I had a wonderful time at Con and returned home to check my email only to find reports that my favorite author of all time has passed away. I am in shock. I never met her and likely never would have, but I was attached to her none the less. Octavia Butler was a pioneer in the field of black female sci fi published authors. Her novels are ground breaking and extraordinary. Dawn was one of the first sci fi novels I ever read and at the time I had no idea the author or main character was black. Ameena had just been born and I was at the mall with her in stroller and bored and disillusioned with marriage and motherhood. I went to Northland Mall to have frozen yogurt at Hudsons-now Marshall Fields. Hudsons at Northland used to have a bookstore on the main level and I picked up a book at random to page through as i ate my ice cream-Ameena must have been sleeping. Dawn had an interesting cover featuring a white woman-not sure who the hell she was supposed to be as the main character, Lilith Iyapo, is black-who was sitting next to a half open plant pod containing a sleeping human. Actually, in retrospect, I believe that I was entranced by the cover of Imago-the third and final installment in the Xenogenesis trilogy that began with Dawn. Always one to start at the beginning I took Dawn back to the table I was sitting at in Hudsons and began reading it. I was hooked at the first page and purchased it and eventually all published works by Octavia Butler. In fact, the only novel of hers I have not read and do not personally own is Survivor which she has never allowed to be reprinted. Her novels have changed me and how I view the world around me. I have loved some of her characters, hated some of her characters and identified with most of her characters. Her novels feature change and explore many boundaries-sexuality, gender, race, society, family, religion-you name it and she has explored it in some way-even incest. All of her books featured strong black capable, intelligent femal main characters-leaders all. They all also featured racially diverse communities and usually also featured lesbians and gays. Her novels are groundbreakking and she is a genius.
To say I am devastated and deeply saddened is to way understate my feelings. I do not posses words for how upset I am. Three great ladies lost back to back: Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and now Octavia Butler-by far the least well known and by far my favorite.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!


Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006)
Octavia Estelle Butler passed away at her Seattle, Washington home on Saturday February 25, 2006.
An only child, she was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father died when she was very young. Octavia attended school at Pasadena City College, California State University, Los Angeles and UCLA.
Following participation in the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, her first story, "Crossover" appeared in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Additional sales were slow to develop but in itme she published nearly 20 novels and books. Fledgling, her first novel in seven years, was released in the fall of 2005.
Octavia received the PEN Center West Lifetime Achievement Award, Nebula award and two Hugo Awards. In 1995 she was the recipient of a $295,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
She has been considered the most successful African American woman writing in the science fiction genre.
Posted February 26, 2006
http://www.sfwa.org/news/2006/obutler.htm

Octavia Butler, prominent science fiction author, dies at 58
By GENE JOHNSON
The Associated Press SEATTLE
Octavia E. Butler, the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, died after falling and striking her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home, a close friend said Sunday. She was 58.Butler was found outside her home in the north Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park on Friday. She had suffered from high blood pressure and heart trouble andcould only take a few steps without stopping for breath, said Leslie Howle, who knew Butler for two decades and works at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.Butler's work wasn't preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre's artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion and human nature."She stands alone for what she did," Howle said. "She was such a beacon and a light in that way."Fellow Seattle-based science fiction authors Greg Bear and Vonda McIntyre said they were stunned by the news and called it a tremendous loss."People came the world around to talk to her," Bear said. "She was sweet. She was smart. She knew science fiction and how to work with it."Butler began writing at age 10, and told Howle she embraced science fiction after seeing a schlocky B-movie called "Devil Girl from Mars" and thinking, "I can write a better story than that." In 1970, she took a bus from her hometown of Pasadena, Calif., to East Lansing, Mich., to attend a fantasy writers workshop.Her first novel, "Kindred," came out in 1979. It concerned a black woman who travels back in time to the South to save a white man. She went on to write about a dozen books, plus numerous essays and short stories. Her most recent work, "Fledgling," an examination of the "Dracula" legend, was published last fall.She won numerous awards, and most notably in 1995 became the first science fiction writer granted a "genius" award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which paid $295,000 over five years. She served on the board of the Science Fiction Museum.Peter Heck, a science fiction and mystery writer in Chestertown, Md., said Butler was recognized for tackling difficult and controversial issues, such as slavery."She was considered a cut above both in the quality of her writing and her imaginative audacity," Heck said. "She was willing to take uncomfortable ideas and pursue them further than a lot of other people would have been willing to."Heck's wife, Jane Jewell, executive director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, called Butler one of the first and definitely the most prominent black woman science fiction writer, but said she would have been a major writer of science fiction no matter her race or her gender."She is a world-class science fiction writer in her own right," Jewell said. "She was one of the first and one of the best to discuss gender and race in science fiction."Butler described herself as a happy hermit, and never married. Though she could be very private, Bear said, she had taken classes to improve her public speaking and in recent years seemed more outgoing."Mostly she just loved sitting down and writing," he said. "For being a black female growing up in Los Angeles in the '60s, she was attracted to science fiction for the same reasons I was: It liberated her. She had a far-ranging imagination, and she was a treasure in our community."Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002831136_webbutlerobit26.html