Octavia Butler Walked So N.K. Jemisin Could Run

How Butler’s vision for series writing reshaped speculative fiction and paved the way for future generations of Black sci-fi and fantasy writers

Of course, Octavia Butler wasn’t just a writer; she was a blueprint. When she expanded her speculative worlds across multiple books, she carved space for future generations of Black science fiction and fantasy writers to do the same. For instance, Butler’s Patternist series moves from 1680 to 2023, the Parable series starts in 2024 and ends around 2090, and the Xenogenesis trilogy begins 250 years after the parables and ends around 2366. Today, we see the legacy of Butler’s series writing in the work of N.K. Jemisin, whose expansive world-building in The Broken Earth trilogy earned her three consecutive Hugo Awards, a first in the genre’s history.