350:654 (Goldstone) October 29, 2020

Photo by Linda Urban, January 21, 2017. twitter.com/lindaurbanbooks/status/822922027916988416.

On the other hand, the Octavia Butler sounds a little to [sic] much realism for my tastes. [Editorial response by Bill Donaho:] Yes, Unfortunately I think it is very likely to be a true prediction. And beware, it is far from the least depressing of her works. Letter from Milt Stevens, “The Arena,” Habakkuk 3, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 58. fanac.org. 350:654 (Goldstone) October 29, 2020 identities Butler began writing at the age of 10. Despite her dyslexia, by the time she was 12, she had become an avid reader of science fiction. After seeing a science fiction film entitled Devil Girl from Mars, Butler decided to begin producing science fiction that did not ignore issues of race and gender. Gregory Hampton, “In Memoriam Octavia E. Butler,” Callaloo 29, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 246. Cf. The Callaloo interview by Charles Rowell, p. 54, and the below interview, p. 57. Later I read all of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover books. I especially liked Ursula Le Guin’s Dispossessed, and the original Dune by Frank Herbert was an- other favorite of mine. I read Harlan Ellison’s stories and also John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov—all the SF classics, whatever I got my hands on…. JM: What about the books that Samuel Delany was writing back in the ’60s? OEB: No. I didn’t even know he was black until I was at Clarion. I got Nova when I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club in my early teens, but I couldn’t get into it. I did read some of his stories but none of his recent work, except his autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water. Octavia Butler, interview by Larry McCaffery and Jim McMenamin (1988), in Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 60. HathiTrust.

2