Este relato, que ganó el premio Hugo en 1984, fue escrito por Butler tras presenciar una sangrienta y absurda pelea mientras iba en el autobús. En su colección de relatos, Bloodchild and Other Stories, Butler afirmaba que al presenciar la pelea se preguntó «si la especie humana evolucionaría lo suficiente para comunicarse sin emplear un tipo u otro de puños». Y entonces, se le ocurrió la primera línea de este relato. Originalmente, Valdemar la publicó en las páginas 15 a 34 de la antología Paisajes del Apocalipsis: antología de relatos sobre el final de los tiempos (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...). La editorial lo ofreció gratuitamente en la red como ayuda para el confinamiento por la pandemia del COVID-19 el 4 de abril de 2020.
Author
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. After her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.
