Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler, who wrote captivating science fiction, died last week. She wrote short stories such as the award-winning Bloodchild, as well as fiction such as the Patternist series and was known for her humane, if to this reader sometimes alarming stories. Butler was a black, women writer, in a genre not known for black, women writers, but she was as matter of fact about her efforts to publish, as she was of her habit of writing a different sort of family history into science fiction:

"When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn't in any of this stuff I read," Ms. Butler told The New York Times in 2000. "The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing."

Octavia Butler achieved acclaim as the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, two Hugo Awards and Nebula awards. Here is a tribute to her via YouTube