Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler

I'm pleased to announce the publication of Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler, an anthology edited by Rebecca Holden and Nisi Shawl, which Aqueduct Press is releasing in trade paperback and e-book editions. Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler celebrates the work and explores the influence and legacy of the brilliant Octavia E. Butler. Author Nisi Shawl and scholar Rebecca J. Holden have joined forces to bring together a mix of scholars and writers, each of whom values Butler’s work in their own particular ways. As the editors write in their introduction:

Strange Matings seeks to continue Butler’s uncomfortable insights about humanity, and also to instigate new conversations about Butler and her work — conversations that encourage academic voices to “talk” to the private voices, the poetic voices to answer the analytic… How did her work affect conceptions of what science fiction is and could be? How did her portrayals of African Americans challenge accepted assumptions and affect others writing in the field? In what ways did her commitment to issues of race and gender express itself? How did this dual commitment affect the emerging field of overtly feminist science fiction? How did it affect the perception of her work? In what ways did Butler inspire other writers and change the “face” of science fiction? How did she “queer” science fiction? In what ways did she inspire us and motivate us take up difficult subjects and tasks? In other words, what is her legacy?”

Earlier this week Publishers Weekly ran a review of Strange Matings:

This noteworthy anthology—published by a feminist small press in memory of Butler, an African-American science-fiction author—consists of a wide-ranging selection of sometimes-dense scholarly essays, highly readable reminiscences and personal essays, poems, correspondence, photographs, and interviews. Though she wasn't prolific, Butler (1947–2006) produced several important novels (Kindred, Lilith's Brood, Parable of the Sower) and short stories (“Blood Child,” “Speech Sounds”) that changed the genre of science fiction and helped empower many new SF writers of color. Highlights of this anthology include “Gambling Against History,” Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson’s queer reading of Kindred, Butler’s seemingly heterosexual time-travel/slave narrative; “The Spirit in the Seed,” writer, performer, and Ifa/Orisha priestess Luisah Teish’s heartfelt recollection of her discovery of Butler’s early novel Wild Seed; reminiscences by genre writers Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, editor Shawl, and Nnedi Okorafor about what Butler and her work meant for their careers; and scholar Shari Evans’s “From ‘Hierarchical Behavior’ to Strategic Amnesia,” undoubtedly the most perceptive essay yet written on Fledgling, Butler’s final novel. Readers unfamiliar with the author’s fiction should start with her novels, but her many devoted fans will find this volume highly satisfying.

 

Nisi and Rebecca organized a panel at WisCon on the book, which included the two of them plus Candra Gill, Ben Rosenbaum, and me. It was, at moments, deeply emotional for audience and panelists alike. Rebecca also presented a talk based on her paper. I have an essay in the book myself--which I presented at WisCon in 2008; at that time, the book had been accepted for publication by a university press. The editors turned to Aqueduct to publish it when the university press flaked out on them (something that is happening with academic presses with alarming frequency, and by no means a reflection on the quality of the book). One last thing I should mention: Strange Matings boasts numerous photos of Octavia Butler, black and white in the print edition, full color in the e-book editions. You can purchase Strange Matings now through Aqueduct's website.

Bloodchildren, ed. Nisi Shawl

I've lifted this straight from The Bookview Cafe:

Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars
edited by Nisi Shawl
$8.01 (Anthology) ISBN 978-1-61138-237-2
Donate $8.01 to the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship Fund. Reap the reward right now.

Every year, the Carl Brandon Society, whose goal is to increase diversity in the field of science fiction, presents scholarships to two students of color accepted to the prestigious Clarion and Clarion West writers’ workshops. The scholarships, named in honor of the brilliant African-American writer Octavia Butler, pay workshop tuition and housing fees for the recipients. Since 2007, they have made it possible for eleven students to attend the workshops.

Give a little, get a free ebook.

If you contribute a mere $8.01 to the scholarship fund, you can download Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, an ebook anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by these students — the voices of the new generation of writers of color in speculative fiction.
Edited by Nisi Shawl, Bloodchildren includes an introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and a memoir by Vonda N. McIntyre of her friendship with Octavia Butler, which began when they were students together at the Clarion Workshop in 1970.

The collection includes ground-breaking stories by Indrapramit Das, Shweta Narayan, Caren Gussoff, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Lisa Bolekaja, Chris Caldwell, Jeremy Sim, Erik Owomoyela, Dennis Y. Ginoza, Mary Burroughs, and Kai Ashante Wilson.

Donate now!

This special ebook is available only until June 22, 2013, Octavia’s birthday. She would have been sixty-six this year.

Octavia taught at Clarion and Clarion West, and provided enormous support there — and elsewhere — to other writers of color. Through these scholarships, she continues to do so.

Help continue Octavia’s work.

Please support the scholarship program right now with a modest $8.01 donation, and then download your gift: this original anthology celebrating an international coterie of writers who are truly the children and inheritors of Octavia Butler.

Contents of Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, edited by Nisi Shawl

Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson
Before Conception
“Speech Sounds” by Octavia E. Butler
“Octavia Estelle Butler” by Vonda N. McIntyre

2007
“My Love Will Never Die” by Christopher Caldwell
“Falling into the Earth” by Shweta Narayan

2008
“Free Bird” by Caren Gussoff
“Impulse” by Mary Burroughs

2009
“Dancing in the Shadow of the Once” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

2010
“Légendaire.” by Kai Ashante Wilson
“Steal the Sky” by Erik Owomoyela

2011
“/sit” by Jeremy Sim
“Re: Christmas, Bainbridge Island” by Dennis Y. Ginoza

2012
“The Runner of n-Vamana” by Indrapramit Das
“The Salt Water African” by Lisa Bolekaja

How to donate:

To donate, click on the orange Donate (MOBI) button if you have a Kindle or Kindle app. Click on the orange Donate (EPUB) button if you have a Nook, Sony, or other ereader or app. After donating, you will be given a link to download Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars.
Share in Octavia’s legacy: a trove of new writers of speculative fiction.

Comments on Bloodchildren:
“This is Octavia Butler’s brood. Her bloodchildren, her kindred, scattered into the future. This is what she’s sown. And our world’s so much better for it.” — Stephen Graham Jones

“From magical revenge on a Louisiana slave plantation to inanimate objects becoming animated, the stories in Bloodchildren are a fitting tribute to the masterful artist who has helped spark so many creative dreams in all of us. This volume helps keep alive the legacy of Octavia E. Butler.” — Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner, author of My Soul to Keep and the African Immortals series

“There is a sentence in one of these fine stories, ‘Legendaire.’ by Kai Ashante Wilson, which is pure poetry: ‘As glowing coals in a fire are steeped with richer color than the fire itself, so, pale as moonlight, a shine appears in the air around Papa’s head, and where his naps grow, not black but indigo-color, round the edges of his hairline, the widow’s peak, sideburns, and kitchen: every curly strand fills with brilliance, the way hot coals do, but this light makes no heat, and it shimmers, blue as the sky at noon.’

“And it was at the moment of reading this line that something relaxed within me. I’d been impressed and entertained before that moment, but in reading Wilson’s story I realized that this collection really was inspired by one of the great modern masters of the SF form, inspired in the highest sense of the word. Octavia Estelle Butler was my friend, the most dedicated writer I’ve ever known, and a shy, sweet, generous giant of a woman. This collection celebrates her life and legacy, but more to the point, it is an opportunity for a generation of writers to announce their arrival in a burst of literary thunder.

“Rest well, Octavia: your legacy is safe.” — Steven Barnes

"The proper representative of humanity"

The Nov 2010 issue of Science Fiction Studies arrived in my mailbox this week, and it's filled with goodies. It features a special section on the work of Octavia E. Butler, edited by De Witt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai, and a symposium on animal studies and science fiction.

In their introduction, "Memorial to Octavia E. Butler," which places great emphasis on Butler's insistence on "hybridity" as the source of hope and well-being, Kilgore and Samantrai write:

Without writers such as Butler, it is possible that sf would have ossified and remained too closely wedded to an invalidated hegemony. In her life, as in her work, Butler showed us that change comes from unexpected places: from the minority actors who challenge the certainties of the majority and from the violation of the settled boundaries that organize our understanding of the world.

The essays that follow attend to the most readily distinguishable and most disturbing feature of Butler's fiction: the human body exposed as shockingly vulnerable, undone by its availability for violation and control. Each author grapples with the implications of Butler's exploration of our embodied humanity: Why must the body be the index of change? If the body is beyond the governing reach of human consciousness, either because it is acted upon by another consciousness or, more likely, because its own desires collude in its violation, what consequence does that have for agency? And if human agency cannot be located in an autonomous will, then how should we conceive of ethics? To this prospect of a posthuman future, each author adds the centrality of the hitherto marginalized or disenfranchised human being, the queerly raced or sexed or desiring body that now takes center stage as the proper representative of humanity. The paradoxical centrality of the marginal is Butler's version of sf's double-edged sword: her highly speculative alternative worlds are in many ways not recognizable from where we stand, but their very difference makes tem a critical mirror held up to the choices and investments that have made our world.

The articles about Butler's work are:

Benjamin Robertson. "Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's Kindred.

Adam J. Johns. Becoming Medusa: Octavia Butler's Lillith's Brood and Sociobiology.

Marina Aline Ferreira. Symbiotic Bodies and Evolutionary Tropes in the Work of Octavia Butler.

Mary M. Fink. AIDS Vampires: Reimagining Illness in Octavia Butler's Fledgling.

Reflections on Octavia E. Butler [by Vonda N. McIntyre, Sandra Y. Govan, Jeffrey Allen Tucker, Veronica Hollinger, Sweta [sic] Narayan, Marleen S. Barr, and Joan Gordon.

Treats!

*Crystal has made a 5-minute video--- "Where Am I?"--- of a scene from Octavia E. Butler's Dawn that's available through You Tube. The physical appearance of the ooloi doesn't quite do it for me, but I don't suppose any visual representation would match the one created by my own imagination. (Link thanks to Ide Cyan, on the Feminist SF Blog.)

*Suzette Haden Elgin has graciously made her novel, The Communipaths (Book One in the Coyote Jones series), available online here. (Link thanks to Liz Henry, at the Feminist SF Blog.)