Octavia Butler and her concept of "The others"

 I recently read the article, "Black Women and the Science Fiction Gebre," a Black Scholar Interview with Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler is a science fiction writer who won a Nebula award. She wrote books such as "Clays Ark," Kendra," and, "Mind of MY Mind". The interview conducted in this reading was recorded on October 29, 1985. 

    In this interview, Butler is asked many questions. Still, I believe the most important question she is asked is, "Why is the science fiction literary form that black and female writers have not sufficiently explored?"  She argues that women and black writers don't write science fiction as much because it was first a white boys' genre. It was targeted at white males and written by white males. This is interesting to me because science fiction has no limits. You can make up almost anything and anything can happen in these books, so why aren't more women and blacks writing them. It is a genre that should be inclusive. Blacks and women were minorities at the start of science fiction and white male writers wanted to keep it that way. This brings me to the second point of her interview. 

    Butler talks about why she believes there is no black representation in science fiction movies and books. Racism is her main point. In the article, the movie, Star Wars is touched on, it gets good praise but the article highlights how "it shows every kind of alien, but there is only one kind of human--white ones; no black people are shown. There are no non-whites at all and where are they." A writer from the show said that "If you put a black, all of  a sudden the focus is on this person." He said having blacks in Star Wars would cause a racial problem. He then continues to try and solve this problem by suggesting black get representation in science fiction movies by being "the other." Octavia Butler used this writer's thoughts and write books using Black people the others. At first, she was called racist, mostly by white males. Her books weren't getting published because of her use of using Black people as others. Now she has greatly succeeded in using this idea. Her most popular book where she used this idea of black people as the other, is the book, Survivor. This is similar to the "Space is the place." They both represent black people as the others.