10 awesome science fiction and fantasy books by Black authors

10. Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler

It’s pretty much impossible to look at the impact of Black writers on science fiction and not talk about Octavia E. Butler. Many have referred to her as the “grand dame of science fiction,” and the moniker is well-warranted. Starting with the publication of her first short stories and novels in the 1970s, she left a tremendous mark on the genre.

There are many books we could talk about where Octavia E. Butler is concerned, but the one I’d most like to call to your attention is Lilith’s Brood (originally published under the name Xenogenesis).

Lilith’s Brood tells the story of Lilith Iyapo, a human woman who awakens after a centuries-long sleep on a starship belonging to a race of aliens called Oankali. Early in the first novel of the trilogy, we find out that Earth is a ruined, dying planet, and that the Oankali have saved the remaining humans with the aim of helping them repopulate.

The hitch is that the Oankali also want to crossbreed with humanity. To say much more would be give too much away, but throughout the three books that make up Lilith’s Brood, readers are given a generations-long examination of this concept, how humanity receives the idea, and what the effects of two “alien” species trying to live together might be.

Octavia Butler, who passed on in 2006, was a master at using science fiction to examine social issues. In Lilith’s Brood, she challenges concepts of gender and traces Lilith’s path from fear to eventual understanding, as she awakens to find herself surrounded by creatures that appear terrifying at first. This sort of thorough examination of the human condition is a mark of great science fiction.

From her six-book Patternist series to her time-traveling novel Kindred (which examines slavery through the lens of a 1970s-era American coming to terms with her heritage), there has rarely been an author as versatile or as influential as Octavia E. Butler.

One can only hope that, in the days to come, we can embrace a landscape as diverse as those imagined in the pages of her science fiction.

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