‘Genius’ Author Takes Sci-Fi Approach to Earthly Issues

When author Octavia Butler won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” last month, no one was more surprised than she--especially because the foundation cited her science fiction for intermingling “elements of African and African American spiritualism, mysticism and mythology.”

“Why would you want to talk to me about religion?” Butler recently asked an interviewer who wanted to know what the foundation meant. “The question I ask in my fiction is, ‘What makes us human?’ I am interested in the way we live, what we are capable of, and where we might be falling down.”

For asking those questions--and others--the MacArthur Foundation will give Butler $295,000 over the next five years. Butler, who describes herself as a frugal person, said the money will help her realize a longstanding dream--owning a home where she can live with her 81-year-old mother.

But besides buying a modest home, Butler foresees no significant change in what she does or how she works.

She still plans to get up each day before sunrise to write on an old, manual typewriter. Hunting and pecking on the 50-pound machine, she hopes to finish her 11th novel, “Parable of the Talents,” sometime next year. A collection of short stories, “Bloodchild and Other Stories,” will be published this fall.

Butler’s other works also explore religious and spiritual themes. The Xenogenesis trilogy--”Dawn,” “Imago” and “Adulthood Rites”--envisions an earth ravaged by nuclear war. Survivors have been kept alive by aliens who want to mate with them, both to enhance their species and to help humans.

Butler, 48, has been at her craft since she was 10. Born in Pasadena, she was an early aficionado of the public library and started making up stories at an early age.

Although her earliest efforts were stories about horses, she soon switched to science fiction because it gave her the freedom to explore anything she wanted.

During the late 1960s, Butler studied at Pasadena College and Cal State L.A. But her most important educational experiences occurred at a writing workshop taught by Harlan Ellison at the Screen Writers’ Guild of America and also at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop.

Still, she dismisses the notion that there is any way to become a writer other than the daily grind of sitting down and doing it.

“I tell would-be writers that there are three things to forget about,” Butler said. “First, talent. I used to worry that I had no talent, and it compelled me to work harder. Second, inspiration. Habit will serve you a lot better. And third, imagination. Don’t worry, you have it.”