Navigating Dystopia: Themes in 'Parable Of The Sower'

Octavia Butler's 1993 novel "The Parable of the Sower" 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're all currently living.

Butler published a sequel, Parable of the Talents, in 1998. Both feature a protagonist named Lauren Olamina, a young woman trying to survive and make a life for herself.

So 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 discuss Butler's novels, and the message of hope she has at the center of this dark story.

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