Octavia E. Butler
by Gerry Canavan
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Pub Date Dec 05 2016 | Archive Date Nov 17 2016
Description
"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction.
Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.
Gerry Canavan is an assistant professor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature at Marquette University. He is a coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction.
Advance Praise
"There are great depths to Butler's work, and Canavan has given us a torch in order to better see those depths. There's a lot of valuable analysis of how Butler's fiction ties in with her personal life. Because of the personal nature of the book, what we have here is anything but a dry academic exercise."--Michael Levy, coeditor of Extrapolation
"Sensible and well organized. A book that situates Butler's fiction at the junction of biocritical and genre studies, showing how Butler's experience of blackness in America led her to explore and exploit the 'messiness' of science fiction."--Lisa Yaszek, coeditor of Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780252082160 |
| PRICE | $22.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 224 |
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Featured Reviews
Carter A, Reviewer
As a long-time fan of Butler, it was fascinating to gain insight into her writing process. I was particularly intrigued by the repetition of themes throughout her works, which at times only becomes apparent when looking at discarded drafts. I also was intrigued by the notion that the Earthseed novels were original just the prologue to an intended larger post-Earth series. Butler is arguably one of the most important science-fiction authors of the late 20th century, and this new biography is a must-read for all serious genre fans.
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