This Week in Literary History: Octavia E. Butler *Finally* Becomes a Bestseller

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THIS WEEK IN

AUGUST 29 - SEPTEMBER 4

Octavia E. Butler finally becomes a bestseller.

On September 2, 2020, almost 50 years after she sold her first story, and more than 14 years after her death, Octavia E. Butler finally fulfilled her own prophecy and became a New York Times bestseller: Butler’s post-apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower, which was originally published in 1993 (but is set in the early 2020s), appeared at #14 on the list.

Not that Butler had anything to prove before this, mind you. After all, in 1995 Butler became the first SF writer to be awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant; her work has been honored with Hugos and Nebulas; she is in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. She was a prescient thinker, a beloved teacher and mentor, and has become an enduring cultural icon, complete with Google doodle. There’s even a Mars landing site named after her. She was also very good at writing author bios. (Don’t laugh; they’re hard.)

More importantly, perhaps, she has inspired countless writers and artists who came after her—from Nnedi Okorafor to Janelle Monáe and even Brit Marling, who cites Parable of the Sower in particular as informing her work on The OA. Butler is becoming one of those writers who gets continually rediscovered and re-evaluated, but for fans old and new, it’s a very verdant period for Butler’s work—both Parable of the Sower and Kindred will soon be adapted for the screen, and gorgeous new editions and new nonfiction about the writer abound. It would be the Octaviassance, except for the fact that for many of us, she never went away.

SPONSORED BY HACHETTE AND GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING

In this stunning follow-up to Hollow Kingdom, the animal kingdom’s “favorite apocalyptic hero” is back with a renewed sense of hope for humanity, ready to take on a world ravaged by a viral pandemic (Helen Macdonald). Start reading now.

MORE ON BUTLER

Octavia Butler: The Brutalities of the Past Are All Around This

How to Give Octavia Butler the Covers She Deserves

Finding Octavia Butler’s Pasadena

Inspired Writing Advice

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

–OCTAVIA BUTLER

In other (old)

news this week

Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library, is opened in Andrew Carnegie’s hometown, Dunfermline, Scotland (August 29, 1883) • Henry James, “the lonely celibate,” returns to the US after two years abroad (August 30, 1904) • John Hersey’s Hiroshima is published in The New Yorker, taking up every page except the “Goings On” calendar (August 31, 1946) • Kurt Vonnegut Jr. marries his childhood sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox (September 1, 1945) • Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which he wrote in “a furious eight-week blitz,” is published in Life (September 1, 1952) • Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon—which is finally (finally!) getting adapted for television—is published (September 1, 1977) • Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh opens on Broadway, though Tennessee Williams does not get to see it (September 2, 1946) • Charles Dickens burns most of his private papers at Gads Hill Place, his home in Kent with the secret bookcase door (September 3, 1860) • Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery disguised as a sailor (September 3, 1838) • Samuel Pepys buries some wine and a hunk of Parmesan cheese in his garden to protect it from the Great Fire of London (September 4, 1666) • F. Scott Fitzgerald hands off the manuscript of This Side of Paradise to his friend Shane Leslie, who will deliver it to Maxwell Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York (September 4, 1919)

LET’S STOP WITH THE REALISM VERSUS SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY DEBATE

WHICH BIG FALL BOOK SHOULD YOU READ?

ON THE LINK BETWEEN GREAT THINKING AND OBSESSIVE WALKING

“I have often been asked how I came to write. The best answer is that I needed the money. When I started I was 35 and had failed in every enterprise I had ever attempted. . . . I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.”