The power and prescience of Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower'

WAMU 88.5 | By Michael Falero

Published October 7, 2024 at 2:33 PM EDT

A typewriter used by science-fiction author and pioneer Octavia Butler is on display at the temporary exhibit Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

It’s 2024. Extreme weather events due to global warming have overwhelmed parts of the United States. Water is increasingly scarce. The mass migration of people in search of more livable conditions has caused political tension and border closures. A drug epidemic spreads across the country. And a candidate for president promises he can fix the country’s problems with more religion and fewer regulations.

That’sthepremiseof Octavia E. Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, whichwas published in 1993.

The novel contains a powerful and poignant vision of the United States of the future, one that rings scarily true in the present. The 2024 of Butler’s 1993 work isn’t so far away from the 2024 in which we’ll all currently living. Butler published asequel, Parable of the Talents, in1998. Both featurea protagonist named Lauren Olamina, a young woman trying to survive and make a life for herself.

What can we learn from Butler’s novel? What makes both Sower and Talents so enduring as a series of speculative science fiction? And what does it mean that our world more and more bears resemblance to works of apocalyptic fiction?

We hear from a panel of experts about what we can learn from Butler’s vision of the US, with spoilers, and the message of hope she has at the center of this dark story.