In Honor Of Octavia Butler

Butler is credited with being the creator of Afrofuturism for good reason

- Tananarive Due

In 2000 I made my way up the walkway of a house outside of Seattle with my husband, author Steven Barnes, to see his longtime friend Octavia Butler. We were greeted by the sound of Motown music blasting through the windows. We had to knock hard to be heard.

Octavia answered the door, apologizing. “I listen to music when I write,” she said.

And so began our 90-minute visit, which Steve and I recorded to write an article about her. I had met Octavia—and Steve—only three years earlier, at a Black science fiction, fantasy and horror conference at Clark Atlanta University. For much of that visit, I listened to her in rapt awe while I marveled at where I was sitting, embraced by books cramming the shelves, being served lentil soup and French bread by the Octavia Butler.

With her six-foot height and a deep, distinctive voice that made listeners lean in to hear her every carefully chosen word, Octavia was a giant in life—and her power and impact have continued to grow since her death in 2006. A television series based on her novels about telepaths is in development at Amazon Prime Video, and her papers are housed within the palatial walls of the Huntington Library Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. Her collection is not far from where she grew up in Pasadena, but it’s a universe away from the humble beginnings that framed her childhood.

Butler, who would have turned 72 on June 22, is often called the Mother of Afrofuturism—or Black speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror). Long before my novels about African immortals that began with My Soul to Keep, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther or the sci-fi horror of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Butler was writing Black women into imaginary worlds with aliens, giving us powers of telepathy and sending us back to the slavery era to try to fix a horribly broken past.