SOURCE: "'There Goes the Neighborhood': Octavia Butler's Demand for Diversity in Utopias," in Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference, edited by Jane L. Donawerth and Carol A. Kolmerten, Syracuse University Press, 1994, pp. 166-89.

In the following essay, Green discusses Butler's fiction in terms of its criticism of popular science fiction utopias and its social critique on such topics as racism and sexism.

Octavia E. Butler's Dawn, the first novel in the trilogy Xenogenesis, is an angry utopian novel, a scathing condemnation of the tendency of human beings to hate, repress, and attack differences they do not understand. It pleads for an end to fear and prejudice, insisting that aggressive social intervention must counteract the ancient hierarchical structures of thought that humans share with their closest animal relatives. The illustration on the jacket sleeve of Dawn ironically emphasizes Butler's cause for anger. Though the novel clearly...