This is the first time that Octavia Butler's work has been adapted for television. The MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, whose science fiction books are often set in a dystopian climate, has several awards to her name—including two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

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Butler sold her first stories in the 70s, but she started writing science fiction as a teenager in California, where she was raised by her widowed mother. Butler described herself as a pessimist, a feminist, and a combination of ambition and laziness. She hoped to be an eighty-year-old writer someday, but she passed away in 2006 at the age of 58. In her time spent as a writer, she authored over fourteen novels and several short story collections, essays, and speeches.

While she resisted being called a genre writer, she was proud to have audiences in black readers, feminists, and sci-fi fans. By writing from the voice of the disenfranchised, Butler was able to properly give a voice to those without one. She called sci-fi the freest way to write, and by focusing her writing efforts on feminism and black culture, she was able to bring the freedom of sci-fi to communities that weren't always catered to directly.