BONUS: Throughline — Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2021
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. She was a deep observer of the human condition, perplexed and inspired by our propensity towards self-destruction. Butler was also fascinated by the cyclical nature of history, and often looked to the past when writing about the future. Along with her warnings is her message of hope — a hope conjured by centuries of survival and persistence. For every society that perished in her books, came a story of rebuilding, of repair.
Read Throughline's article about Octavia Butler.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, Maddie Sifai here. Today we are wrapping up our week celebrating Black |
| 0:05.6 | Excellence in Science with a very special episode from our friends at NPR's History |
| 0:10.6 | podcast, Thru Line. As part of their Imagining New World series, they dive into the life |
| 0:16.9 | of visionary science fiction writer Octavia Butler. If you don't know already, Octavia |
| 0:22.5 | became known for her cautionary tales, combined with messages of hope and resilience. Her |
| 0:29.0 | work made her the first Black woman to win the Hulu and the Nebula, Science Fictions |
| 0:34.0 | Most prestigious awards, and as a huge fan of Octavia and her work, I am so excited for |
| 0:40.6 | this one y'all. So let's get to it. |
| 0:49.7 | Does it ever seem to you that there are people among us who hold up the sky and make the rivers |
| 0:55.0 | flow? People who are just like other people, just like the rest of us, only different. |
| 1:01.8 | They're the structural beams in the house we all share. The house that has a sky for a roof. |
| 1:07.8 | And usually they don't want to call attention to themselves. They just want to be who they are. |
| 1:11.9 | Do what they do with this little interference as possible. Octavia comes to my mind as |
| 1:18.6 | first among that group of people. In her books she showed us the horrors and the great |
| 1:26.9 | good that humans can create. And the choices that she made in her books and in her life |
| 1:33.0 | always gave us new ways of seeing. She was a beacon of hope. Sometimes even when she wasn't trying. |
| 1:43.0 | These novels are not prophetic. These novels are cautionary tales. These novels are if we are not |
| 1:53.4 | careful. You know, if we carry on as we have been, this is what we might wind up with. |
| 2:01.0 | You have to think about what kind of world you want to live in. And I don't think there is a person |
| 2:06.3 | alive who would want to live in the world that I've written about, but we can arrange it. The |
| 2:13.6 | problems that I write about are problems that we can do something about. That's why I write about them. |
| 2:25.4 | All that you touch, you change. You're listening to Thru Line from NPR. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.