Principled prophet

There's a detail in Octavia Butler's 1998 novel Parable of the Talents that caught a lot of attention during and after the 2016 US presidential election: a right-wing, Christian nationalist politician who used the phrase "Make America Great Again." Butler, who died in 2006, probably wouldn't have guessed that it was a real estate developer-turned reality television star that picked up the slogan for his campaign for the White House a decade later, but she likely wouldn't have been surprised at the broader, rightward shift the country has undertaken. After all, she had long imagined the country moving in that direction, lending books such as Parable of the Sower a reputation for being uncannily accurate in their depictions of the future.

In her new biography of the late author, Susana M. Morris, explores Butler's life and career with an eye towards uncovering why her stories continue to resonate with audiences. The book, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, mines Butler's journals and stories, paints a portrait of a lonely woman who's determined to make an impact in a world that's hostile to her entire existence, and how she used that outsider status to hone her understanding of people and how they operate.

Butler was born on June 22nd, 1947, in Pasadena, California in a working class family. Her father died not long after she was born, and her mother supported the two of them through a series of odd jobs. Morris describes her as a bright kid who struggled in school – she was later diagnosed with dyslexia – and was an awkward kid: an African American girl who towered over her classmates and was often the target of bullies. From an early age, she turned to books and storytelling as a refuge. "Stories were her earliest companions," Morris writes, "Once she learned to write, stories were among her first scribbles when she was four years old."

She discovered science fiction as a teenager, picking up magazines like Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others, and working her way through her local library's stacks, reading up on the classics. She was moved to write stories of her own in 1959 when she watched a film called Devil Girl from Mars and realized she could do better, and began writing stories of her own.

After graduating from Pasadena City College with an associates degree and began working odd jobs to support herself while she continued to write. This period was fruitful: she had begun the seeds of what would eventually become her Patternist series, as well as Kindred, and in 1970, at the urging of Harlan Ellison, enrolled in the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop, which helped her begin selling stories.

Morris emphasizes a couple of things in Butler's life at this point: her steadfast commitment to not only writing, but to be successful at it. She recounts how she wrote affirmations in her journal, writing out her goals and aspirations. She rejected advice from her mother to try and find more steady work, opting instead to work part time and temporary jobs in order to have the time to write in the mornings and evenings.

She also highlights that Butler was deeply tied into the lower-middle class, and from that vantage point became a keen observer of the people around her. Her daily rides on the city bus to jobs and classes gave her a first-hand view of people, and for her entire life, she was a fierce advocate of public libraries, where she spent much of her time reading, researching, and watching. Butler didn't have to use her imagination to draw vivid, three-dimensional characters, and I think that's one reason why her books stand the test of time. These aren't people who're based on conjecture, imagination, or stereotypes, and as such, she was able to bring in a rich layer of fidelity to the worlds she was dreaming up.

Butler's work can't be extracted from her life. Growing up impoverished and scraping by instilled in her a recognition for the importance of government programs: everything from public transportation to public libraries, she recognized that supporting one's neighbors and communities was essential for a healthy society. Morris pays close attention to Butler's reactions to President Ronald Reagan's election and the actions that his administration took to dismantle many of those public programs that supported people throughout the country. She channeled that anger and frustration into her books, looking at how ideological conflicts can break down society and how people can work together to ensure that they're living in a just and equitable world.

Taken together, and you have a recipe for books that are deeply observant about the state of the world, and Morris's biography explains just why they seem so prophetic. Butler isn't using any secret tricks or techniques: she just paid close attention to the world around her and recognized the direction that the political, economic, and social trends could take us. It takes deep observations, understanding of history, and a sense of empathy to conceptualize the present moment and how the actions that policymakers and influential figures lay the groundwork for what comes next, and it's these skills that Butler put to work in her fiction.

In many ways, Butler's affirmations, belief in herself, and her principled view of the world paid off for her: while she struggled to gain a foothold in the publishing industry and in fandom early on, her work eventually gained more and more attention. Kindred became an enormously influential and important novel in the canon of American literature, while her Patternist and Xenogenesis stories have continually found new audiences and reappraisal. And of course, she was recognized in 1995 with a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship – the first science fiction writer to earn the award.

Reading Morris's book in 2025, I couldn't help but come away with a sense of immense loss and tragedy. She recounts how in the late 1990s, she hit a stumbling block: her books were the most popular that they'd been in her entire career, but she had incredible difficulty putting words to the page; a combination of the medications she was on for various health issues and writer's block. She struggled to figure out how to continue the story she had begun in Parable of the Sower and continued in Parable of the Talents. It wasn't until the early 2000s when she found her stride by writing something completely different: a vampire novel called Fledgling, which she published in 2005.

It her last novel: Butler tragically died on February 24th, 2006 at the far-too-young age of 58. She would have been 78 in 2025, and I can't help but wonder what we might have seen her write had she lived through the last two decades – a period where we saw the United States continue its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, elect its first Black president, endure considerable racial tensions following high-profile shootings of Black men and women, and the rise of the MAGA movement that feels eerily similar to the future she envisioned. I can't help but think that she wouldn't be surprised by the direction the country has taken, and that she would have approached the moment with a range of emotions. It's impossible to know.

Morris's biography is a stellar sketch of Butler's life, not just recounting the critical moments and high points, but by seeking to understand how she looked at the world and how her observations shaped the work she produced. It's a book that not only explores her role in science fiction, but how she took her deeply-held principles and imbued them into her storytelling, how she grounded her characters and stories in the real world, and how she worked for years to perfect her craft and ensure that her voice would be heard, despite every barrier along the way. They're all lessons worth learning as we move forward into more, uncertain futures.