Octavia Butler: Books & eBooks

Contains excellent chapters on utopias/dystopias, gender and race in sf.

Provides a nice summary of key sf themes, including utopias/dystopias.

Short stories (1996). This collection includes five short stories spanning Butler's career, the first finished in 1971 and the last in 1993.

Interviews.

A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner's powerful saga of survival and destiny in a near-future dystopian America. One of the world's most respected authors of science fiction imagines an apocalyptic near-future Earth where a remarkable young woman discovers that her destiny calls her to try and change the world around her. Octavia E. Butler's brilliant two-volume Earthseed saga offers a startling vision of an all-too-possible tomorrow, in which walls offer no protection from a civilization gone mad.   Parable of the Sower: In the aftermath of worldwide ecological and economic apocalypse, minister's daughter Lauren Oya Olamina escapes the slaughter that claims the lives of her family and nearly every other member of their gated California community. Heading north with two young companions through an American wasteland, the courageous young woman faces dangers at every turn while spreading the word of a remarkable new religion that embraces survival and change.   Parable of the Talents: Called to the new, hard truth of Earthseed, the small community of the dispossessed that now surrounds Lauren Olamina looks to her--their leader--for guidance. But when the evil that has grown out of the ashes of human society destroys all she has built, the prophet is forced to choose between preserving her faith or her family.   The Earthseed novels cement Butler's reputation as "one of the finest voices in fiction--period" (TheWashington Post Book World). Stunningly prescient and breathtakingly relevant to our times, this dark vision of a future America is a masterwork of powerful speculation that ushers us into a broken, dangerously divided world of bigotry, social inequality, mob violence, and ultimately hope.  

A vampire novel (2005).

SF/fantasy/historical novel (1976).

Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format.   More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century.    Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana's own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.   Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, there are over 500,000 copies of Kindred in print. The intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed within the original work remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere.   Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

The complete series about an alien species that could save humanity after nuclear apocalypse--or destroy it--from "one of science fiction's finest writers" (The New York Times). The newest stage in human evolution begins in outer space. Survivors of a cataclysmic nuclear war awake to find themselves being studied by the Oankali, tentacle-covered galactic travelers whose benevolent appearance hides their surprising plan for the future of mankind. The Oankali arrive not just to save humanity, but to bond with it--crossbreeding to form a hybrid species that can survive in the place of its human forebears, who were so intent on self-destruction. Some people resist, forming pocket communities of purebred rebellion, but many realize they have no choice. The human species inevitably expands into something stranger, stronger, and undeniably alien.   From Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Octavia Butler, Lilith's Brood is both a thrilling, epic adventure of man's struggle to survive after Earth's destruction, and a provocative meditation on what it means to be human.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.

Novels from the Xenogenesis trilogy (1987-1989); Dawn -- Adulthood rites -- Imago.

Award-winning dystopian sf novel; book 1 in the Parable (Earthseed) series (1994).

The follow-up to #1 New York Times Bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, comes Octavia E. Butler's groundbreaking dystopian novel In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America's future. In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

A dystopian SF novel (1998); sequel to Parable of the Sower; Laura Olamina’s daughter, Larkin, describes the broken and alienated world of 2032, as war racks the North American continent and an ultra-conservative religious crusader becomes president.

Patternist trilogy (1974-1984); Includes the novels: Wild seed -- Clay’s ark -- Mind of my mind -- Patternmaster.

The complete Patternist series--the acclaimed science fiction epic of a world transformed by a secret race of telepaths and their devastating rise to power. In the late seventeenth century, two immortals meet in an African forest. Anyanwu is a healer, a three-hundred-year-old woman who uses her wisdom to help those around her. The other is Doro, a malevolent despot who has mastered the power of stealing the bodies of others when his wears out. Together they will change the world.   Over the next three centuries, Doro mounts a colossal selective breeding project, attempting to create a master race of telepaths. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, splitting the human race down the middle and establishing a new world order dominated by the most manipulative minds on Earth.   In these four novels, award-winning author Octavia E. Butler tells the classic story that began her legendary career: a mythic tale of the transformation of civilization.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.

Connected to the Patternist series, this sf novel (1978) is out-of-print, in part because of the author's wishes.

An NPR Books Great Read: Two never-before-published stories from the archives of one of science fiction's all-time masters. The novella "A Necessary Being" showcases Octavia E. Butler's ability to create alien yet fully believable "others." Tahneh's father was a Hao, one of a dwindling race whose leadership abilities render them so valuable that their members are captured and forced to govern. When her father dies, Tahneh steps into his place, both chief and prisoner, and for twenty years has ruled without ever meeting another of her kind. She bears her loneliness privately until the day that a Hao youth is spotted wandering into her territory. As her warriors sharpen their weapons, Tahneh must choose between imprisoning the newcomer--and living the rest of her life alone. The second story in this volume, "Childfinder," was commissioned by Harlan Ellison for his legendary (and never-published) anthology The Last Dangerous Visions(tm). A disaffected telepath connects with a young girl in a desperate attempt to help her harness her growing powers. But in the richly evocative fiction of Octavia E. Butler, mentorship is a rocky path, and every lesson comes at a price. The award-winning author of science fiction classics Parable of the Sower and Kindred bestows these compelling, long lost gems "like the miraculous discovery that the beloved book you've read a dozen times has an extra chapter" (Los Angeles Review of Books). Harlan Ellison and Dangerous Visions are registered trademarks of the Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.

This book maps the intersection of feminism and science fiction through close readings of science fiction literature by Octavia E. Butler, Richard Calder, and Melissa Scott and the movies The Matrix and the Alien series.

Octavia E. Butler's works of science fiction invite readers to consider the structures of power in society and to ask what it means to be human. Butler addresses social justice issues such as poverty, racism, and violence against women and connects the history of slavery in the United States with speculation on a biologically altered future world. The first section of this volume, "Materials," lists secondary sources and interviews with Butler and suggests texts that instructors might pair with her works. Essays in the second section, "Approaches," situate Butler in science fiction, modernism, and Afrofuturism and provide interdisciplinary approaches from political science, philosophy, art, and digital humanities. The contributors present strategies for teaching Butler in literature courses as well as courses designed for adult learners, preservice teachers, and students at historically black colleges and universities.

"Anxieties about embodiment and posthumanism have always found an outlet in the science fiction of the day. In Bodies of Tomorrow, Sherryl Vint argues for a new model of an ethical and embodied posthuman subject through close readings of the works of Gwyneth Jones, Octavia Butler, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and other science fiction authors. Vint's discussion is firmly contextualized by discussions of contemporary technoscience, specifically genetics and information technology, and the implications of this technology for the way we consider human subjectivity."--Amazon

"...The predominant premise of his text is that Butler's fiction transforms the way the body is imagined with reference to race and gender...Discussions of race, class, and sex are reoccurring topics in Hampton's interrogation of Butler's writing and are posited as being inextricable to any understanding of contemporary body politics and theory. This book is filled with exciting and insightful discussions that raise questions about what constitutes humanity in fiction and in the real world..."--Amazon

Cyberfiction: After the Future explores a world where cybernetics sets the terms for life and culture - our world of ubiquitous info-tech, instantaneous capital flows, and immanent catastrophe. Economics fuses with technology to create a new kind of speculative fiction: cyberfiction. Paul Youngquist reveals the ways in which J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and William Gibson, among others, map a territory where information reigns supreme and the future is becoming a thing of the past.

Includes a chapter entitled: "Space and time : the interdependency of history, identity, and survival in Octavia Butler’s Kindred."

A reading guide for the Xenogenesis or Lilith's Brood series.

This noteworthy anthology--published by a feminist small press in memory of Butler, an African-American science-fiction author--consists of a wide-ranging selection of sometimes-dense scholarly essays, highly readable reminiscences and personal essays, poems, correspondence, photographs, and interviews..."--Amazon