Abstract

Octavia E. Butler was notoriously skeptical of utopian science fiction, and though she desired very much to write it, she found herself unable to do so "because I don't believe imperfect humans can form a perfect society."1 In interviews and in practice through her fiction Butler rejected the possibility of an ideal society and instead found her way to what Jim Miller has called "a post-apocalyptic hoping informed by the lessons of the past."2 This is to say that, as a black woman science-fiction writer who had witnessed the pains of systemic racism, patriarchy, and oppressive violence against the communities to which she belonged, and who was particularly affected by the Religious Right–backed racist and classist...