Octavia's Brood

Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

By: Adrienne Maree Brown, Walidah Imarisha

Narrated by: Je Nie Fleming

Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision and try to create such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia's Brood span genres - sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism - but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas.

©2015 Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown (This edition 2015 AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studios) (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Those concerned with justice and liberation must always persuade the mass of people that a better world is possible. Our job begins with speculative fictions that fire society's imagination and its desire for change. In adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha's visionary conception, and by its activist-artists' often stunning acts of creative inception, Octavia's Brood makes for great thinking and damn good reading. The rest will be up to us." (Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America)

"Conventional exclamatory phrases don't come close to capturing the essence of what we have here in Octavia's Brood. One part sacred text, one part social movement manual, one part diary of our future selves telling us, 'It's going to be okay, keep working, keep loving.' Our radical imaginations are under siege and this text is the rescue mission. It is the new cornerstone of every class I teach on inequality, justice, and social change.... This is the text we've been waiting for." (Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier)

"Octavia once told me that two things worried her about the future of humanity: The tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others. I think she would be humbled beyond words that the fine, thoughtful writers in this volume have honored her with their hearts and minds. And that in calling for us to consider that hierarchical structure, they are not walking in her shadow, nor standing on her shoulders, but marching at her side." (Steven Barnes, author of Lion's Blood)

Great idea, not great writing

I love Brown's activism and the idea behind this of taking organizers and social justice activists and hearing their perspectives on the future. But they aren't necessarily great writers, and I only made it half way through.

Some Hits and Misses

Making my way through this collection of writings honoring the spirit and works of Octavia Butler, I found a few favorites and some hard passes. Some could make really interesting movies or video series. The variety and talent displayed by this material has me hoping for a second volume.

I don't know how to say it.

I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a long time. The writers are fantastic, writing rich speculative fiction, and you can practically hear Octavia over their shoulders, whispering in their ears. I especially love Hollow, because authentic disabled people and chronic pain sufferers are extremely underrepresented in fiction. Wish that one could be made into a novel or series of novels. My one nitpick is that Aftermath was only an excerpt with a cliffhanger. It can't be listened to in audio format, so that is a bummer.

The variety of stories. Learning more about Octavia Butler!

The creativity, ideas, visions, and the transformational words that change the way we think about our world.

This was my intro to AfroFuturism/VisionaryFiction

I liked some of the stories, struggled to finish some, and just plain skipped others. Some of the stories seemed to have been written by professionals with experience in both writing and social justice "fields" and others seemed to have been written by novices or inexperienced students.

Overall I'm glad to have purchased this. I would recommend this for those new to the AfroFuturism genre and maybe even grade school to highschool classrooms.


The voice actor was a bit corny at times and off on her portrayals. For example, one story featured an old woman whose voice was supposed to sound like a young woman but the narrator read all of her parts with a stereotypical raspy old lady voice. Overall she did a good job. I say this while under the impression that this was made for