SOURCE: "Octavia Butler and the Black Science-Fiction Heroine," in Black American Literature, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer, 1984, pp. 78-81.

Salvaggio is Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University. In the following essay, she discusses Butler's black, female protagonists in the Patternist novels.

A traditional complaint about science fiction is that it is a male genre, dominated by male authors who create male heroes who control distinctly masculine worlds. In the last decade, however, a number of women writers have been changing that typical scenario. Their feminine and feminist perspectives give us a different kind of science fiction, perhaps best described by Pamela Sargent's term "Women of Wonder." In a sense, Octavia Butler's science fiction is a part of that new scenario, featuring strong female protagonists who shape the course of social events. Yet in another sense, what Butler has to offer is something very different. Her heroines...