What most intrigues me about her stuff is that I couldn’t put it down — even Bloodchild messed up what passes for my schedule — and I couldn’t quite say why.

OT, but I didn’t even know that she was black when I picked some of her books at the local library (The scifi section wasn’t that big, so I read pretty much everything).

piny:
Sometimes the fact that Octavia E. Butler was a woman and black (rare in scifi) is emphasized more than the fact that she was an incredible writer. Sort of “Look! I like African-American scifi!”.

I admit that that’s true. I think, however, that her position relative to the usual canon does bear mentioning, and not in a patronizing way: when she took on that genre, she basically had to create one of her own. And she…did. The worlds you can imagine are defined by the world you occupy; she ventured into unpublished territory in part because she was coming from a previously unacknowledged place. Ironically enough, the fact that her worlds were yet more alien to people weaned on Heinlein meant that she received less recognition for her work.

I regret that line I wrote, and hope that this doesn’t turn into a race debate. I respect her and I hope this doesn’t start something negative.

And trust me, I’m not praising it because of what Miss Butler was.

Considering the wealth of critical acclaim she accumulated in her lifetime, and the laudatory obits all over the press and the blogosphere, why would you assume that people here would think that?

I haven’t tracked down many of her short stories– the ones I’ve read have been a part of “Years Best” collections.

Right. Apparently she hated writing them.

I haven’t tracked down many of her short stories– the ones I’ve read have been a part of “Years Best” collections.

It would be interesting to see an analysis on that.