It is a book that Butler’s many admirers have been waiting for, whether they knew it or not. Unexpected Stories is one of those surprises.
As novelist Nisi Shawl notes in their eloquent introduction, we may live in a fundamentally unfair world, but “sweet surprises” occasionally come our way. These may be early stories, but they are the clear reflections of a powerful and original talent, and their belated publication is a major literary event. In the second story, “Childfinder,” the title character is a woman who uses her psychic abilities to track down children with similar nascent abilities-and protect them from the abuses of a predatory society. With the arrival of visitors from a distant mountain tribe, the society known as the Rohkohn finds itself faced with the sudden prospect of profound social change. “A Necessary Being” takes us into the heart of an alien culture with a rigid hierarchical system based on caste and skin coloration. This slender but resonant volume contains two stories-recently unearthed and never before in print-by one of the most significant figures in modern science fiction: Octavia E. Unexpected Stories is, by any measure, an unexpected gift.
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