Unexpected Stories is a collection of two short speculative fiction works by Octavia Butler that was posthumously published in 2014.

Tahneh of the Rohkhon people is a Hao, a type of humanoid creature with blue skin and tall stature.

Barbara erases her own memories of the existence of psionic abilities in order to prevent the organization from getting information about her students.

In a postscript, a historian stated that psionic people died out from a natural disease rather than internal struggles, lamenting the passing of their utopian society.

A Necessary Being explores the issue of race through an allegorical caste system in which all characters have skin that is either yellow, green, or blue.

[4] Publishers Weekly gave the collection a starred review, calling the stories "superb examples of [Butler's] craft".