Her novels evoked mutant societies that emerged from viral infection, alien symbiosis and extraterrestrial eugenic programmes her fiction sought to call normative values into question by testing the rules of attraction and repulsion. In 19, she attended the open door programme of the Screen Writers’ Guild of America, where she met novelist Harlan Ellison, who encouraged her to attend the Clarion science fiction writers’ workshop in East Lansing, Michigan.įrom her modest flat in Los Angeles, Butler explored the nature of intimacy between human, alien and virus.

She studied at California State University, Los Angeles, and took extension classes at UCLA. Introverted, dyslexic - and an only child - she was writing stories by the age of 10 and declared her interest in science fiction at 13. Her father, a shoe shiner, died when she was very young her mother worked as a maid. Growing up in Pasadena, southern California, Butler, who at age 15 was 6ft tall, was always going to stand out. A famously reclusive lesbian, she enjoyed the welcome from critics and fans for her most recent vampire novel, Fledgling (2005), as a return to activity after a four-year struggle with writer’s block. With her vivid intelligence and powerful work ethic, the American novelist Octavia Butler, who has died aged 58 following a fall, was a pioneering figure in the white, male-dominated field of American science fiction.

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