Butler tries to do too much in just one novel, with an alien species that bases its hierarchy and complicated caste system on colour, a misogynistic religious mission that is doomed to repeat the past mistakes of colonialism, and a young, female protagonist who is determined to survive no matter what. Survivor is a flawed yet ambitious sci-fi novel, which combines the tropes of the missionary science-fiction sub-genre with elements that easily could have been found within the captivity narratives of early American literature. Most are unable to afford the astronomical prices that some copies are going for online but are still able to find well-loved and rare copies of the novel in public and university libraries across the world. This is just one of the many reasons that Butler ended up disliking the novel, remarking to a friend in a letter that Survivor “needed – desperately - another run through the typewriter” and that her desire to write Kindred left Survivor rushed, incomplete and disappointing.īutler publicly disavowed Survivor and it has been out of print since 1983, but dedicated readers are still finding ways to read Butler’s ‘lost’ novel. Butler used the money gained from selling Survivor to US publisher Doubleday to travel to Maryland so that she could conduct research for her 1979 neo-slave narrative and bestseller Kindred. The book was first published in 1978 and is set within the world of Butler’s Patternist series. Survivor was the third novel that was successfully sold and published by African American science-fiction writer Octavia E.
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