Octavia E. Butler, the woman you were...

I’m currently laying in my bed staring at the ceiling in an attempt to process my thoughts after finishing the audiobooks for Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler. These two speculative science fiction novels, published in 1993 and 1998 respectively, explore the uncertain, unsettling future of humanity.

Butler’s speculative portrayal of America is a country riddled with social inequality and the lingering affects of climate catastrophe. As the smell of smoke from two historic and deadly fires still lingers over California, as small mountain towns in North Carolina still struggle from the devastating hurricane that wiped entire towns off the map, and as President Trump passes executive order after executive order targeting trans* people, immigrants and anyone whose existence can be conflated with DEI, one begins to question the speculativeness of these novels. The power of Butler’s work is that the reality of what we are currently facing, what some have been facing, and what we will all face in the future is inescapable.

A couple of weeks ago, there was discourse on threads around the magic of Octavia Butler. Some argued she was able to write such realistic portrayals of what would be her future and our present because she was otherworldly. Others argued it was because she was a student of history who paid attention. I argue that it was probably a bit of both. One cannot read Butler’s work and not feel the spirit of something else, something otherworldly amongst the pages of her words. One, however, also cannot be a student of history without realizing that Butler, too, was a diligent student. Butler had clearly been paying attention to the signs of her current reality—which had been shaped and was being shaped by history—and was brave enough to accept the future that would be if humans did not alter their actions.

What makes Butler’s work speculative is that the future she wrote about in these novels— and the present that it feels we are speeding toward—did not and does not have to be. To me, Butler’s work is not a prediction but rather a warning. It is a warning that if we do not drastically change course, we will be doomed to a fate that is not the same but similar to that of the characters in the novel. It is a warning that the government will not save you, that you—alongside your community—will have to save yourself.

Butler’s novels serve almost as a manual for how to navigate the times we find ourselves in, for how to save ourselves. Through Lauren, Butler teaches us to accept the signs of trouble we are seeing and to be prepared. She teaches us how to prepare but she also teaches us that for some people (ie: the unhoused) the catastrophic future we are scared of is already here and that they have a lot to teach us if we are willing to learn, to center them in our communities and care.

Through Acorn, Butler teaches us that we will not survive without community. The characters of the novel not only survive through times of unimaginable horror but also live through things turning around for the world because they had each other. Their care was unwavering even if they didn’t particularly like each other. Another lesson from Butler: the Community needed to survive, to resist, to persist is not one in which everyone will like each other nor is that necessary. What matters is that everyone in the Community believes that people, regardless of how much you like them, are worthy of protection and care and safety.

And through Earthseed, Butler teaches us the necessity of believing that another world is possible. Lauren’s belief in Earthseed was really a belief that the world she was living in was not an inevitability, that another world, less harmful world could exist. This belief mirrors that of abolition. Abolitionists like myself are interested in abolishing the current oppressive, violent systems that we have because we believe that another world is possible.

This belief, however, does not exist without action and neither did Lauren’s. Lauren acted in ways that supported her belief in the possibility of Earthseed to be actualized, in her belief that another world could be created. Here, Butler teaches us that if we believe another world is one day possible then we have to act like it today. We have to re-evaluate our relationship with the land and each other. We have to act in ways that say “this world is possible and we will make it so” and that is what Lauren did. It is no wonder, then, that the Parable of the Talents ends with Earthseed taking flight to the stars. What other conclusion would there be with Lauren’s determination and steadfastness? That, too, is a lesson: one day the determined, steadfast people will win.

Octavia E. Butler has provided us with gifts that I wish we didn’t need. The most obvious of these gifts being the manuals for how to navigate what’s head. However, the gift that I am appreciating most right now is the gift Butler gives by embracing the speculative and sharing what Robin D.G. Kelley would call ‘freedom dreams’ through her work. It is easy to read Butler’s work and focus only on the horrific parallels between her fictional world and our real one but as I read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, all I could think was Butler is trying to express a way out of the cycle of violence, oppression, and harm. Those are mere backdrops to the actual work of these novels. The actual work of these novels is to highlight what’s on the other side of systems of capitalism and white supremacy. Butler is painting a world of dignity, care, and true freedom—the very things capitalism and white supremacy deny us all.