Arguably there is no African American writer who is currently as influential as the late Octavia Butler. Working from within the once-marginalized genre of science fiction and with a perspective rooted in the historical experiences of Black people and women, her visionary work has become so central to contemporary thinking on science fiction, feminism, African American literature, and Afrofuturism. And it is no secret that her work will soon be appearing on the big screen (though one desperately hopes they don’t mess that up). In 1985, just as her work was beginning to spread beyond the science fiction ghetto, The Black Scholar conducted this interview. We present it as a summer gift to our readers, old and new.
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