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Kola
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Username: Kola

Post Number: 2792
Registered: 02-2005

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Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2006 - 08:59 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

From Steven Barnes:


Yesterday Octavia Butler fell outside her house during what neighbors thought was a stroke. A neighbor kid found her outside her house. They rushed her to the hospital, and found blood had pooled in her brain, they operated but she passed away today.



KOLA:

This really knocked the wind out of me.

I was searching for some news/media outlet for confirmation and could find none whatsoever, so I'm trusting that Steven Barnes and Harlan Ellison have the correct information.




I don't think ANYONE has ever yet given critical due to the genius of Octavia Butler's work--she was so much more than just "science fiction" (as so many writers are, including Mr. Barnes). There were so many sociological and political dimensions that she weaved expertly into the text of entertainment.



I not only loved her books...but I loved her PERSONHOOD. She was quite alone and yet so majestic and even-tempered. Her person contained a goodness and a love of challenging adversity that translated quite powerfully in her novels and stories.

I think the PARABLE stories are my favorites, as I so enjoyed the character "Lauren".

Dearest.

I just hate this day so much.

Bless you, Octavia, for blessing us.




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Kola
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Post Number: 2793
Registered: 02-2005

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Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2006 - 09:02 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

OCTAVIA BUTLER...IN
HER OWN WORDS:




I'm a 53-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Seattle -- a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.

I've had eleven novels published so far: Patternmaster, Mind of my Mind, Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago, Parable of the Sower, and Parable of the Talents as well as a collection of my shorter work, entitled Bloodchild. I've also had short stories published in anthologies and magazines. One, "Speech Sounds," won a Hugo Award as best short story of 1984. Another, "Bloodchild," won both the 1985 Hugo and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette. My most recent novel Parable of the Talents won the 1999 Nebula for Best Novel

-- Octavia Butler

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Mzuri
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Username: Mzuri

Post Number: 129
Registered: 01-2006

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Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006 - 11:31 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler Dies

By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

February 26, 2006, 11:53 PM EST

SEATTLE -- Octavia E. Butler, considered the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, has died, a close friend said Sunday. She was 58.

Butler fell and struck her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home, said Leslie Howle, a longtime friend and employee at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.

The writer, who suffered from high blood pressure and heart trouble and could only take a few steps without stopping for breath, was found outside her home in the north Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park and died Friday, Howle said.

Butler's work wasn't preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre's artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion and human nature.

"She stands alone for what she did," Howle said. "She was such a beacon and a light in that way."

Jane Jewell, executive director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, said Butler was one of the first black women to explore the genre and the most prominent. But Butler would have been a major writer of science fiction regardless of race or gender, she said.

"She is a world-class science fiction writer in her own right," Jewell said. "She was one of the first and one of the best to discuss gender and race in science fiction."

Butler began writing at age 10, and told Howle she embraced science fiction after seeing a schlocky B-movie called "Devil Girl from Mars" and thought, "I can write a better story than that." In 1970, she took a bus from her hometown of Pasadena, Calif., to attend a fantasy writers workshop in East Lansing, Mich.

Her first novel, "Kindred," in 1979, featured a black woman who travels back in time to the South to save a white man. She went on to write about a dozen books, plus numerous essays and short stories. Her most recent work, "Fledgling," an examination of the "Dracula" legend, was published last fall.

She received many awards, and in 1995 Butler was the first science fiction writer granted a "genius" award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which paid $295,000 over five years.

Butler described herself as a happy hermit, and never married.

"Mostly she just loved sitting down and writing," Seattle-based science fiction writer Greg Bear said. "For being a black female growing up in Los Angeles in the '60s, she was attracted to science fiction for the same reasons I was: It liberated her. She had a far-ranging imagination, and she was a treasure in our community."

* __

Associated Press writer Donna Gordon Blankinship contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
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Kola_boof
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Username: Kola_boof

Post Number: 1653
Registered: 02-2005

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Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006 - 11:36 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Mzuri, thanks for posting this.

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Zuriburi
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Username: Zuriburi

Post Number: 70
Registered: 11-2005

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Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006 - 01:46 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

This is so shocking.
May she rest in peace.

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