![]() ![]() She continues to help her step-mother educate children, for reading and writing are uncommon in Butler’s 2025. Her small community is content and doesn’t want to hear her ideas about keeping an emergency pack by their beds in case they have to flee in the middle of the night. She’s also compelled to write about what she calls “Earthseed,” a new religion she’s crafting that states God is change and people belong in the stars (surely a metaphor for starting humanity over off Earth). Lauren is a survivalist, reading books about plants and medicine her father has kept. Thanks to home ownership, the Olaminas aren’t living in the streets, working instead with their walled off community to share food and money any time someone’s house is broken into. Both adults have PhDs but can barely find work in California. Parable of the Sower begins with fifteen-year-old Laura Olamina, whose father is a professor and preacher and step-mother raises her younger brothers. Climate change is a overwhelming the ecosystem, unemployment is high, people build walls around their communities to keep out unwanted folks, and sex trafficking is a problem. No one drives cars anymore because gas is largely gone, a drug called pyro causes addicts to light fires, people pay the police/EMT/firefighters an expensive fee to come (it takes hours for arrival), and dead and dying bodies lay around the streets as feral dogs eat them. Although there wasn’t an apocalypse, everything is changed. Published originally in 1993, Octavia Spencer’s futuristic novel is set in 2025. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |