Sad Note: Octavia Butler gone

[netmouse]

matociquala passed on the news that Octavia Butler died Saturday after a fall outside her house.

I was so excited to see the publication of Fledgeling in 2005, after a 7-year hiatus. Now I guess there won't be any more. ... The first book of hers I ever read I read in a single sitting. I started it as I entered a class I was sitting in on, waiting for it to begin. I read at the back of the room all through the class and on for another hour after everone had left, unmoving. It was Clay's Ark, and I swallowed it whole.

I met Octavia Butler one year at Minicon. She struck me as a dignified and thoughtful, highly intelligent woman, nice to talk to, and of course she was an outstanding and sensitive author. She will be greatly missed.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I remember the first Octavia Butler I read. It was, most likely, just coincidence that it was by her -- I was young, and we were visitting my Grand parents (or Grandfather, I don't remember if my Grandmother was still alive) in Listowel, Ontario. A small town. I had, somehow, run out of reading material, and I wandered over to the local small-town drug store, which had a rack of paperbacks for sale... the selection of sf/f was limitted, but the most interesting looking one was Survivor by Octavia Butler. Probably not her strongest work (it was early, 3rd published, in 1978), and I didn't notice or read anything by her for many years thereafter, but I did enjoy it.

I think the more powerful book by her I read was (the far more recent) Parable of the Sower.