Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58

If you have not read Octavia Butler before, you should now, because the master seer's eyes have closed for the last time.

Death came as the result of a fall -- surely someone as gifted at characterization as she would have scripted a more poetic end. For examplem in her novel, Wild Seed, the central love/hate conflict is between one immortal character who cannot fully live and another character who cannot die. Each is a predator -- although one is struggling to find a way out of the madness. We don't get to feel superior to either character, though -- instead, we get a gimlet-eyed view of our own complicity in the US' tortured history of race and gender oppression.

Mark Anthony Neal helpfully sent along a link to this interview by Jelani Cobb from about a decade ago. Tributes are accumulating on Nalo Hopkinson's blog. By the way, Jasmyne is annoyed that the obits don't point out that Butler was a lesbian.

UPDATE: According to someone who knew Butler who emailed me, she was heterosexual, although her work does contain sympathetic lgbt characters.