I usually don’t mention when celebrities pass on--I mean, I’m sorry for the friends and family of Don Knotts, but it’s not like I was personally waiting around for a sequel to The Ghost and Mr. Chicken--but the death of Octavia Butler got to me.

Butler was a science fiction writer.  Unfortunately, people were often introduced to her books through the much-taught Parable of the Sower, which I feel is preachy and not as interesting as her other work.  (The sequel, Parable of the Talents, is a little better.)

Her best work is anything but simplistic, politically correct pablum.  I personally love the Xenogenesis trilogy, beginning with Dawn, about an alien race that comes to pick up the pieces after a nuclear war.  Although the story can be read as a metaphor of racial subjugation, it’s never simplistic and there are never easy answers.  Butler seems to be saying that yes, someone is the slaver and someone is being enslaved, but why does the enslaved become enslaved?  Is it because they have no choice, or because there something in it for them?  What are the effects of the relationship upon the slaver?  And what happens when they change places?

On a less cerebral note, it’s also the absolute coolest depiction of an alien culture I’ve ever read.

Many of the same questions are asked in Kindred, about a woman who is repeatedly sent back in time to 19th century America.  Also a good book, although it needs more aliens.

I did a little research on Butler when I taught Dawn as part of a freshman writing class a while back.  She never married or had kids, and lived a hermetic life in Los Angeles.  She appeared to only write speculative fiction, using metaphor to explore the topics and issues that obsessed her. She died at age 59.  I’m sorry that I can’t look forward to any more of her stories.