Sci-Fi’s imagined futures and the radical world-building of Octavia Butler

By Ali Roberts

Science fiction has long offered opportunities to imagine futures filled with technological advancement and societal development. Many historical accounts trace the emergence of science fiction to around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. It was during this era that an increasing number of writers began to contemplate how advances in technology and science may impact the future of humanity (Science Fiction | Britannica, n.d.).

The genre of science fiction, also known as sci-fi, often evokes imagery of time travel, extraterrestrial life, space travel, robots, and tech-filled futures. These explorations of possibility can provide indications of some of the ways that writers and consumers of sci-fi make sense of the present. Sometimes it is the concepts, people, or experiences that are absent from these stories that prove to illuminate the most about whom authors consider as part of their futures.

While sci-fi provides nearly limitless possibilities in terms of speculative futures, many sci-fi stories have replicated themes of colonization, objectification, ableism, racism, and gender discrimination (Melzer, 2006). It is also extremely important to highlight that there is not just one narrative development of science fiction. A linear explanation of sci-fi history completely ignores the complex methods of storytelling that have long existed outside of the realm of “Western” ideas of narrative. The sci-fi stories that have been given so much mainstream attention in Eurocentric spaces are not the origins of sci-fi. Working to unravel these linear narratives is critical in decentering whiteness and colonialism.

Understanding the importance of different perspectives lends to the project of expanding imagined futures. Women sci-fi authors have been actively contributing to the genre throughout its existence despite not always being recognized. The story of one of the most well-known sci-fi monsters in popular culture, Frankenstein’s monster, was written by a woman named Mary Shelley in 1818. Numerous stories written by women from the pulp era of sci-fi were recently uncovered by a professor at Georgia Tech. She speculates these women were excluded from popular publications due to resistance against first-wave feminism (Galaxy, 2019).

When Ursula K Le Guin published The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, it was considered a turning point for women authors and for concepts of gender in popular media (Writing the Future, 2019). Le Guin wrote of an androgynous species of alien people, shaking up many static assumptions of sex and gender through the fluid nature of her characters. Other feminist sci-fi authors continued to publish stories of class analysis and speculative fiction. Many of these stories, however, did not engage with concepts of race and ethnicity, continuing to erase the existence of so many people from these futures, utopian and dystopian alike. One author who noticed her absence from these stories and decided to do something about it was Octavia E. Butler.

Octavia Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. When she was in college, she was inspired to write Kindred, a story about slavery, time travel, and power. Butler said she wanted to make people feel history in a deeper way rather than just accept the widely known “facts” of history (Arablouei & Abdelfatah, 2021, 20:31). Butler’s works span stories of dystopia, time travel, aliens, climate change, and women’s rights, most often from the perspective of a Black woman protagonist and hero figure. Her work has inspired countless writers to continue building Afrofuturist and African futurist worlds that center Black experience and technology in sci-fi futures.

One such author is Nnedi Okorafor, who found it difficult to relate to mainstream themes of sci-fi that were rooted in colonialism and futures that didn’t include her. She is a sci-fi and fantasy author of African futurism, which specifically centers African culture and history (Arablouei & Abdelfatah, 2021, 25:45). Okorafor has written numerous novels, short stories, comics, and a (developing) TV series. These works include rich narratives and complexly beautiful characters that build and expand on Octavia Butler’s project of telling previously excluded stories and crafting possible futures.

Science fiction is a genre that allows vast space for considering liberated futures. As we approach Octavia Butler’s birthday, I hope to honor her work and legacy of radical storytelling by continuously engaging with the ideas she offered to us, as well as the works of so many other incredible Black science fiction and speculative fiction authors; Nnedi Okorafor, N. K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, Alaya Johnson, Jelani Wilson, and Nisi Shawl, among many, many others. Octavia Butler often illuminated much of what could go wrong in the future based on the past; she was also pointing to what could go right.

References:

Arablouei, R. (2021, February 18). How Octavia Butler’s Sci-Fi Dystopia Became A Constant In A Man’s Evolution. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/16/968498810/how-octavia-butlers-sci-fi-dystopia-became-a-constant-in-a-mans-evolution

Arablouei, R., & Abdelfatah, R. (2021, February 18). Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction [Audio podcast episode]. Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2021/08/25/1030976863/octavia-butler-visionary-fiction-2021

Galaxy, G. G. to the. (2019, February 2). The History of Women in Sci-Fi Isn’t What You Think. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2019/02/geeks-guide-history-women-sci-fi/

Melzer, P. (2006). Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. University of Texas Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/asulib-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3443163

Science fiction | Definition, Characteristics, Books, Movies, Authors, Examples, & Facts | Britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/art/science-fiction

Writing the future: A timeline of science fiction literature. (2019, August 27). BBC Teach. Retrieved May 14, 2022, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/writing-the-future-a-timeline-of-science-fiction-literature/zjfv6v4