African American science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s fiction often focuses on more-than-human relationships in ways that critiques and undermines human exceptionalism. Her fiction also challenges ‘theoretical exceptionalism’ in that it seriously addresses epistemological and ethical issues in the intimate as well as hostile encounters between humans and different species throughout her oeuvre, from the Clayarks (a quadruped human-alien species) in her first published novel Patternmaster (1974) to the Ina (or vampires) in her last novel, Fledgling (2005). Through these always cultural and often biological exchanges, Butler’s fiction explores the problems and possibilities of more-than-human relations in ways that match and, I would argue, sometimes surpass theoretical formulations; or at least one could say that her fiction works – to borrow Donna Haraway’s expression – as a “companion species” to theory. 

In this talk, I will outline some previous work on Butler that has dealt with the relation between her fiction and theoretical interventions, which I hope will inspire further thoughts on the conceptual and theoretical power of speculative fiction in more-than-human studies.