Sci-Fi Pioneer Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler’s 1979 book, Kindred, is now a series for FX on Hulu. In 1993, the pioneering author, who died in 2006, told Fresh Air she made up her own stories so that she could see herself — a Black woman — in them. Kindred is about a writer who involuntarily time travels to the Antebellum South.

Also we remember lesbian pulp fiction writer Marijane Meaker who died last month.

Critic David Bianculli reflects on the best of 2022 television.