Octavia Butler
Locus Online is reporting via Steve Barnes that Octavia Butler died of a stroke yesterday.
She was such a fine writer, and by all accounts a fine person. I met her once, and I wish I'd gotten to know her. She made many important contributions to our field, not the least of which is her powerful, harrowing novel Wildseed.
A couple of years ago at WisCon I was taking a cab ride to a pharmacy, and I mentioned to the driver that I was in Madison for a science fiction convention. She asked me who some of the good writers were in our field, and I tried to come up with names that maybe someone not too too familiar with written sf might recognize, people with some mainstream cross-over. She hadn't heard of Gibson, Sterling, or Dan Simmons. But then I mentioned Maureen McHugh, and she knew of Maureen's work and had enjoyed it, and I mentioned Octavia Butler, and she was really ethusiastic about her work.
My sympathies go out to her friends, family, students, and fans.
She was such a fine writer, and by all accounts a fine person. I met her once, and I wish I'd gotten to know her. She made many important contributions to our field, not the least of which is her powerful, harrowing novel Wildseed.
A couple of years ago at WisCon I was taking a cab ride to a pharmacy, and I mentioned to the driver that I was in Madison for a science fiction convention. She asked me who some of the good writers were in our field, and I tried to come up with names that maybe someone not too too familiar with written sf might recognize, people with some mainstream cross-over. She hadn't heard of Gibson, Sterling, or Dan Simmons. But then I mentioned Maureen McHugh, and she knew of Maureen's work and had enjoyed it, and I mentioned Octavia Butler, and she was really ethusiastic about her work.
My sympathies go out to her friends, family, students, and fans.
1 Comments:
I met her once at a book signing we hosted back in my Bookstar days. She was just lovely. She'll be missed.
By Michael van Eekhout, at Wed Mar 01, 04:46:00 PM MST
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