Octavia Butler & The Rise of Afrofuturism
Octavia Estelle Butler grew up a shy, Black girl in Pasadena that grew up to be one of the most influential science-fiction writers of this generation. Born in 1947, she was raised by her mother and grandmother as her father became ill and died in her infancy.
She developed a lifelong passion for science-fiction at 10, and at 12 was inspired by an unsatisfactory science-fiction film that reassured her that her ideas were good enough to make it onto the big screen. This inspired her to ask her mother for a typewriter.
It was her fervor, her confidence, as well as her ability to blend sociopolitical analysis into her foreign, futuristic societies that propelled her to the status of Hugo and Nebula award winning author and gained her the nickname “Grandmaster of science fiction”.
Butler wasn’t just passionate; her imagination could conjure up the most fascinating worlds and her uncanny storytelling captivates the reader and engulfs them into this world.
Butler credited escapism as her inspiration to write. She preferred writing science-fiction to dealing with reality.
She mentioned in an author’s afterword in Bloodchild and Other Stories in regard to writing an essay about her evolution as a writer, “I have no doubt at all that the best and the most interesting part of me is my fiction.” (pg. 136) Although we cannot judge her personal qualities, Butler does provide much to unpack and discuss in her speculative and science fiction works; despite its analytical connections to social factors such as race, gender, class, and ability, one’s mind does not concentrate on matters of politics while reading.
Butler weaves irony and suspense into the plot to sculpt the readers’ experience by beginning en media res, not providing background information, but allowing us to piece the story together as the plot carries on. Readers are so invested in the story, the futuristic elements and the familiar elements alike, that the contemplation Butler intended while writing comes after we’ve closed the book and allow our minds to digest.
The world of science fiction is dominated by white males telling stories of white male heroes and advanced technological utopian societies. This brand of literature resonates well with certain demographics who find certain elements entertaining; however, there is a wide range of readers, some of which are nonwhite people who are more interested in seeing the struggles and oppressions they face in reality dealt with differently in their literature.
Escapism varies for everybody, and it makes sense that white writers do not write literature about racism and Black people, because they do not think about it, know about it, or live it. The onus then falls on white writers, editors, and publishers to not oppress and discriminate against Black writers and allow their literature to circulate and tell the stories these underrepresented groups deserve and yearn to read.
Black science fiction writers, and Octavia Butler is the quintessential example, are equipped to incorporate sociopolitical commentary and connections to Black culture and history in their science fiction. This is the concept behind the artistic cultural movement of Afrofuturism, still thriving in the year 2020, where visual and literary artists adopt elements of Black history and culture to develop a Black futuristic aesthetic.
Modern examples are Janelle Monáe’s discography, namely her album Dirty Computer in which she, a Black woman, undergoes virus de-bugging, and the Marvel blockbuster Black Panther in which a Black man with supernatural ancestral powers and futuristic technology reigns over a small, unknown colony of African peoples consisting of multiple tribes. Octavia Butler’s literature helped sculpt this movement in its early stages.
1984 is an infamous and beloved speculative science-fiction novel written by George Orwell in 1949. Orwell intended for the novel to show the potential harm in communism and how it would eventually lead us to a “negative-utopia” where everything is too regulated, too monitored, too perfect. The novel’s concept is great and it’s impact on society and discourse has been even greater, but Octavia Butler was the writer everyone thinks George Orwell was.
In 1984, Orwell does not include or mention gender, race, or socioeconomic class specifically anywhere in the novel. Not only are none of the characters Black or brown, but there is not even a hint at the existence of a system of racism or sexism. No matter what time period we are in, there are differences between us as human beings, and we are bound to reflect that somehow in the structure of our societies. Octavia Butler takes this human tendency into account when writing her novels and creates a vortex through which we can look and examine our own personal biases, as well as the systems of oppression at work in our society.
For instance, in her beloved short story Bloodchild, Octavia Butler explores a pregnant-man story by creating a world in which humans and some alien species cohabit a planet that isn’t suitable for either. Because of this, humans and aliens have social customs and agreements, one of them being that humans have to host alien larvae in order for the species to continue, and the birthing process is horrifically barbaric.
In it, the main character is a young man who decides to, given the circumstances his family is in, carry the larvae of his family-friend. Butler said in the afterword that she wanted to explore what it would be like for a man to decide to become pregnant, not in a competitive light to prove a man could do it, but in the way anyone decides to get pregnant: weighing in the consequences and making a decision about their own body knowing the associated risks (Butler, 30).
I like that Butler uses science-fiction to challenge conventional notions about gender. Transgender people have been taking on this feat simply by existing since the beginning of time, but recently the concept of gender and genderfluidity have been discussed and politicized heavily. A pregnant transgender Black man who stumbles upon Butler’s fiction may feel himself and his experiences reflected in it in the ways that a cisgender straight white man would not. This is why Butler’s work is important; she is able to creatively restructure conventional social constructs like race, gender, and religion in her science-fiction, offering a new and unique lens through which to look at the world we currently exist in.
