Kindred (Beacon) Although Octavia Butler was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (-genius- grant-) in 1995 because of her science fiction, she does not consider her breakthrough novel, Kindred, to be sci-fi. Indeed, Butler celebrates the 25th anniversary of that book with a review of the many paradoxes that surround her work: contradictions and reversals that have placed her among the distinguished literary novelists of our time.