Essay Database

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler This book brings forth an utterly nightmarish vision of California and the USA in 2027, but one with an almost shockingly firm grounding in reality. Los Angeles has devolved into walled island neighborhoods in a sea of utter chaos and collapse. Everything we take for granted today comes with a price. No-one is to be trusted. Everyday violence is a way of life. Slavery is returning. In one …

…well as biblical references. This future is almost too dark to contemplate, and Butler, perhaps has gone to unecessary lengths to express that darkness. Though I felt the characters pretty much ended up where they started, there is, however, a vague hopeful tone to the end of the nightmare. Butler treads on west-coast post-apocalyptic ground covered previously by Kim Stanley Robinson, but brings home a more memorably realistic and often riveting account of the future.