The Power And Prescience Of Octavia Butler's 'Parable Of The Sower'

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🗓️ 8 October 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

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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Transcript

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0:00.0	Democrats used to take Michigan for granted. Then the state helped carry Donald Trump to the White House.
0:05.5	All this week, NPR's consider this podcast is talking to Michigan voters
0:09.7	about how issues like the war in Gaza could shape the 2024 race.
0:14.0	There needs to be a policy change, not just a change at the top of the ticket.
0:19.0	What's on Voters Minds in Michigan this week on the Consider This Podcast from NPR.
0:24.0	It's 2024.
0:31.0	Extreme weather events due to global warming have overwhelmed parts of the United States.
0:37.0	Water is increasingly scarce. The mass migration of people in search of more livable conditions has caused political tension
0:44.4	and border closures. A drug epidemic spreads across the country, and a candidate for president
0:49.7	promises he can fix the country's problems with more religion and fewer regulations.
0:55.2	That's the premise of Octavia E Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sewer.
1:00.6	She published a sequel, Parable of the Talent in 1998.
1:04.0	Both feature protagonist Lauren Olamina, a young woman trying to survive and make a life for herself.
1:10.0	Butler had a vision of the U.S.'s near future future and her accuracy about where we were going has renewed interest in her novels.
1:17.0	Today we get into Butler's message and what we can learn from it.
1:20.0	And just a heads up, there may be some spoilers. I'm Jen White. You're
1:24.2	listening to the one-day podcast where we get to the heart of the story. We get
1:27.7	into all of it after the break. Stay with us.
1:31.6	This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies.
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1:50.3	Hey there, it's Ian and Mike and on the How to Do Everything Podcast from the team at Wait Wait Wait Don't Tell me we will answer any question you have no matter how ridiculous.
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