Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)

Published in observation of the birthday anniversary of Octavia Butler, June 22, 1947
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Octavia Butler on The Reading Life

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Born 1947, Pasadena, California, died 2006

Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. - from Goodreads

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
I only recently, after a decades long hiatus, have gotten back into reading Science Fiction and Fantasy works.  During my time away authors have become world famous, won all the major genre works and died without me ever hearing of them.

Bloodchild, Butler's Hugo and Nebula Prize Winning novella, was my first venture into her work.  I loved this story about humans and aliens in a symbiotic relationship.  Next I read her time travel work in which an African American woman from contemporary California involuntarily time traveled back to a slave plantation in America, circa 1840.  The conception is brilliant and Butler executed it well.  I next made a bigger venture, reading her tetralogy Lilith's Blood.  I found the overarching idea, the earth being repopulated by humans rescued long ago by aliens interesting but I had to slog my way to the end.

Parable of the Sower begins around 2024, a hopefully not prophetic date when trump could just be completing his second term.  Set in a community near a totally in ruins Los Angeles, destroyed by drugs, an extreme shortage of water brought on by Climate Change, poverty and rampant lawlessness and corruption.  Our narrator, an African American woman Lauren Otamina, lives in a small walled enclave, with her father, her step mother and her brothers.  Her father is a preacher, in the old days both of her parents were professors.  Lauren has a hyperempathy, a condition which causes her to feel the injuries of those around her.  There is a highly addictive drug rampant which turns people into pyromaniacs.  Lauren and her family are in constant fear of roaming bands of scavengers.  Butler does just a wonderful job depicting a very believable dystopian vision of America.

One day scavengers burn down her small enclave, her family  is killed.  Everyone says things are much better in the northern states of Oregon and Washington and Canada is the new promised land.  These states have border guards but if you are lucky you can get through.  Lauren and a few other survivors set out north.  Butler makes the journey very real.

Lauren has her own religion.  Ultimately she learns of a safe heaven up north, owned by an older man she meets on her journey, where she hopes to set up a community.

I don't want to tell too much of the very exciting plot.  There is a sequel to this work, Parable of the Talents that goes further into the life of Lauren after she forms her community.  I hope to read it.

I greatly enjoyed this book.

Mel u

Dawn by Olivia Butler (1987, Part One of The Lilith's Blood Trilogy)

Olivia Butler 1947 to 2006, multi-awarded American Science Fiction Writer


Dawn is part one of Olivia Butler's Lilith's  Blood Trilogy.  I have previously read her Bloodchild and Kindred.  It is my hope to read all of her fiction available as Kindles.

Dawn begins on a vast space ship, itself a living being.  Around 250 years ago America and Russia had a nuclear war which left the earth virtually uninhabitable.  The aliens aboard the ship, the Oankali, removed the survivors and have placed them in deep sleep.  They are planning to return them to earth after they are trained in survival skills.  The Oankali are very strange, to the humans, multitentacled beings.  Lilith, who is African American in origin, is being kept in a room with an alien when we meet her.

The best thing, and it is very well done, about Dawn, is the conceptual ideas, the creation of the aliens, who have been on the ship so long they do not know for sure where there home world is located.  The weakest aspect of the novel, and I found this pretty wanting, was the relationships that develop between the wakened humans as the aliens prepare to return them to the earth, in a jungle environment.

I enjoyed this book.  It falls short of greatness but the overall idea behind it was super interesting.  I have begun part two, Adulthood Rituals.  I bought the trilogy on Amazon for $2.95.

"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler (1984, Hugo and Nebula Award Winner)

"Bloodchild" can be read here

The Octavia Butler Society.

Webpage of The Huntington Library (keeper of The Octavia Butlef Archives)

It is funny how on a Tuesday you have never even heard of a writer and by Friday you have her placed on your read all I can list along with Joseph Roth, Clarice Lispector, R. K. Narayan, Irene Nemirosky, all writers I would never have read but for my participation in the  international book blog community, the world's best readers.

After reading Science Fiction classic
The Way Station by Clifford Simak (in the long ago I was a big reader of Sci Fi but I stopped nearly three decades ago so I know very little about writers who have come (and in some cases gone) in the last three decades.  My research indicated Olivia Butler (1947 to 2006, born in the Los Angeles, California area in 1947 and died in 2006 in Lake Forest Park, Washington after a bad fall), winner of every award in the genre including the Hugo and Nebula Awards was a writer I wanted to check out.  As I researched her (primarily on the links above) I read she was an extreme devotee of the reading life.  Like many of us, Butler came to love reading as an escape from a world in which she did not feel comfortable, a very shy child, books were her friends.  Not only did Butler have serious commercial success she is now avidly studied by academics.  (Just take a quick look at the web page for the Olivia Butler society to see the various ways in which her work is now being mined.)

I looked for a work by Butler I could read online, I located only one, Bloodchild".  I found it was


given the Hugo, Nebula, Chronicles of Science Fiction, and Locus award for best Science Fiction Novelette of 1984.

I was captivated and gripped  by "Bloodchild" in the first paragraph in which a human girl, maybe in her early teens is laying in the arms of a human size very intelligent insect like creature, on a planet far from her ancestors home on earth and far in the future.  It is not a sexual embrace but more a maternal protective embrace.  The girl is quite comfortable with this.



Long ago the ancestors of the girl had left Earth, where they were mistreated, settling on planet compatible to their life support needs.  The planet was home to Tics.  In order to reproduce Tics must implant their eggs in a host animal.  Once the humans arrived they were found to be ideal hosts for the eggs.  The Tic created a protected preserve for the humans, took care of them.  Many Tics bonded with particular humans and became sort of family members.  Tics fed and watched over their human families.  There was a very big negative to being implanted with Tic eggs.  Once the eggs hatched they would eventually begin to eat through their host as they made their way out.  In one vivid scene, the hatchlings have to be cut out of the man in which they are implanted.  The story is narrated by the girl's brother.

I really don't want to give out much more of the plot of "Bloodchild".  (Reading time easily under thirty minutes.). I think it would be a great classroom read, stimulating lots of discussion.


Butler is now firmly on my read all I can list.

I thank Buried in Print and Fred for remarks on Octavia Butler (in the comments on my recent post on Way Station).

Wikipedia has a decent article on Butler and one on "Bloodchild".  In 1995 she became the first


Science Fiction writer to receive The MacArthur Award (commonly called "The Genius Award")a

Have you read Butler?  Please share your experience with us.

Do you have a favorite Science Fiction writer.?

Many academics call Butler an "Afro Futurist Writer".  Are you comfortable with labels like that?