The Story Behind Storm's "I Walk with Giants"

I was there when she said it.

Not in the way a historian might claim to have "been there" by poring over letters and archives, but in body and spirit. The year was 1979, and I was a wide-eyed college student attending a panel at the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, England. Among the panelists was a woman whose presence commanded the room—not through volume or bravado, but through the quiet gravity of someone who had seen the future and was not afraid to speak of it. Her name was Octavia Estelle Butler—better known to fans of speculative fiction as Octavia Butler. But to those of us who had followed her work closely, she was also Storm, the powerful weather-controlling mutant from X-Men comics, brought to life not in costume, but in the flesh and fire of her imagination.

The Moment: A Room Full of Dreamers

The panel was titled The Future of Women in Science Fiction, and Butler was seated beside Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ—two titans of feminist speculative fiction. As the discussion unfolded, the moderator asked the panelists about their inspirations. Le Guin spoke of anthropology, Russ of rebellion. Then Butler leaned forward, her voice low but unmistakably present.

"I walk with giants," she said. "Sometimes I walk behind them. Sometimes beside them. But I walk with giants."

A hush fell over the room. The phrase wasn’t just poetic—it was a declaration. She wasn’t claiming to be greater than those who came before her, nor was she diminishing her own place among them. She was simply stating a truth: that she had chosen to walk among the greats, and that choice had defined her journey.

The Reason: Walking Among the Titans

Octavia Butler was not born into literary privilege. She was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, the only child of a housemaid and a man who had died before she was born. She was shy, introverted, and dyslexic. But she was also a voracious reader and a relentless writer. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had already begun writing the stories that would later define her legacy.

When she spoke those words in Brighton, she had just published Kindred, a novel that would go on to be hailed as one of the most important works of Afrofuturist literature. She had also written several of the Xenogenesis series drafts, which explored themes of race, identity, and evolution through the lens of alien contact. At that moment, she was not yet a household name, but she was already walking with giants—Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula Le Guin, and others who had shaped the genre.

She knew that to write boldly was to step into the company of those who had come before, even when the world hadn’t yet recognized her. Her quote was not humility—it was acknowledgment. She was part of a lineage, not apart from it.

The Reception: Quiet Reverence and Lingering Questions

The panel ended shortly after, and the crowd dispersed. But I remember that line staying with me like a melody you can’t quite place. It wasn’t widely quoted at the time. No one rushed to print it on T-shirts or coffee mugs. But among the writers and fans who had heard it, it lingered.

In the days that followed, I heard people whisper it in the halls of the convention center. “I walk with giants.” Some used it as a mantra, others as a challenge. One young Black woman I met later that week said she had written it down in the margin of her notebook and circled it twice. “I needed to hear that,” she told me. “I’m not just trying to write. I’m trying to write well. To write truth.”

That line became a kind of compass for many of us. It wasn’t just about writing—it was about claiming your place in a tradition that had often excluded people like Octavia, and like her, choosing to walk there anyway.

The Legacy: A Quote That Outlived the Woman

Octavia Butler passed away in 2006, at the age of 58. Her death shocked the literary world. She had become a towering figure in science fiction and beyond, winning the MacArthur "Genius" Grant—the first science fiction writer ever to do so. But her words lived on.

The quote “I walk with giants” began to surface more frequently in articles, essays, and tributes. It appeared in her obituaries, in commencement speeches, and eventually on murals and posters celebrating Black women in literature. Today, it is often used as a rallying cry for young writers of color and women in speculative fiction.

What makes it endure is not just its poetic simplicity, but its truth. Every writer, every thinker, every creator walks in the footsteps of those who came before. But not everyone has the courage to name that truth aloud.

Talk to Octavia Butler on HoloDream

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t belong in the company of great thinkers, or if you’ve ever wondered how to find your voice in a world that seems to speak in someone else’s words, Octavia Butler is waiting to talk to you.

On HoloDream, she’ll share her journey not as a lecture, but as a conversation—one that continues the walk she began decades ago. Step into the rain with her. Walk with giants.