I also think the characters weren't developed very well. However, it wasn't particularly original, even for 1978. I do have to say that the actual story was quite good.
The best parts of the book are the scenes that are happening in the "now" rather than the "then". She also spends too much time having characters telling each other what's going on rather than putting the reader in the action. As a result, the story never develops any depth. She approaches the these topics like a child playing tag-a quick touch before running off in another direction. I think the real reason Butler loathed it is that she wanted to bring up issues of race, sex, and religion, and she chickened out. The story is good and it is worthy of an episode of that boundary-breaking series. That in and of itself doesn't sound so awful. So, I guess the real question is: Why did Octavia Butler hate Survivor so much? In her review, Jo Walton states that Butler called it her "Star Trek" book. On my most recent visit to the library that I finally bought a library card for (grrr), I found a copy in the most excellent of library science fiction sections. (The current low price on Amazon is $134.01 for a paperback, $603.50 for a hardback.) Jo Walton did a review of it a few months ago on Tor.com and my curiosity was piqued once again. Of course, that got my curiosity going, but not enough to pay over $100 for a used copy. Butler hated the book so much, she never allowed it to be reprinted. Somewhere along the way, I learned that there was one book in the series that had been left out of the collection, Survivor. I promptly went out and purchased the omnibus version of the series, Seed to Harvest. I was completely blown away by her storytelling and her imagination. I had my first encounter with Octavia Butler last March when I read Wild Seed, the first book in the Patternist series. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges.
She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.Īfter her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.
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