Welcome to Zero to Well Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you read.

I'm Jeff O'Neill.

And I'm Rebecca Sinski.

Today we're exploring an alternate vision of the 2020s in Octavia Butler's groundbreaking novel, The Parable of the Sower.

Before we jump in though, if you're enjoying the show so far, we sure appreciate a reading or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. It really helps us as we're continuing to grow in this first season. And of course, telling your friends that you're liking it is also helpful. You can also send questions, thoughts, whatever. Tell us about your own experiences with the books that we've covered. We're going to do a mailbag here at the end of the season in a few weeks. Zero to well read at bookriot.com for all of those. And you can, you know, if you've liked a particular episode, you've got feedback for the show, a story of reading one of these books like way back in high school, assuming high school was way back for you. That's not true for all listeners. I know at this point. You can also, we've gotten a few

requests for books to cover eventually. And let me just say, I appreciate those. They will

definitely get put into the file. But there are so many books, Rebecca, that we could do this

for a hundred million years. but we do want to know.

So no promises. The master list that we have going is like 400 and some odd books. Right. Yeah.

And I don't know that Parable the Sower is something that a lot of people would have written in about

because I think this might be the least well-known book we've done so far.

I don't think there's really anything close.

And I think that's part of the story of Octavia Butler,

especially over the last five, 10 years again.

This is not an own work, a super important work.

But I think for a general reader, maybe former English majors,

who seem at this point to be our most adherent and vociferous fans.

Yes, thank you very much.

We have pins to put on your jacket later.

Like us, for example, we both came to this book quite a bit later.

We'll talk about that a little bit more.

But a hugely influential person in books and sci-fi specifically and continues to

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