This chapter examines Octavia E. Butler’s reconfiguration of the dominant narratives of culture within anthropology, sociobiology, and science fiction in her Xenogenesis trilogy (1987–1989). Drawing on archival documents, including syllabi, class notes, and journals kept during her anthropology coursework at CSU-Los Angeles from summer 1982 to fall 1983, I reveal how Butler’s engagement with anthropological and sociobiological theory shaped the development of Xenogenesis trilogy. Positioned at the intersection of competing narratives of “culture” articulated by anthropology, sociobiology, and science fiction, Butler engages in what I call genre-tic engineering, reconfiguring key narrative elements of each of these discourses—and the power dynamics within them—to reexamine categories of nature/culture, alien/human, gender, race, and genre (science fiction/ethnography). The power, allure, and terror these refashioned narratives evoke is epitomized in figures who are both “captives and converts,” a phrase that appears in Butler’s own notes on anthropology and writing as well. These power dynamics are echoed in Butler’s account of the interaction between author, text, and reader, positioning the author as analogous to the Oankali ooloi—powerful, seductive, creative, and transformational. Ultimately Butler constructs “culture”—and in particular “storytelling”—as problem-solving technology that both is grounded in/determined by genetics and also enables human transformation/“cultivation.”