This essay studies Octavia Estelle Butler’s Kindred (1979 [2003]), Wild Seed (1980) and Dawn (1987) with a postcolonial perspective. It questions the meaning of the narratives of travel through time and space in Butler’s science fiction novels. On the one hand, the postcolonial reading of these novels has helped discovering the moral duty in traveling to the past, its humanitarian and didactic function. On the other hand, it has demonstrated that these same narratives reinforce an imperialistic discourse in favor of cultural imperialism by the redemptive mission assigned to the travelers and their ability to change the social order. Finally, these narratives have been portrayed as a means of political domination for they present the power of imperialist states that conquer, change the mode of leadership in the conquered territories and deprived the native people of all kind of power.