SOURCE: "The Technology Fix," in American Book Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, February/March, 1996, p. 28.

Miller is the author of the short story collection, Las Vegas Everywhere. In the following review, he asserts that Butler is "not just a good science-fiction writer, but also one of the most interesting and innovative political writers around today."

At a recent speaking engagement in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Octavia Butler told the story of how she was hassled by the police in L.A. for trying to pay for her groceries with a hundred dollar bill her mother had given her for Christmas. The money was hers, but she was black with no I.D. and that was all that was needed to make the store manager and the police suspicious enough to confiscate the money. She followed the cops to the station and waited to get the hundred dollars back, but paid a...