Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Butler, Octavia - Hoda M. Zaki (essay date July 1990)

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Hoda M. Zaki (essay date July 1990)

SOURCE: "Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler," in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, July, 1990, pp. 239-51.

[In the following essay, Zaki discusses Butler's work as it relates to the genre of utopian and dystopian science fiction.]

In an interview published in 1986, Octavia E. Butler stated that there was no "women's genre in science fiction." Women authors, she continued, wrote too many varieties of S[cience] F[iction] for their work to be labeled as one subgenre. Nor did Butler see herself writing utopian S[cience] F[iction]: "I've actually never projected an ideal society. I don't believe that imperfect humans can form a perfect society." I take issue with both of Butler's statements about her own writing. Like other critics of her work, I maintain that Butler is part of the post-1970 feminist and utopian S[cience] F[iction] trend which emerged when writers...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ruth Salvaggio (essay date Summer 1984)
   2. Octavia Butler with Frances M. Beal (interview date March/April 1986)
   3. Sandra Y. Govan (essay date Spring-Summer 1986)
   4. Adele S. Newson (review date Summer 1989)
   5. Frances Bonner (essay date Spring 1990)
   6. Hoda M. Zaki (essay date July 1990)
   7. Octavia Butler with Randall Kenan (interview date Spring 1991)
   8. Orson Scott Card (review date January 1992)
   9. Michelle Erica Green (essay date 1994)
   10. Rebecca O. Johnson (review date February 1994)
   11. Elyce Rae Helford (essay date Summer 1994)
   12. Hoda Zaki (review date July 1994)
   13. Cathy Peppers (essay date March 1995)
   14. Jim Miller (review date February/March 1996)
   15. Danille Taylor-Guthrie (review date 31 March 1996)
   16. Octavia Butler with Stephen W. Potts (interview date November 1996)
   17. Madelyn Jablon (essay date 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Octavia Butler