Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into The Story
An exhibit at the Huntington Library shows visitors how famed science fiction writer Octavia Butler created a career for herself in a genre that had few women and even fewer African-Americans.
Octavia Butler used to say she remembers exactly when she decided to become a science fiction writer. She was 9 years old and saw a 1954 B-movie called Devil Girl from Mars, and two things struck her. First: "Geez, I can write a better story than that!" And second: "Somebody got paid for writing that story!" If they could, she decided, then she could, too.
Eventually she did exactly that. Octavia Estelle Butler became one of the world's premier science fiction writers, the first black female science fiction writer to reach national prominence, and the only writer in her genre to receive a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. ("You have a Genius Grant," Charlie Rose said in a 2000 interview.
