Book excerpt: Octavia E. Butler is widely recognized today as one of the most important figures in contemporary science fiction. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars and covering Butler's complete works from the bestselling novel Kindred, to her short stories and major novel sequences Patternmaster, Xenogenesis and The Parables, this is the most comprehensive Companion to Butler scholarship available today. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Octavia E. Butler covers the full range of contemporary scholarly themes and approaches to the author's work, including: · Cyborgs and the posthuman · Race and African American history · Afrofuturism · Gender and sexuality · New perspectives from Religious Studies, the Environmental Humanities and Disability Studies · New discoveries from the Butler archives at the Huntington Library The book includes a comprehensive bibliography of works by Butler and secondary scholarship on her work as well as an afterword by the novelist Tananarive Due.