R.I.P Octavia Butler
She was funny, with a dark, dry, self-deprecating wit.
Ms. Butler, who never married, described herself this way in 1999: "I'm also uncomfortably asocial — a hermit in the middle of Seattle — a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive."
(via Seattle Times)
The first African-American woman to break barriers in the SF field continued to break the mold right till the end. Butler died this week at the age of 58 after she slipped and fell on the sidewalk near her house; news of the accident spread fast on SF networks, and tributes have been coming in from Greg Bear, Harlan Ellison: peers who were also fans. She had just published Fledgling, which promises to change the face of vampire fiction. The protagonist of Fledgling, Shori Matthews, is a 53-year-old vampire who looks like a 10-year-old black girl—probably the first time Dracula’s many literary descendants have included a black female among their numbers.
Butler came up with two fabulous twists on the vampire story. In her version, vampires are actually members of a matriarchal race that predates humanity: aside from needing human blood to survive, they are shy, peaceful people. And Shori’s skin colour is because of an experiment to see whether black-skinned vampires might be able to bypass the race’s legendary intolerance of sunlight.
(via Business Standard)
