A pair of recently discovered early stories by prize-winning science fiction author Octavia Butler will be coming out as an e-book in June.

Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher, announced Tuesday that A Necessary Being and Childfinder will be compiled in a single volume titled Unexpected Stories that will be released June 24th.



The book will include an introduction by Walter Mosley.

Finally coming out: Two titles by Octavia Butler (pictured) were recently discovered, and will be released this June

'Unexpected Stories reveals the themes that would become Butler's lexicon: the complicating mysteries we assign to power, race, and gender,' Mosley writes.



'Reading these tales is like looking at a photograph of a child who you only knew as an adult. In her eyes you can see the woman that you came to know much later; a face, not yet fully formed, that contains the promise of something that is now a part of you; the welcomed surprise of recognition in innocent eyes,' he continued.

Serious act: Butler was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame

Butler's literary agent, Merrilee Heifetz, found the stories, written in the early 1970s, among the author's papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

According to Open Road, A Necessary Being tells of how the leaders of two ancient tribes 'must broker a delicate peace to ensure that their peoples are to survive.'



In Childfinder, a young woman 'locates children with budding psionic powers and teaches them to protect themselves from society.'

Butler, who died in 2006 at age 58, was o ne of the first black science fiction writers to receive mainstream attention and was known for such books as Bloodchild and Other Stories and the novel Parable of the Sower.

Butler was the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship, in 1995.



The honor, also known as the 'genius grant,' has also been awarded to intellectual luminaries including David Foster Wallace and Junot Diaz.

