between 1948 and 1951, she produced a series of science fiction adventure stories that were longer than her previous work, including classic representations of her planetary settings as "The Moon that Vanished" and the novel Sea-Kings of Mars (1949). The latter was later published as The Sword of Rhiannon.

In "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (1949), Brackett created the character of Eric John Stark. Stark, an orphan from Earth, is raised by the semi-sentient aboriginals of Mercury, who are later killed by Earthmen. He is saved by a Terran official, who adopts and mentors Stark. When threatened, Stark reverts to the primitive N'Chaka, the "man without a tribe", who he was on Mercury. From 1949 to 1951, Brackett featured Stark (whose name echoes that of the hero in "Lorelei of the Red Mist") in three stories published in Planet Stories: "Queen of the Martian Catacombs", "Enchantress of Venus", and "Black Amazon of Mars". With this last story, Brackett's high adventure period ended.

Brackett adopted an elegiac tone in her stories, no longer celebrating the conflicts of frontier worlds but lamenting the passing of civilizations, and concentrating more on mood than plot.The stories' reflective, introspective nature is indicated in the titles: "The Last Days of Shandakor", "Shannach—the Last", and "Last Call from Sector 9G".

"Last Call" was published in the final issue (Summer 1955) of Planet Stories, which had been her most reliable publisher. After Planet Stories folded, and then Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, Brackett lost her magazine market. The first phase of her career as a science fiction author ended. She produced other stories over the next decade, and revised and published some as novels. A new production of this period was The Long Tomorrow (1955), one of Brackett's more critically acclaimed novels. It describes an agrarian, technophobic society that develops after a nuclear war.

After 1955, Brackett concentrated on writing for the more lucrative film and television markets. In 1963 and 1964, she briefly returned to her old Martian milieu with a pair of stories. "The Road to Sinharat" was an affectionate farewell to the world of "Queen of the Martian Catacombs", and the other, with the intentionally ridiculous title of "Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon", borders on parody.

Brackett and her husband shared Guest of Honor duties at the 22nd World Science Fiction Convention in 1965 in Oakland, California.

After another decade-long hiatus, Brackett returned to science fiction in the 1970s with the publication of The Ginger Star (1974), The Hounds of Skaith (1974), and The Reavers of Skaith (1976), collected as The Book of Skaith in 1976. This trilogy brought Eric John Stark back for adventures on the extra-solar planet of Skaith (rather than his old haunts, Mars and Venus).

Brackett's solar system

Often called the "Queen of Space Opera", Brackett also wrote planetary romance. Almost all her planetary romances take place in the Leigh Brackett solar system, which contains richly detailed fictional versions of the consensus Mars and Venus of science fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s. Mars appears as a marginally habitable desert world, populated by ancient, decadent and mostly humanoid races, and Venus as a primitive, wet jungle planet, occupied by vigorous, primitive tribes and reptilian monsters. Brackett's Skaith combines elements of her other worlds with fantasy elements.

Though Edgar Rice Burroughs's influence is apparent in Brackett's Mars stories, her Mars is set firmly in a world of interplanetary commerce and competition. A prominent theme of her stories is the clash of planetary civilizations; they illustrate and criticize the effects of colonialism on civilizations that are either older or younger than those of the colonizers. Burroughs's heroes set out to remake entire worlds according to their own codes; Brackett's heroes (often antiheroes) are at the mercy of trends and movements far bigger than they are.

After the Mariner missions indicated there was no life on Mars, Brackett never returned to her solar system. When she started to write planetary romance again in the 1970s, she invented a new solar system outside our own.

Screenwriter

Shortly after Brackett broke into science fiction writing, she wrote her first screenplays. Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by her novel No Good from a Corpse that he had his secretary call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep (1946). The film was written by Brackett, Faulkner, and Jules Furthman, and starred Humphrey Bogart.

After getting married, Brackett took a break from screenwriting. When she returned to screenwriting in the mid-1950s, she wrote for TV and movies. Howard Hawks hired her to write or co-write several John Wayne pictures, including Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari! (1962), El Dorado (1966), and Rio Lobo (1970). Because of her background with The Big Sleep, she later adapted Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye for the screen.

The Empire Strikes Back

Brackett worked on the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, the first Star Wars sequel. The film won the Hugo Award in 1981. This script was a departure for Brackett; until then, all her science fiction had been in the form of novels and short stories. George Lucas said that he asked Brackett to write the screenplay based on his story outline. Brackett wrote a finished first draft, titled "Star Wars sequel", that was delivered to Lucas shortly before her death from cancer on March 18, 1978, but her version was rejected and Lucas wrote two drafts of a new screenplay and, following the delivery of the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, turned them over to Lawrence Kasdan to rework some dialogue. Brackett and Kasdan (but not Lucas) were credited for the final screenplay. Brackett was credited in tribute despite not being involved in the final film.

Laurent Bouzereau, in Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays, said that Lucas disliked the direction of Brackett's screenplay, discarded it, and produced two more screenplays before turning the results over to Kasdan. io9's co-founder Charlie Jane Anders has written that while "It's fashionable to disparage Brackett's contributions to Empire", "it's not true that none of Brackett's storyline winds up in the final movie—the basic story beats are the same."

For over 30 years, Brackett's screenplay could be read only at the Jack Williamson Special Collections library at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico, and at Lucasfilm's archives in California. It was officially published in February 2016. In this draft, there is a love triangle between Luke, Leia and Han Solo. Yoda is named Minch, Luke has a hidden sister named Nellith, Lando Calrissian is Lando Kaddar, Luke's father is still a distinct character from Darth Vader and appears as a Force ghost on Dagobah, and Han Solo, at the end of the script, leaves to search for his uncle Ovan Marek, the most powerful man in the universe after the Emperor Palpatine.

Bibliography

"The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter" was the cover story in the Summer 1941 issue of Planet Stories, "Citadel of Lost Ships" (novelette) was the cover story in the March 1943 issue of Planet Stories, "Black Amazon of Mars" (novella) was the cover story in the March 1951 issue of Planet Stories, "Shannach - The Last" (novella) took the cover of the December 1952 issue of Planet Stories, "The Ark of Mars" (novella) was the cover story in the September 1953 issue of Planet Stories, illustrated by Kelly Freas, "Last Call from Sector 9G" (novella) was the cover story in the final issue of Planet Stories in 1955, illustrated by Kelly Freas.

Short science fiction

1940–1941: "Martian Quest" (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1940), The Treasure of Ptakuth" (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1940), "The Stellar Legion" (Planet Stories, Winter 1940), "The Tapestry Gate" (Strange Stories, August 1940), "The Demons of Darkside" (Startling Stories, January 1941), "Water Pirate" (Super Science Stories, January 1941), "Interplanetary Reporter" (Startling Stories, May 1941), "The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter" (Planet Stories, Summer 1941), also published as "The Dragon-Queen of Venus", "Lord of the Earthquake" (novelette; Science Fiction, June 1941), "No Man's Land in Space" (novelette; Amazing Stories July 1941), "A World Is Born" (Comet Stories July 1941), "Retreat to the Stars" (Astonishing Stories, November 1941).

1942–1944: "Child of the Green Light" (Super Science Stories, February 1942), "The Sorcerer of Rhiannon" (novelette; Astounding Science Fiction, February 1942), "Child of the Sun" (novelette; Planet Stories, Spring 1942), "Out of the Sea" (novelette; Astonishing Stories, June 1942), "Cube from Space" (Super Science Stories, August 1942), "Outpost on Io" (Planet Stories, Winter 1942), "The Halfling" (novelette; Astonishing Stories, February 1943), "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (Planet Stories, March 1943), "The Blue Behemoth" (Planet Stories, May 1943), "Thralls of the Endless Night" (Planet Stories, Fall 1943), "The Jewel of Bas" (novelette; Planet Stories, Spring 1944), "The Veil of Astellar" (novelette; Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spring 1944), "Terror Out of Space" (Planet Stories, Summer 1944), "Shadow Over Mars" (Startling Stories, Fall 1944), published in book form as The Nemesis from Terra, winner of a best novel Retro Hugo in 2020.

1945–1950: "The Vanishing Venusians" (novelette; Planet Stories, Spring 1945), "Lorelei of the Red Mist", with Ray Bradbury (novella; Planet Stories, Summer 1946), "The Moon That Vanished" (novelette; Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948), "The Beast-Jewel of Mars" (novelette; Planet Stories, Winter 1948), "Quest of the Starhope" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949), "Sea-Kings of Mars" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1949), published in book form as The Sword of Rhiannon, "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (Planet Stories, Summer 1949), expanded and published in book form as The Secret of Sinharat, "Enchantress of Venus" (novella; Planet Stories, Fall 1949), also published as "City of the Lost Ones", "The Lake of the Gone Forever" (novelette; Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1949), "The Dancing Girl of Ganymede" (novelette; Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950), "The Truants" (novelette; Startling Stories, July 1950), "The Citadel of Lost Ages" (novella; Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950).

1951–1955: "Black Amazon of Mars" (Planet Stories, March 1951), expanded and published in book form as People of the Talisman, "The Starmen of Llyrdis" (Startling Stories, March 1951), "The Woman from Altair" (novelette; Startling Stories, July 1951), "The Shadows" ( Startling Stories, February 1952), "The Last Days of Shandakor" (novelette; Startling Stories, April 1952), "Shannach – The Last" (novelette; Planet Stories, November 1952), "The Ark of Mars" (Planet Stories, September 1953), later published as part of the book Alpha Centauri or Die!, "Mars Minus Bisha" (Planet Stories, January 1954), "Runaway" (Startling Stories, Spring 1954), "Teleportress of Alpha C" (Planet Stories, Winter 1954/1955), later published as part of the book Alpha Centauri or Die!, "The Tweener" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1955), "Last Call from Sector 9G" (Planet Stories, Summer 1955).

After 1955: "The Other People" (novelette; Venture Science Fiction Magazine March 1957), also published as "The Queer Ones", "All the Colors of the Rainbow" (novelette; Venture Science Fiction Magazine, November 1957), "The Road to Sinharat" (novelette; Amazing Stories, May 1963), "Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1964), "Come Sing the Moons of Moravenn" (The Other Side of Tomorrow, 1973), "How Bright the Stars" (Flame Tree Planet: An Anthology of Religious Science-Fantasy, 1973), "Mommies and Daddies" (Crisis, 1974), "Stark and the Star Kings", with Edmond Hamilton (in the collection of the same name, 2005).

Science fiction novels: Shadow Over Mars (1951) – first published 1944; published in the U.S. as The Nemesis from Terra (1961), The Starmen (1952) – also published as The Galactic Breed (1955, abridged), The Starmen of Llyrdis (1976), The Sword of Rhiannon (1953) – first published as Sea-Kings of Mars (1949), The Big Jump (1955), The Long Tomorrow (1955), Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963) – fixup of The Ark of Mars (1953) and Teleportress of Alpha C (1954), The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (1964), The Ginger Star (1974) – first published as a two-part serial in Worlds of If, February and April 1974, The Hounds of Skaith (1974), The Reavers of Skaith (1976).

Science fiction collections: The Coming of the Terrans (1967), The Halfling and Other Stories (1973), The Book of Skaith (1976) – omnibus edition of the three Skaith novels, The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977), ed. Edmond Hamilton, Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (2000) – Haffner Press, Stark and the Star Kings (2005), with Edmond Hamilton, Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories (2005) – #46 in the Fantasy Masterworks series, Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances (2007) – Haffner Press, Shannach–the Last: Farewell to Mars (2011) – Haffner Press.

Science fiction as editor: The Best of Planet Stories No. 1 (anthology; 1975), The Best of Edmond Hamilton (collection; 1977).

Screenplays: The Vampire's Ghost (with John K. Butler) 1945, Crime Doctor's Manhunt (with Eric Taylor) 1946, The Big Sleep (with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman) 1946, Rio Bravo (with Jules Furthman and B.H. McCampbell) 1959, Gold of the Seven Saints (with Leonard Freeman) 1961, Hatari! (with Harry Kurnitz) 1962, Man's Favorite Sport? (uncredited) 1964, El Dorado 1967, Rio Lobo (with Burton Wohl) 1970, The Long Goodbye 1973, The Empire Strikes Back (with George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan) 1980.

Other genres: No Good from a Corpse (crime novel; 1944), "I Feel Bad Killing You" (noir short story) - New Detective Magazine, November 1944, Stranger at Home (crime novel; 1946) – ghost-writer for the actor George Sanders, An Eye for an Eye (crime novel; 1957) – adapted for television as Suspicion series episode (1958), The Tiger Among Us (crime novel; 1957; UK 1960 as Fear No Evil), filmed as 13 West Street (1962; dir. Philip Leacock), Follow the Free Wind (western novel; 1963) – received the Spur Award from Western Writers of America, Rio Bravo (western novel; 1959) – novelization based on the screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, Silent Partner (crime novel; 1969), No Good from a Corpse (mystery collection; Dennis McMillan Publications, 1999) – reprints the titular novel featuring PI Ed Clive, and eight shorter crime stories.

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?334

Bryant, Dorothy

Bryant (1930–2017) was an American novelist, playwright, essayist and feminist writer.

Bryant was known for her mystical, feminist and fantastic novels and plays that traverse the space between the real world and her character's inner psyche or soul. Her book The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You was described by Alice Walker as "One of my favorite books in all the world."

Dorothy Bryant was born in San Francisco in 1930, second daughter of Joe and Giuditta Calvetti, both born in Balangero, a factory town near Turin, Italy, and brought to the United States as children. Bryant became the first in her family to graduate from college, and she earned her living teaching (high school and college) until 1976. She began writing in 1960 and published a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction. Her plays have been performed in the Bay Area and beyond.

Fiction

Ella Price's Journal (1972, J. B. Lippincott, reprinted 1973 by Signet Books)

The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (1976)

Miss Giardino (1976)

The Garden of Eros (1979)

Prisoners (1980)

Killing Wonder (1981)

A Day in San Francisco (1983)

Confessions of Madame Psyche (1986) (American Book Award winner 1987)

The Test (1991)

Anita, Anita (1994)

The Berkeley Pit (2007)

Non-fiction

Writing a Novel (1983)

Myths to Lie By (1984)

Literary Lynching: When Readers Censor Writers (online)

Plays

Dear Master (1991)

Tea with Mister Hardy (1992)

The Panel (1994)

Posting for Gaugain (1997)

The Trial of Cornelia Connelly (2003)

Sad But Glorious Days (2003)

Eros in Love (2006)

www.dorothybryant.com/

Butler, Octavia

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was a science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop, was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.

She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards soon followed. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshine. Butler's father died when she was seven. She was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment.

Growing up in the racially integrated community of Pasadena allowed Butler to experience cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of racial segregation. She accompanied her mother to her cleaning work, where the two entered white people's houses through back doors, as workers. Her mother was treated poorly by her employers.

From an early age, an almost paralyzing shyness made it difficult for Butler to socialize with other children. Her awkwardness, paired with a slight dyslexia that made schoolwork a torment, made Butler an easy target for bullies, and led her to believe that she was "ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless." As a result, she frequently passed the time reading at the Pasadena Central Library. She also wrote extensively in her "big pink notebook". Hooked at first on fairy tales and horse stories, she quickly became interested in science fiction magazines, such as Amazing Stories, Galaxy Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She began reading stories by John Brunner, Zenna Henderson, and Theodore Sturgeon

At the age of 10, Butler begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter, on which she "pecked [her] stories two fingered." At 12, she watched the telefilm Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and concluded that she could write a better story. She drafted what would later become the basis for her Patternist novels. Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of 13, when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel said: "Honey ... Negroes can't be writers." But Butler persevered in her desire to publish a story, and even asked her junior high school science teacher, Mr. Pfaff, to type the first manuscript she submitted to a science fiction magazine.

After graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College (PCC) at night. As a freshman at PCC, she won a college-wide short-story contest, earning her first income ($15) as a writer. She also got the "germ of the idea" for what would become her novel Kindred. An African-American classmate involved in the Black Power Movement loudly criticized previous generations of African Americans for being subservient to whites. As Butler explained in later interviews, the young man's remarks were a catalyst that led her to respond with a story providing historical context for the subservience, showing that it could be understood as silent but courageous survival. In 1968, Butler graduated from PCC with an associate of arts degree with a focus in history.

Although Butler's mother wanted her to become a secretary in order to have a steady income, Butler continued to work at a series of temporary jobs. She preferred less demanding work that would allow her to get up at two or three in the morning to write. Success continued to elude her. She styled her stories after the white-and-male-dominated science fiction she had grown up reading. She enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles, but switched to taking writing courses through UCLA Extension.

During the Open Door Workshop of the Writers Guild of America West, a program designed to mentor minority writers, her writing impressed one of the teachers, noted science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison. He encouraged her to attend the six-week Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania. There, Butler met Samuel R. Delany, who became a longtime friend. She also sold her first stories: "Childfinder" to Ellison, for his anthology The Last Dangerous Visions (eventually published in 2014); and "Crossover" to Robin Scott Wilson, the director of Clarion, who published it in the 1971 Clarion anthology.

For the next five years, Butler worked on the novels that became known as the Patternist series: Patternmaster (1976), Mind of My Mind (1977), and Survivor (1978). In 1978, she was finally able to stop working at temporary jobs and live on her writing. She took a break from the Patternist series to research and write a stand-alone novel, Kindred (1979). She then finished the Patternist series with Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984).

Butler's rise to prominence began in 1984 when "Speech Sounds" won the Hugo Award for Short Story and, a year later, Bloodchild won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novelette. In the meantime, Butler traveled to the Amazon rainforest and the Andes to do research for what would become the Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989). These stories were republished in 2000 as the collection Lilith's Brood.

During the 1990s, Butler worked on the novels that solidified her fame as a writer: Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to be awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, an award that came with a prize of $295,000.

In 1999, after her mother's death, Butler moved to Lake Forest Park, Washington. The Parable of the Talents had won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award for Best Science Novel, and she had plans for four more Parable novels: Parable of the Trickster, Parable of the Teacher, Parable of Chaos, and Parable of Clay. However, after several failed attempts to begin The Parable of the Trickster, she decided to stop work in the series. In later interviews, Butler explained that the research and writing of the Parable novels had overwhelmed and depressed her, so she had shifted to composing something "lightweight" and "fun" instead. This became her last book, the science-fiction vampire novel Fledgling (2005).

Butler's first work published was "Crossover" in the 1971 Clarion Workshop anthology. She also sold the short story "Childfinder" to Harlan Ellison for the anthology The Last Dangerous Visions. "I thought I was on my way as a writer", Butler recalled in her short fiction collection Bloodchild and Other Stories. "In fact, I had five more years of rejection slips and horrible little jobs ahead of me before I sold another word."

Starting in 1974, Butler worked on a series of novels that would later be collected as the Patternist series, which depicts the transformation of humanity into three genetic groups: the dominant Patternists, humans who have been bred with heightened telepathic powers and are bound to the Patternmaster via a psionic chain; their enemies the Clayarks, disease-mutated animal-like superhumans; and the Mutes, ordinary humans bonded to the Patternists.

The first novel, Patternmaster (1976), eventually became the last installment in the series' internal chronology. Set in the distant future, it tells of the coming-of-age of Teray, a young Patternist who fights for position within Patternist society and eventually for the role of Patternmaster.

Next came Mind of My Mind (1977), a prequel to Patternmaster set in the 20th century. The story follows the development of Mary, the creator of the psionic chain and the first Patternmaster to bind all Patternists, and her inevitable struggle for power with her father Doro, a parapsychological vampire who seeks to retain control over the psionic children he has bred over the centuries.

The third book of the series, Survivor, was published in 1978. The titular survivor is Alanna, the adopted child of the Missionaries, fundamentalist Christians who have traveled to another planet to escape Patternist control and Clayark infection. Captured by a local tribe called the Tehkohn, Alanna learns their language and adopts their customs, knowledge which she then uses to help the Missionaries avoid bondage and assimilation into a rival tribe that opposes the Tehkohn. Butler would later call Survivor the least favorite of her books, and withdraw it from reprinting.

After Survivor, Butler took a break from the Patternist series to write what would become her best-selling novel, Kindred (1979), as well as the short story "Near of Kin" (1979). In Kindred, Dana, an African-American woman, is transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early 19th-century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, a black freewoman forced into slavery later in life. In "Near of Kin" the protagonist discovers a taboo relationship in her family as she goes through her mother's things after her death.

In 1980, Butler published the fourth book of the Patternist series, Wild Seed, whose narrative became the series' origin story. Set in Africa and America during the 17th century, Wild Seed traces the struggle between the four-thousand-year-old parapsychological vampire Doro and his "wild" child and bride, the three-hundred-year-old shapeshifter and healer Anyanwu. Doro, who has bred psionic children for centuries, deceives Anyanwu into becoming one of his breeders, but she eventually escapes and uses her gifts to create communities that rival Doro's. When Doro finally tracks her down, Anyanwu, tired by decades of escaping or fighting Doro, decides to commit suicide, forcing him to admit his need for her.

In 1983, Butler published "Speech Sounds", a story set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where a pandemic has caused most humans to lose their ability to read, speak, or write. For many, this impairment is accompanied by uncontrollable feelings of jealousy, resentment, and rage. "Speech Sounds" received the 1984 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

In 1984, Butler released the last book of the Patternmaster series, Clay's Ark. Set in the Mojave Desert, it focuses on a colony of humans infected by an extraterrestrial microorganism brought to Earth by the one surviving astronaut of the spaceship Clay's Ark. As the microorganism compels them to spread it, they kidnap ordinary people to infect them and, in the case of women, give birth to the mutant, sphinx-like children who will be the first members of the Clayark race.

Bloodchild and the Xenogenesis trilogy: 1984–1989

Butler followed Clay's Ark with the critically acclaimed short story "Bloodchild" (1984). Set on an alien planet, it depicts the complex relationship between human refugees and the insect-like aliens who keep them in a preserve to protect them, but also to use them as hosts for breeding their young. Sometimes called Butler's "pregnant man story", "Bloodchild" won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award.

Three years later, Butler published Dawn, the first installment of what would become known as the Xenogenesis trilogy. The series examines the theme of alienation by creating situations in which humans are forced to coexist with other species to survive and extends Butler's recurring exploration of genetically altered, hybrid individuals and communities. In Dawn, protagonist Lilith Iyapo finds herself in a spaceship after surviving a nuclear apocalypse that destroys Earth. Saved by the Oankali aliens, the human survivors must combine their DNA with an ooloi, the Oankali's third sex, in order to create a new race that eliminates a self-destructive flaw in humans—their aggressive hierarchical tendencies. Butler followed Dawn with "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" (1987), a story about how certain females with "Duryea-Gode Disease", a genetic disorder which causes dissociative states, obsessive self-mutilation, and violent psychosis, are able to control others with the disease.

Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989), the second and the third books in the Xenogenesis trilogy, focus on the predatory and prideful tendencies that affect human evolution, as humans now revolt against Lilith's Oankali-engineered progeny. Set thirty years after humanity's return to Earth, Adulthood Rites centers on the kidnapping of Lilith's part-human, part alien child, Akin, by a human-only group who are against the Oankali. Akin learns about both aspects of his identity through his life with the humans as well as the Akjai. The Oankali-only group becomes their mediator, and ultimately creates a human-only colony in Mars. In Imago, the Oankali create a third species more powerful than themselves: the shape-shifting healer Jodahs, a human-Oankali ooloi who must find suitable human male and female mates to survive its metamorphosis and finds them in the most unexpected of places, in a village of renegade humans.

The Parable series: 1993–1998

In the mid-1990s, Butler published two novels later designated as the Parable (or Earthseed) series. The books depict the struggle of the Earthseed community to survive the socioeconomic and political collapse of 21st-century America due to poor environmental stewardship, corporate greed, and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor. The books propose alternate philosophical views and religious interventions as solutions to such dilemmas.

The first book in the series, Parable of the Sower (1993), introduces the fifteen-year-old protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, and is set in a dystopian California in the 2020s. Lauren, who lives with a syndrome causing her to literally feel any physical pain she witnesses, struggles with the religious beliefs and physical isolation of her hometown Robledo. She forms a new belief system, Earthseed, which posits a future for the human race on other planets. When Robledo is destroyed and Lauren's family and neighbors killed, she and two other survivors flee north. Recruiting members of varying social backgrounds along the way, Lauren relocates her new group to Northern California, naming her new community Acorn.

Her 1998 follow-up novel, Parable of the Talents, is set sometime after Lauren's death and is told through the excerpts of Lauren's journals as framed by the commentary of her estranged daughter, Larkin. It details the invasion of Acorn by right-wing fundamentalist Christians, Lauren's attempts to survive their religious "re-education", and the final triumph of Earthseed as a community and a doctrine.

In between her Earthseed novels, Butler published the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995), which includes the short stories "Bloodchild", "The Evening and the Morning and the Night", "Near of Kin", "Speech Sounds", and "Crossover", as well as the non-fiction pieces "Positive Obsession" and "Furor Scribendi".

After several years of having writer's block, Butler published the short stories "Amnesty" (2003) and "The Book of Martha" (2003), and her second standalone novel, Fledgling (2005). Both short stories focus on how impossible conditions force an ordinary woman to make a distressing choice. In "Amnesty", an alien abductee recounts her painful abuse at the hand of the unwitting aliens, and upon her release, by humans, and explains why she chose to work as a translator for the aliens now that the Earth's economy is in a deep depression. In "The Book of Martha", God asks a middle-aged African-American novelist to make one important change to fix humanity's destructive ways. Martha's choice—to make humans have vivid and satisfying dreams—means that she will no longer be able to do what she loves, writing fiction. These two stories were added to the 2005 edition of Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Butler's last publication during her lifetime was Fledgling, a novel exploring the culture of a vampire community living in mutualistic symbiosis with humans.[6] Set on the west coast, it tells of the coming-of-age of a young female hybrid vampire named Shori whose species is called Ina. The only survivor of a vicious attack on her families that left her an amnesiac, she must seek justice for her dead, build a new family, and relearn how to be an Ina.[20] Scholars like Susana M. Morris read Fledgling as a powerful disruption of the vampire genre—a genre which tends to feature pale vampire heroes with paternalist tendencies that privilege whiteness. Butler disrupts this narrative by centering Shori, the protagonist of Fledgling, a petite Black female Ina.

Butler began reading science fiction at a young age, but quickly became disenchanted by the genre's unimaginative portrayal of ethnicity and class as well as by its lack of noteworthy female protagonists. She determined to correct those gaps by, as De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai point out, "choosing to write self-consciously as an African-American woman marked by a particular history"—what Butler termed as "writing myself in". Butler's stories, therefore, are usually written from the perspective of a marginalized black woman whose difference from the dominant agents increases her potential for reconfiguring the future of her society.

Audience

Publishers and critics have labelled Butler's work as science fiction. While Butler enjoyed the genre deeply, calling it "potentially the freest genre in existence", she resisted being branded a genre writer. Her narratives have drawn attention of people from varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds. She claimed to have three loyal audiences: black readers, science-fiction fans, and feminists.

During her last years, Butler struggled with writer's block and depression, partly caused by the side effects of medication for high blood pressure. She continued writing and taught at Clarion's Science Fiction Writers' Workshop regularly. In 2005, she was inducted into Chicago State University's International Black Writers Hall of Fame.

Butler died outside of her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington, on February 24, 2006, aged 58. Contemporary news accounts were inconsistent as to the cause of her death, with some reporting that she had a fatal stroke, and others indicating that she died of head injuries after falling and striking her head on her cobbled walkway. Another suggestion, backed by Locus magazine, is that a stroke caused the fall and hence the head injuries.

Butler maintained a longstanding relationship with the Huntington Library and bequeathed her papers including manuscripts, correspondence, school papers, notebooks, and photographs to the library in her will. The collection, comprising 9062 pieces in 386 boxes, 1 volume, 2 binders and 18 broadsides, was made available to scholars and researchers in 2010.

Themes: The critique of present-day hierarchies, The remaking of the human, The survivor as hero, The creation of alternative communities, Relationship to Afrofuturism.

Critical reception

The New York Times regarded her novels as "evocative" and "often troubling" explorations of "far-reaching issues of race, sex, power". Writing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card called her examination of humanity "clear-headed and brutally unsentimental",  and The Village Voice's Dorothy Allison described her as "writing the most detailed social criticism" where "the hard edge of cruelty, violence, and domination is described in stark detail". Locus regarded her as "one of those authors who pay serious attention to the way human beings actually work together and against each other, and she does so with extraordinary plausibility." The Houston Post ranked her "among the best SF writers, blessed with a mind capable of conceiving complicated futuristic situations that shed considerable light on our current affairs."

Some scholars have focused on Butler's choice to write from the point of view of marginal characters and communities and thus "expanded SF to reflect the experiences and expertise of the disenfranchised". While surveying Butler's novels, critic Burton Raffel noted how race and gender influence her writing: "I do not think any of these eight books could have been written by a man, as they most emphatically were not, nor, with the single exception of her first book, Pattern-Master (1976), are likely to have been written, as they most emphatically were, by anyone but an African American." Robert Crossley commended how Butler's "feminist aesthetic" works to expose sexual, racial, and cultural chauvinisms because it is "enriched by a historical consciousness that shapes the depiction of enslavement both in the real past and in imaginary pasts and futures."

Butler's prose has been praised by critics including the Washington Post Book World, where her craftsmanship has been described as "superb", and by Burton Raffel, who regards Butler's prose as "carefully, expertly crafted" and "crystalline, at its best, sensuous, sensitive, exact, not in the least directed at calling attention to itself".

Influence

Butler credited the struggles of her working-class mother as an important influence on her writing. She also encouraged Butler to write. She bought her daughter her first typewriter when she was 10 years old, and, seeing her hard at work on a story casually remarked that maybe one day she could become a writer, causing Butler to realize that it was possible to make a living as an author. A decade later, Mrs. Butler would pay more than a month's rent to have an agent review her daughter's work. She also provided Butler with the money she had been saving for dental work to pay for Butler's scholarship so she could attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, where Butler sold her first two stories.

A second person to play an influential role in Butler's work was the American writer Harlan Ellison. As a teacher at the Open Door Workshop of the Screen Writers Guild of America, he gave Butler her first honest and constructive criticism on her writing after years of lukewarm responses from composition teachers and baffling rejections from publishers. Impressed by her work, Ellison suggested she attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop and even contributed $100 towards her application fee. As the years passed, Ellison's mentorship became a close friendship.

Butler herself has been highly influential in science fiction, particularly for people of color. In 2015, Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha co-edited Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. Toshi Reagon adapted Parable of the Sower into an opera. In 2020, adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon began collaborating on a podcast called Octavia's Parables.

Parable of the Sower was adapted as Parable of the Sower: The Opera, written by American folk/blues musician Toshi Reagon in collaboration with her mother, singer and composer Bernice Johnson Reagon. The adaptation's libretto and musical score combine African-American spirituals, soul, rock and roll, and folk music into rounds to be performed by singers sitting in a circle. It was performed as part of The Public Theater's 2015 Under the Radar Festival in New York City.

Kindred was adapted as a graphic novel by author Damien Duffy and artist John Jennings. The adaptation was published by Abrams ComicsArts on January 10, 2017. To visually differentiate the time periods in which Butler set the story, Jennings used muted colors for the present and vibrant ones for the past to demonstrate how the remnants and relevance of slavery are still with us. The graphic novel adaption debuted as number one New York Times hardcover graphic book bestseller on January 29, 2017. After the success of Kindred, Duffy and Jennings also adapted Parable of the Sower as a graphic novel. They also plan on releasing an adaptation of Parable of the Talents.

Awards and honors
1980: Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA
1984: Hugo Award for Best Short Story – "Speech Sounds"
1984: Nebula Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"
1985: Locus Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"
1985: Hugo Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"
1985: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – "Bloodchild"
1988: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – "The Evening and the Morning and the Night"
1995: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
1995: Bloodchild a New York Times Notable Book
1998: Publishers Weekly Best '98 Books – Parable of the Talents
1998: James Tiptree Jr. Award Honor List– Parable of the Talents
1999: Los Angeles Times Bestseller – Parable of the Talents
1999: Nebula Award for Best Novel – Parable of the Talents
2001: Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist – Parable of the Talents
2000: Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the PEN American Center
2005: Langston Hughes Medal of The City College
2010: Inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame
2012: Solstice Award
2018: The International Astronomical Union named a mountain on Charon (a moon of Pluto) Butler Mons to honor the author, after a public suggestion period and nomination by NASA.
2018: Google featured her in a Google Doodle in the United States on June 22, 2018, which would have been Butler's 71st birthday.
2019: Asteroid 7052 Octaviabutler, discovered by American astronomer Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1988, was named in her memory.[80] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on August 27, 2019 (M.P.C. 115893).
2019: Los Angeles Public Library opened the Octavia Lab, a do-it-yourself maker space and audiovisual space named in Butler's honor.
2021: Named as one of the women inducted to the National Women’s Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2021.
2021: NASA named the landing site of the Perseverance rover in Jezero crater on Mars the "Octavia E. Butler Landing" in her honor.

Memorial scholarships
In 2006, the Carl Brandon Society established the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship in Butler's memory, to enable writers of color to attend the annual Clarion West Writers Workshop and Clarion Writers' Workshop, descendants of the original Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, where Butler got her start. The first scholarships were awarded in 2007.
In March 2019, Butler's alma mater, Pasadena City College, announced the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship for students enrolled in the Pathways program and committed to transfer to four-year institutions.
The memorial scholarships sponsored by the Carl Brandon Society and Pasadena City College help fulfill three of the life goals she had handwritten in a notebook from 1988.

Selected works
Patternist series: Patternmaster (Doubleday, 1976), Mind of My Mind (Doubleday, 1977), Survivor (Doubleday, 1978), Wild Seed (Doubleday, 1980), Clay's Ark (St. Martin's Press, 1984), Seed to Harvest (Grand Central Publishing 2007; omnibus excluding Survivor).
Xenogenesis series (Lilith's Brood): Dawn (Warner, 1987), Adulthood Rites (Warner, 1988), Imago (Warner, 1989).
Parable series (Earthseed series): Parable of the Sower (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1993), Parable of the Talents (Seven Stories Press, 1998).
Standalone novels: Kindred (Doubleday, 1979), Fledgling (Seven Stories Press, 2005).

Short story collections: Bloodchild and Other Stories (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1995; Seven Stories Press, 2005 including "Amnesty" and "The Book of Martha"); Unexpected Stories (2014, including "A Necessary Being" and "Childfinder").

Essays and speeches
"Lost Races of Science Fiction." Transmission (Summer 1980): pp. 16–18.
"Birth of a Writer." Essence 20 (May 1989): 74+. Reprinted as "Positive Obsession" in Bloodchild and Other Stories.
"Free Libraries: Are They Becoming Extinct?" Omni 15.10 (August 1993): 4.
"Journeys." Journeys 30 [Oct 1995). Part of an edition from PEN/Faulkner Foundation, a talk given by Butler at the PEN/Faulkner Awards for Fiction in Rockville, MD at Quill & Brush. Reprinted as "The Monophobic Response" (the title that Butler preferred), in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, ed. Sheree R Thomas (New York: Aspect/Warner Books, 2000), pp. 415–416.
"Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction",Media in Transition. MIT February 19, 1998. Transcript October 4, 1998.
"Brave New Worlds: A Few Rules for Predicting the Future", Essence 31.1 (May 2000): 164+.
"A World without Racism" / NPR Essay Un Racism Conference. NPR Weekend Edition Saturday. September 1, 2001.
"Eye Witness: "Butler's Aha! Moment". O: The Oprah Magazine 3.5 (May 2002): 79–80.

Incomplete novels and projects: "I Should Have Said..." (memoir, 1998), "Paraclete" (novel, 2001), "Spiritus" (novel, 2001), "Parable of the Trickster" (novel, 1990s-2000s).

Unpublished/not-in-print stories and novels: "To the Victor" (Story, 1965, under penname Karen Adams, winning submission for a competition at Pasadena City College), "Loss" (Story, 1967, 5th place in national Writer's Digest short story contest), Blindsight (Novel: 1978, started; 1981, first draft; 1984, second draft).

https://www.octaviabutler.com/