The title of the series, Earthseed, comes from a Darwinian religion that Lauren makes up. The main character, who tells her story through journal entries, is a 15-year-old black girl named Lauren Oya Olamina, who, as the New Yorker points out, is wise enough to determine that people have changed the climate of the world. In Parable of the Sower, there are signs of climate change, such as drought and rising seas. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.”
Butler ignored the received idea that black people belonged in science fiction only if their blackness was crucial to the plot…She later made a habit of explaining, as here to the Times, “I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing. from Mars and taken on a tour of the solar system. In one of Butler’s first stories, “Flash – Silver Star,” which she wrote at the age of eleven, a young girl is picked up by a U.F.O.
Her mother worked as a maid and her father a shoe-shiner. Perhaps she imagined herself as one such type of protagonist, and rightly so. Perhaps this future is something Octavia could envision as a child in a world where a critical dystopia didn’t seem that unimaginable, existed in some form already, and had signs of continuing, though it is reasonable to suggest that in her novels, Octavia created hopeful heroes. Note that climate change is a historical, present, and future concern. That’s to say it is as much a reflection of the past as a projection of a brighter future in which black and African culture does not hide in the margins of the white mainstream. It is an intersectional lens through which to view possible futures or alternate realities, though it is rooted in chronological fluidity. The term Afrofuturism, coined in 1993, seeks to reclaim black identity through art, culture, and political resistance. In African Arguments, Bolanle Austen Peters states:
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The Earthseed series seems to accurately envision the near-future world’s downfalls, brought on by climate change and economic disparity, which have resulted in growing populism and demagoguery around the world. Inverse calls Octavia Butler the “Mother of Afrofuturism” and describes four themes used in her books: critique of modern-day hierarchies, violence, survival, and diversity. Though a few terms have been introduced to describe the subject of climate change as a genre in fiction, one phrase that is often ignored is Afrofuturism, which, according to Inverse, is a type of cultural aesthetic that explores the intersection of African culture with technology and futurism.
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She went against the odds on many levels: gender, skin color, and story subjects.
But we should never forget adventurous authors like Octavia Butler who were innovative for their time. And, of course, writers naturally take on what they see around them. The reasoning may be that today, climate change is more accepted and obvious around the world. The number of authors tackling the subject of climate change in fiction has risen in the past few years, but as stated earlier in this series, many authors were writing about it before it became more mainstream. Despite tackling multiple issues – politics, environment, segregation, religion, social injustice – her prose was concise. Her protagonists were stoic and inspiring. The worlds she built were beautiful, harsh, and grim. She wrote powerfully, imaginatively, and creatively. Octavia helped usher in the genre of young adult dystopian fiction. Talking about the Earthseed series as a very “real” tale should not drown out the story itself. And by the early 1990s the first IPCC report stated that warming was likely. If you look at a timeline of climate change, you’ll see that global warming had, by and large, become agreed upon by scientific opinion by 1977. But time marches impossibly on, and for those of us who clearly remember 1993, the vacuum that has sucked out space from then to now seems both eternal and too quick. Sower opens in 2024, which once seemed so futuristic, even in the year 1993 when the book was published. A third in the series, Parable of the Trickster, was not completed before her death. Earthseed contains two novels: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. It is the Earthseed series on which this spotlight focuses, but her other works are relevant and recommended.
In addition, she wrote two stand-alone novels, two short story collections, and several essays and speeches. 123-126.) Octavia’s series include the Patternist, Xenogenesis, and Parable (also called the Earthseed). “Positive Obsession.” Bloodchild and Other Stories. New York, Seven Stories, 2005. By the time she was a pre-teen she got her first typewriter, ignoring her Aunt Hazel telling her, “Negroes can’t be writers.” (Source: Butler, Octavia Estelle. A Hugo and Nebula award winner, she wrote fairy tales as a young girl. Octavia Butler, an African American science fiction writer, was born in 1947 and died in 2006.
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