All that she touched: the "lucky ones" gather to remember the author they knew as a mentor and friend.

IT SEEMED MOST FITTING THAT WE SHOULD remember her in a bookstore. So there we were, about 50 of us--writers, readers, educators, friends. Octavia had been gone more than a week, and we were hungry for the company of other mourners. So many, after all, have yet to discover exactly how much we lost in Octavia. So many do not yet understand why she won the MacArthur "genius" grant, the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. So many will pick up Kindred (Doubleday, 1979) for the first time tomorrow and discover her genius anew. Those of us who knew her already--the lucky ones who laughed with her, dined with her, spoke to her, heard her dynamic readings, or read her words in the privacy of our own lives--were feeling the pain.

If Octavia's last appearance at Eso Won Books in Los Angeles hadn't fallen on Halloween night in 2005--our two-year-old son's first trick-or-treat experience--that is the last place we would have seen her. Instead, four months later, on March 9, 2006, we met at Eso Won to remember her. If we craned our ears, we could almost hear her deep-timbered voice. We could almost see the crown of her head, all six feet of her, among the shelves of books and posters featuring the works of Walter Mosley and Dr. Cornel West.

One by one, we stood to remember her in a place where she still felt so close.

Prophetess Among Us

A childhood friend of Octavia's, Donna Oliver, gave us a glimpse of her in elementary school--already big, already bookish, already dreaming ideas that most of the people around her had no hope of understanding. "But I thought she was fascinating," she said, and their friendship lasted 50 years. Every week, they spoke for an hour on the phone. "Octavia was a talker" she said, "and the phone was her instrument."

We read passages from Octavia's work: From Parable of the Sower (Seven Stories Press, 1993). From Kindred. From Mind of My Mind (Doubleday, 1977). Each small excerpt, read in random order, was ripe with such profundity that Octavia suddenly seemed to have been a prophetess walking among us. A pastor and a friend of nearly 20 years, the Reverend Gayle Davis-Culp, quoted a passage from Parable of the Sower:

   All that you touch
   You Change.
   All that you Change
   Changes you.
   The only lasting truth
   Is Change.
   God Is Change.

When a magazine reporter e-mailed us to say she had heard Octavia had died, we hoped it was a rumor. We called writer Harlan Ellison, Octavia's mentor--and the most honored living science fiction writer--who had not heard, but he investigated and called back later in a weary voice to confirm that it was true: Octavia was gone. To Harlan, Octavia was "Estelle," which the E in her name stood for. He always considered her his greatest discovery.

A Ride Home

After Steve's mother died in December 1983, he moved back into his mother's house in his old neighborhood, and Octavia lived on West Boulevard, about six blocks away. Steve had met Octavia shortly after his first publications in 1980, but it was only after they both appeared at a book signing in 1994 and she asked him for a ride home--Octavia never drove--that he realized how close she lived. He invited her over for dinner frequently. He went to her house, as well, but she never cooked for him. Instead, she took him to a small, homey restaurant. They talked about writing and life.

Octavia's old house was a duplex, with bars on the door and windows, and she often felt a sense of insecurity, fear of crime in the neighborhood, and neglect on the part of our national political leaders. Not coincidentally, fear and stress cropped up in conversation--and her work--quite a bit. Her house was crammed with books from top to bottom, but at that time there was no television set. She traveled mostly by bus, when she couldn't get a ride, and she loved to walk.

The last time we spoke to Octavia was on the telephone in the summer of 2005, when she called about her manuscript for Fledgling (Seven Stories Press, 2005). We took turns on the phone, talking about work, life and family. We felt like a family, too, of sorts. In 2000, when we visited Octavia's new house in Seattle to interview her for a magazine cover story, we were surprised and gratified to see a photo we posed for in 1997 framed on her wall--Tananarive, Steve, Octavia, Samuel R. Delany and Jewelle Gomez.

"My other family" Octavia explained. That photo was taken at Clark Atlanta University's conference on the "African-American Fantastic Imagination: Explorations in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror" (It was the first time Tananarive had met either Octavia or Steve--making it one of the most magical experiences of Tananarive's life.)

Now our fragile family of black speculative novelists has lost its matriarch.

God Is Change.

To honor Octavia E. Butler's memory, Warner Books, Seven Stories Press, Beacon Press, The Carl Brandon Society, Writers House, and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame have set up a scholarship for writers of color to attend a Clarion Writers Workshop. For more information: The Carl Brandon Society, P.O. Box 23336, Seattle, WA, 98102; telephone: [phone]; e-mail: [e-mail] or [e-mail].

Steven Barnes is a science-fiction writer whose 20th novel, Great Sky Woman, set in prehistoric Africa, will be published in June 2006 by One World/Ballantine. Tananarive Due, an American Book Award winner, is the author of Joplin's Ghost (Atria, 2005) among other novels.