Product Description
Author of 12 novels, Hugo and Nebulaaward-winning novelist Octavia Butler, is readilyidentified as an African American feminist andscience fiction writer. In selected works by Butler,enough evidence exists to support the argument thatButler is a California regionalist writer as well.Born and raised in Pasadena, California, the authorherself sees no special significance in theCalifornia setting in some of her work, and makesthe point that not all her stories are set inCalifornia?or even on earth. The works chosen foranalysis with regard to the significance of settingare Kindred, Clay?s Ark, Parable of the Sower andParable of the Talents, all of which featurefuturism, images, trends, and landmarks unique toCalifornia.Octavia Estelle Butler died Friday February 24,2006 at Northwest Hospital after a fall at her homein Lake Forest Park, Washington. She was 58. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 5057 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Utopias of old, solutions for the new millennium: a comparative study of Christian fundamentalism in M.K. Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.
Author: Donna Spalding Andreolle
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 12Issue: 2Page: 114(11)

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This digital document is an article from Extrapolation, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 7502 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Destabilizing order, challenging history: Octavia Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, and affective beginnings.
Author: Alison Tara Walker
Publication: Extrapolation (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 46Issue: 1Page: 103(17)

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This digital document is an article from St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 155 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Signed essays ranging from 500 to 2,500 words, written by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries include subject-specific bibliographies and textual cross-references to related essays. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Extrapolation, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2005. The length of the article is 4084 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The relationship between community and subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.
Author: Clara Escoda Agusti
Publication: Extrapolation (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 46Issue: 3Page: 351(9)

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Myth Making Man is a study of the transmission of a set of scientific paradigms to the culture at large. These science-based cultural myths originate in the provisional and hypothetical language of research scientists, but with popularization, the story and images in the discourse come to assume progressively more prominence. Michael Prince focusses on three paradigms related to human evolution, paleoanthropology, eugenics-genetics, and Darwinian / Post-Darwinian evolution. The short fiction of Philip K. Dick is presented as an exemplar of this paradigm set as it was extant in early 1950s science fiction. The remainder of the book treats several Dick novels, the Canopus in Argos five book series by Doris Lessing, as well as Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series. ... Read more

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Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Octavia E. Butler paints a stunning portrait of an all-too-believable near future. As with Kindred and her other critically-acclaimed novels, Parable of the Sower skillfully combines startling visionary and socially realistic concepts. God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young womans diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacsand reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars. For her elegant, literate works of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler has been compared to Toni Morrison and Ursula K. LeGuin. Narrator Lynne Thigpens melodious voice will hold you spellbound throughout this compelling parable of modern society. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 - February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. Butler was born and raised in Pasadena, California. Since her father Laurice, a shoeshiner, died when she was a baby, Butler was raised by her grandmother and her mother (Octavia M. Butler) who worked as a maid in order to support the family. Butler grew up in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood. According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Butler was "an introspective, only child in a strict Baptist household" and "was drawn early to magazines such as Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy and soon began reading all the science fiction classics." ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 2003. The length of the article is 6721 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Octavia Butler's chiastic cannibalistics (1). (Essays on Octavia Butler).
Author: Peter Sands
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2003
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 14Issue: 1Page: 1(15)

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Customer Reviews (1)

Showing the Tissue of Human Relationships.
Some time ago I've read for the first time a book from Ms Butler. I was immediately captivated by her amazing imagination and the quality of her prose and became instantly a fan of the author. This first impression was corroborated as I read more of her writings.
Unfortunately for us, her fans, Ms. Butler has recently passed leaving the "Parable" trilogy unfinished and I'm sure many delightful stories unwritten.

All her books showed a rich combination of imagination, complex and interesting characters launched into conflictive situations to test their mettle.

In "Kindred" the story is presented in a sci-fi framework, in order to give an entry point to a world distant more than a hundred years from us, but the substance is about getting in touch with slavery.
This poignant account unearths the relationships between slave-owners and slaves, drawing a huge fresco of that society.

Dana, an Afro-American woman, is drawn time and again to the past with the specific mission of saving Rufus' life, the son of a slave-owner and his heir. Each time Dana is transported backward, the drama increases. Poignant and vivid scenes are shown, reaching deep into the reader's sensibility, but with an earnest and straightforward approach.
You can't elude perceiving the "reality" of the world shown in this amazing book.

After reading it, I keep wondering about what kind of strange compulsion make a human being to despise another one based on racial, religious or even political or social differences, without perceiving that we are all kindred to each one.

This is great book for sci-fi buffs and general public too.

Reviewed by Max Yofre ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ms Butler's Rollercoaster!
A couple of years ago I've read for the first time a book from Ms Butler. I was captivated by her amazing imagination and quality of her prose and became instantly a fan of the author. This first impression was corroborated as I read more of her writings.
Unfortunately for us, her fans, Ms. Butler has recently passed leaving the "Parable" trilogy unfinished and I'm sure many delightful stories unwritten.

She was highly talented writer and win Sci-Fi Hugo and Nebula awards.
All her books showed a rich mixture of imagination, complex and interesting characters and conflictive situations to test their mettle.


Here the reader is presented with Octavia's short stories. She proves to be as good as with her novels, even if she states she is not a "short story writer".
There are five tales and two essays.
The essays provide good hints for "would be writers".

The multi-awarded "Bloodchild" is a typically Butler's product.
She explores in depth, in a quite short text, the intricacies of symbiosis between human and alien specie.
I think that from this story, Octavia has derived her amazing trilogy "Xenogenesis". Both stories refer to symbiosis and how this affects human mind producing very different attitudes from rejection to uncensored adhesion.

The other remarkable tale is "Speech Sounds" that shows a post apocalyptic world where humanity is deprived of speech or the ability of read and write.
She focuses on the strain survivors suffer to adapt to these conditions. The inner suffering and the will to survive are shown without respite.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" reflects the anguish endured by a woman that knows she will be devastated by a new disease.

This book is a very good introduction to Ms. Butler's universe.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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Product Description
The first science fiction written by a Black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of Black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she's been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother. Author Octavia E. Butler skillfully juxtaposes the serious issues of slavery, human rights, and racial prejudice with an exciting science fiction, romance, and historical adventure. Kim Staunton's narrative talent magically transforms the listener's earphones into an audio time machine. 10 Hours 59 Minutes on nine compact disks. ... Read more