“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix must first burn.”

So I find myself with a massive backlog of potential book reviews, although I’ve been doing a fair amount of re-reading and many of those are old classics (does the world need another review of The Brothers Karamazov? Or Siddhartha? Ironically Hesse would find the idea appalling as he is a firm believer that the more you try to discuss something to death the less power and truth it holds). I am of a similar mind about the Earthseed books (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) as they are very well acclaimed indeed and aren’t in desperate need of visibility. But I have things to say. Lucky you.
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Parable of the Sower opens in 2024, when civilization has collapsed (the same year, as it happens, as the Bell Riots, so two sets of writers saw in the nineties the road headed on a thirty-year course to hell) to differing degrees depending on one’s socioeconomic status. The last of the middle-class holdouts live in self-policed, self-contained walled neighborhoods crowned with razor wire and glass. Groups only venture outside the walls armed. Despite this, people struggle to maintain some degree of normalcy and forward momentum—a local college still holds online classes (as it is too dangerous to travel to and from campus) and the community keeps holding church services and teaching its children in a living room-based school. Even as an adolescent Lauren Olamina realizes this is not sustainable, and that soon, the walls will be torn down and they will have to face the outside world as one of the dispossessed. Her realization that change is constant and inevitable, but that one must shape it, not try to hold to the old order, forms the basis of her personal philosophy she dubs “Earthseed”. It is partially her experiences as a “sharer”, or a person with hyperempathy syndrome, that informs her philosophy. When she sees others in pain, she feels it, as surely as if she herself was hurt. It is a handicap in a brutal world but she learns to live with it. In 2027 her prediction is fulfilled and she escapes the burning and plundering of her neighborhood and goes north—toward the Pacific Northwest, toward rain and opportunity. In contrast to her younger brother, who made his way in the outside world on cruelty and guile, she gathers a group of travelers and ex-slaves for mutual protection and support and from them forms her first Earthseed commune.

I found Sower at one of those clearance book sales that are frequently held outside Ackerman. The version they had has a rather bland, white-light background cover that tries to make it very clear that this is Serious Literature and worthy of consideration by people of intellectual fiber and not just the sort of riffraff who are mesmerized by the flash-bang tripe of sci-fi, but, at the very least, the protagonist is (correctly) portrayed as black. Unfortunately this often leads to the book being marketed or shelved as “special interest” but that is a whole other rant.

The broad socioeconomic changes predicted in the book are not surprising. They’re evident as imminent possibilities to many people. What always shocks me most in the writing of the most visionary speculative fiction authors – William Gibson, Margaret Atwood – is the correct prediction of small details. They predict tiny, sharp, and accurate vectors of future movement within the larger one. In the book Southern California is parched and dying and overcrowded and everybody wants to flood up to the Pacific Northwest, where there is water and the air is clean and there is space. This is exactly the trend I have seen now, twenty years after the book was published and ten years before the book takes place, and after several of the hottest, driest seasons on record (not counting that lovely burst of heavy rain this past winter). I’ve shot around vague “what are you going to do after graduation/in the future” etc conversations with various friend groups, who have no knowledge of each other and therefore no influence over each other, and with the exception of people who have personal ties elsewhere they almost all mention a vague tug toward “Seattle” or “Vancouver”, words that evoke greenery and cooler air and oxygen in place of dust. I’m no exception to this, despite the fact that almost all of my friends wound up in the LA area (many of us from Phoenix), but the way conversations are going we might all end up in the same place again anyway. In the books, Oregon, Washington, and Canada have sealed and armed borders to keep out floods of “California trash” hiking up I-5 looking for a better life. The flood has gotten bad enough that shoot-on-sight has become the accepted rule for guards. (And, from what I’ve heard of people currently living in those areas, that spirit is certainly there. It is understandable – their lovely area is being flooded with crowds of people driving up rents and costs of living, the rich buying up properties, the area choked with traffic. In short, it’s becoming SoCal. There’s a Tragedy of the Commons analogy here somewhere.) Given that communications infrastructure has collapsed most migrants are not aware of this, but even those who are feel it is worth the desperate attempt, because there is nothing left in SoCal for anybody but the rich. (In this case, ‘nothing’ really does mean complete anarchy and mob rule—the government has essentially become a privatized and parceled enforcement corps for the wealthy.) In the Real World LA we’ve had drought and relentless summer heat and given how overburdened the grid is the power goes out almost every time the temperature goes above 90*F. Even in the five years I’ve lived here traffic has gotten much worse (quantitatively—based on drive times) and rents have spiked dizzying amounts. The entire demographic character of neighborhoods around me has shifted in a matter of years. It all makes people feel like so much cattle and ferments a great deal of resentment and economic unrest.

In the first book the president runs on a populist platform that, at the time of publication (1993) might have sounded rather farfetched and Machiavellian, even though the country was coming out of the Regan years backlash, but at the current time sounds rather familiar. You know exactly where I’m going with this and I am far from the only person who has drawn parallels between President Donner and President Trump. Again, an example of prediction of ‘small’ details—a populist charlatan winning a desperate public is a common dystopian trope, but Butler correctly predicted the details of Donner’s plans and the rhetoric he uses to pit industry regulations and worker protections against this nebulous idea of “freedom” and “opportunity”. Company towns are a major part of the national fabric, and we see how they attract people (with promises of security and a constant source of food, no small offer when you grow up having to go around the neighborhood in armed groups) and the end result of (legally) indenturing people to their service through the use of payment in scrip. It’s a privatized debtor’s prison system. But, in the rhetoric of the elite, this represents “opportunity”, and the disgusting part is that they’re not wrong. To many people it’s more attractive than being murdered or raped on the road—until they realize that once they are legally ‘indebted’ (slaves), they will be treated that way anyway. But it’s the only “opportunity” offered to the masses. At this point in the story a good portion of the population is completely illiterate, and with that loss comes also the loss of their ability to learn about the past, to read and understand contracts and laws, to read newspapers. The school system collapsed, so you have a generation of young, angry people with no knowledge and no literacy. Hopeless, easy to inflame, easy to mislead. Butler is not coy in implying that this is a direct result of the end of the public school system and the collapse of public youth programs—money-saving measures touted as things that will ultimately lead to a more ‘efficient’ system (privatization). Surprise of surprises, though, once private those schools and youth programs no longer want to go where there is no money.
Donner also runs on a platform of returning to an idealized past – making America great again, if you will. (I almost did not add this because it’s too on-the-nose but fuck it. EDIT NOTE: I hand-to-God wrote this paragraph before I started reading Talents and I rescind my previous statement. Just keep reading.) When things are getting worse it’s only natural to want to turn back to when things are better. A savvy politician realizes this and uses it in his rhetoric—a vague promise. Lauren realizes that there is no turning back and that energies must be used to shape the future. As a leader, she is his direct foil.

Overt racism has again spiked in the wake of populist anger. Interracial couples are particularly likely to be attacked by mobs and in-group tribalism proxied by the marker of skin color is brazen. Lauren’s father points out (correctly) that their suburb is too black and brown to be of interest to authorities to try to re-claim, despite “respectable” middle-class status, and, indeed, it is one of the few white families in their neighborhood who is accepted to a company town on the coast. People get mean and scared when resources are few. Honestly as I am white I realize I am only made aware of overt shows of racism, so it is difficult for me to say how much worse things have gotten in the past few years (I do think that is the direction it has gone), but racists have certainly gotten bolder and more outspoken. It’s this ancient division tactic to keep the masses fighting each other for the few crumbs the rich leave for them, instead of focusing on the rich themselves. Again, not a new observation, but I am pleased with how accurately Butler predicted (or remembered, to anybody who reads history) that overt shows of racism and other forms of in-group/out-group behavior spike with hardship. People seem to think we’ve moved past that and become truly post-racial. Odd, that. People show their true prejudices under stress.

Women and children, especially, are vulnerable, and find themselves either disguising their sex (like Lauren, who is tall and angular in build) or finding men to travel with, often in exchange for sex—and condoms are rare, so this often leads to more pregnancy, more vulnerability, more dependency. (Aside – this is mentioned in the Saga comic, that women and children suffer most in war, even considering battlefield violence against drafted men.) Something Andrea Dworkin said – conservative women find the traditional marriage model attractive in that it is better to be raped by one man instead of by all men, and to get a roof and food in the deal. This is the origin of patriarchy. Lauren is well aware of this and is terrified of getting pregnant. In this book there is no Mad Max-like group of women acting in solidarity for mutual protection, but the concept of strength in numbers is proven in Lauren’s nascent Earthseed traveling group. Atomization – of the marginalized, of the weak, of minorities, of women – is what leads to death in a hostile world.

Lauren also learns that she is not the only person with hyperempathy syndrome (colloquially, ‘Sharers’) – it is a common result of in utero exposure to a new ‘smart’ drug, and it is a trait much prized in slaves and workers, as it makes them easier to control. The doctor in her traveling group points out that it would not be advantageous for healthcare workers, etc, to be paralyzed by another’s pain, but concedes that a greater prevalence might control a lot of the wanton violence. Sharers are also a uniquely vulnerable people; when they are in the minority, they are easily controlled, but were they the majority, the world would be a better place.

A designer drug (not the above mentioned) that makes people start fires, rape, and torture, is widespread and highly addictive, and provides a source of transcendent joy to a dispossessed and hopeless people. Seeking that happiness itself could be as powerful as seeking to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. The concept that dispossessed, impoverished, trapped people turn to drugs to numb their pain and crushing boredom is not new, but, again, is true, and is accurately portrayed as causing cascading ripples of destruction and pain around the primary user.

Parable of the Talents takes place (the mainline story, anyway; it is presented as a collection of diary entries with commentary) five years after the events of Sower and was published in 1998. Sower ended on an uplifting note and the book would have worked well as a stand-alone, but Talents goes the direction of The Handmaid’s Tale really quick. Or, and I don’t think this counts as much of a spoiler, America has gone from what anarcho-capitalists say would not happen in their system but honestly would, to what honestly to the average person makes little difference but this time when they’re being raped and held as slaves their captors have the pretence of saving their souls while doing it. Yes, a theocracy. With re-education camps and electronic slave collars and all that dystopian stuff. Oh, let it not be lost on the reader that this theocracy was elected into place by a populace responding to strongman posturing and a promise to bring the country back to order. There was no violent coup. And as always it’s the people who are (desperately) trying to mind their own business and live their lives who suffer the most. Not even just incidentally, as collateral damage, which happens plenty, but they are also directly targeted for having the audacity to want to exist on their own terms, hurting nobody. (I get that the Bible says that suffering sinners to live in your nation without crushing them brings down God’s wrath, so, by that interpretation, it is not a victimless crime. Very convenient, politically, for the authors and supporters of the Bible to include that as a stipulation, but this review is already running far too long.)

Lauren discusses the changes in the political landscape that have occurred since she founded the Earthseed commune. A presidential candidate has been advocating a return to some halcyon days of socio-ethno-religious homogeny, and clearly something in his message resonates or he is merely a mouthpiece for an undercurrent of fermenting backlash, because the anarchist gangs are largely replaced by paramilitary self-styled Crusaders (crosses and tunics and all) who have taken it upon themselves to wipe out anything that would ruin that. The candidate, Jarret, winkingly-but-not-super-openly advocates these activities by not-really condemning them, but using this as an opportunity to hint that if only people would fall in line, this would not need to happen.

Oh, his entreaty is, literally, not metaphorically, ‘Make America great again.’ That’s when I stared at the book for a good ten seconds.

Had this book been written post-Trump I would have found the use of his direct slogan too on-the-nose and overbearing, but this book was published in 1998. This is not just a freak prediction in a literalist sense. That slogan was effective because it evoked that already-fermenting resentment and vague desire to return to something ‘past’ and better, and that is what Butler predicted.

Ultimately it’s irrelevant whether or not Trump resembles Jarret in that he actually believes all the Christian right claptrap he spews or is just an opportunist. The end result is the same. It’s a tacit endorsement that resonates with an already-existing, simmering resentment and hatred in the populace. That is why half-veiled innuendos are understood. The idea is already there. Butler had predicted this, in a slightly different form, in Sower—life goes to shit for the previously-privileged or majority class, so they look for scapegoats, and the scapegoat becomes especially infuriating if it has the audacity to do well while they are not, and those in true power encourage this because better to channel that energy into infighting among the dispossessed instead of risk an alliance against them. But it becomes refined, in Talents, five years later, from aimless hedonistic anarchy to something ideological and disciplined.

Subtle, it is not. But that is because the distortions in the book are only in scale, not in a sideways or backwards distortion of the direction things are going. It is a direct vector from where we are now to where the world is in the book. There are no side-steps required. It is a situation in which were you to jump directly to the center of the book, you’d be tempted to find it heavy-handed and melodramatic and self-discrediting, but reading through from the beginning of the story it becomes very easy indeed to understand how things became as bad as they did. It’s the boiling frog principle.

This is already a heinously long review and I could pick apart the books almost line-by-line with political commentary and adulations for Butler’s Cassandra-like clarity of vision, but that would ruin the primary experience for you, gentle reader, and I must respect the white space left in the book to contemplate subtleties and parallels. Ultimately, these stories are about rising from the ashes of your past life, no matter how many times your world burns down around you. Lauren’s God as Change is not intrinsically a merciful or a cruel god, but in this world change takes the form of complete and utter devastation more often than not. She loses everything, scrapes her way through, builds up from the ash and blood a community, and has it all taken from her—again. And, even when she rebuilds her life, some of the things she lost can never be regained. She has to carry that sorrow the rest of her life and keep going. I’ve heard it said that losing a child breaks something in you, forever. And yet people choose to keep living, even if they’ll never be truly happy again. It is not a happy tale, in that there is no closure for many of the characters, and people bear the most terrifying and complete forms of sorrow for decades without relief, but they survive. Usually in these stories people are able to hold on because there is that one thing they get back, or that one thing they can count on. In this story, it’s all burned away. Children are killed or sold into the most sadistic forms of sexual slavery. Spouses are killed. Second spouses are killed, again. Second batches of children are killed, again. People who were outcast and unwanted in their own families of origin find a new home and it’s ripped from them. It keeps happening. But they survive and shape the world by guiding change.

And, it’s well worth saying all this misery is wrecked on people by other people. There is enough misery in the world without having to cause any of it. That is what is so heartbreaking. And then broken people want to spread their misery. It never stops until somebody—probably a broken and hurt somebody—is willing to say stop. And live with the misery stoically and still shape the world for the better.

In some ways, I am glad Butler died before the housing crash and the socioeconomic fallout that is still shaking the world apart (she died in 2006), as she would not have to witness her vision come closer to fruition, but what I wouldn’t give to talk with her about current events. She died far too young of tragic circumstances but at least there’s peace in death. I know she would not appreciate me saying that—she always valorized survival—but I guess I’m trying to find some redeeming aspect of a shit situation. And that, I think, she might appreciate more. Cassandra was not a happy person.