Cover for Unexpected Stories
Well, old stories really, but previously unpublished! Open Road Media has produced an ebook of two previously unavailable Butler short stories, available for pre-order now, hitting e-readers on June 24. The collection is called Unexpected Stories, and contains the stories “A Necessary Being” and “Childfinder.” Per the Publisher’s Weekly review, the former is a short story prequel to Butler’s out-of-print novel Survivor (the text of which is easy to find online). The latter is a story set on Earth during the Patternist cycle, about racial tensions between telepaths.

“Childfinder” was bought by Harlan Ellison for Last Dangerous Visions, after Butler wrote it during his week at Clarion. Curiously, the story seems to have been removed from the Clarion archives. In 2008 I went to the special collections library and pulled the stories from Butler’s year, eager to read “Childfinder,” but there were only two of her pieces in there, both very short and unremarkable. “Childfinder” was nowhere to be found.

I’ll get to read it soon, though. Here’s a link to Open Road Media’s ebook page for Unexpected Stories


EDIT: Sam Miller informs me that, as of 2012, “Childfinder” is back in the archive. I have no explanation for this. It definitely wasn’t there in 2008.