The religion of the future: God is Change
In Octavia Butler's 'Parable Series' a fifteen-year-old hyperempath invents 'Earthseed' a new faith that will save the world
Welcome to Story Voyager’s monthly Reviews & Recs edition, where I recommend sci-fi books and short stories.
In 2023 and 2024, I shared my curated reading lists on Story Voyager. Many of you asked if I’ll review these books. So, by popular request, Story Voyager now brings you a monthly book review in your inbox.
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The Dust Pirates is out 📣
The latest installment of my cli-fi series There Is Hope is out! The Dust Pirates is a gritty tale of survival in the Dust Bowl of Central Europe around 2550 CE.
During the rainmaking festival, a young boy rescues a teenage girl from danger, but her secret sets him on a perilous journey.
You can read all four episodes for free👇!
Parable Series by Octavia Butler
When her gated community is burnt down, the fifteen-year-old hyperempath Lauren Olamina starts a perilous journey of survival with two surviving friends. As she navigates the treacherous landscape of a twenty-first-century California ravaged by climate change, water and food shortages, social chaos and anarchy, Lauren sets the foundations of Earthseed—a new faith and vision for the future—and gathers a loyal following. But the peaceful community she establishes faces great danger when an ultra-conservative president who wants to make America great again is elected.
Star rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: climate fiction, science fiction, post-apocalyptic, future history
Major themes: climate change, social inequality, systemic abuse, historical fiction, afro-futurism, future spirituality
Books: Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents
Publication years: 1993 & 1998
Book lengths: 320 & 424 pages
The Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents are tales of horror, hope, and the heavy price we must pay to envision a better world.
What are the books about?
George Orwell’s 1984 social nihilism and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 psychotic fanaticism served with a heavy side of climate cataclysm.
Like Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake—published in 2003—Parable of the Sower, the first book in the Parable Series, starts with gated communities. Unlike Oryx and Crake, Butler’s gated communities aren’t just for the rich and powerful but for anyone who has some possessions and wants to maintain the semblance of a normal life. The importance of gated communities in Butler’s world is soon made evident when the community of Lauren Olamina—the fifteen-year-old daughter of a preacher—burns to ashes one night, and almost everyone she knows dies. This sets our young protagonist on a journey of horror, hope and survival in a twenty-first-century California devastated by climate change, resource scarcity and social anarchy.
Lauren Olamina is thrown into the murky waters of chaos, lethal danger and a world devoid of humanity with a fatal weakness—she is a hyperempath with a debilitating sensitivity to other’s suffering—and a secret weapon—Earthseed, an invented faith that will blossom like a lotus from the dark depths of destruction to form a community and build a vision for a better world.
All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.
This brings us to the central theme of Butler’s duology and a seldomly explored topic in science fiction writing: faith. In line with our humanist thought and scientific worldview, the future is usually reserved for technological progress in science fiction. This technological vision of the future has dominated science fiction for more than half a century with few exceptions. In Frank Herbert’s Dune, faith and a mission to transform the desert planet Arrakis into a green oasis are the primary motivators of change. The Parable Series, a seminal work of climate fiction, uses faith and a mission to conquer the stars as a means to save planet Earth from anthropogenic destruction.
We are Earthseed. We are flesh--self-aware, questing, problem-solving flesh. We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly. We are Earthlife maturing, Earthlife preparing to fall away from the parent world. We are Earthlife preparing to take root in new ground. Earthlife fulfilling its purpose, its promise, its Destiny.
Another central theme in Butler’s duology is the systemic abuse of power. The images of enslaved people wearing remote-controlled collars through which their capturers can torment them at every hour of day and night are harrowing. And yet, we don’t have to look into a too-distant past to find such abuse in our history. The horrors of the ultra-conservative Catholic church in Butler’s dystopia echo the inquisition practices of the Middle Ages, as well as the slave and colonization cultures that still ripple through our society.
What I liked the most
Earthseed and faith as worldbuilding. When we come in contact with nature’s incomprehensible forces, especially the destructive ones, we instinctively understand that we cannot reduce the universe at a human scale. Our ancestors knew their environment in a way that is absolutely incredible by our standards and respected nature. Even the great Gengis Khan was a shaman-king and a Tengrian believer, an animist religion that predates all religions. In a world devastated by climate change, social and moral injustice, as well as stark economic inequality and power abuse, Butler’s main character understands that people need a new religion, a new outlook in life, and a higher mission in order to make a leap of faith to a better future.
The writing. Octavia Butler’s writing is hard like steel and soft and pliable like silk and this is reflected in the character of the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, the strong but deeply vulnerable female prophet who stands up after life brings her to her knees still able to forgive, love and give.
What I liked the least
The treatment administered by the ultra-conservative faction to the Earthseed community is hard to stomach. The technology of control and coercion envisioned by Octavia Butler is some of the darkest I’ve encountered in dystopian fiction.
Would I recommend it?
The Parable Series of Octavia Butler is more than a story. This is a new religion, a new mission for humanity, a possible solution to our current issues and a hope for the future. It is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the human mind and its capacity to shape reality.
Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.
Sci-fi round-up
If you don’t have time to read a whole book, here are three sci-fi & fantasy short stories I loved reading with my daily cup of tea, in no particular order.
I hope you’ll enjoy these short stories ✨!
The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (this is the audio version, go here for the text version)
Genre: climate fiction, science fiction, future history
Major themes: climate change, alien civilization
Reading time: 5 minutes per episode (5 episodes in total)
This is a climate fiction short story, so it’s very much up our alley here at Story Voyager. The audio production is stellar and you’ll find that
—actor, linguist and veteran AAA games developer—is an overall story talent.
Genre: science fiction, young adult
Major themes: space colonization, coming of age, parental divorce
Reading time: 5 minutes
A short science fiction story about a young girl dealing with her parent’s divorce and a world about to change. The story takes place over several years and
employs a non-linear storytelling technique that successfully navigates the changes in the protagonist’s life while remaining emotionally engaging.
Genre: science fiction, family drama
Major themes: nanomedicine, AI, space colonization
Reading time: 7 minutes
A terminally ill man is about to say goodbye forever to his wife and daughter as they prepare to escape into space for a better life.
takes us on an emotional journey involving a family of three and Clement, an indiscrete AI personal assistant.
That’s all for today.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Story Voyager. Let me know in the comments if you want more sci-fi book reviews & recommendations.
Thank you so much for the mention, Claudia! I'm quite proud of that particular story and am so happy it found you. 💜🥂
Thank you for mentioning my short story, Claudia! I like your review and round up here. Very cool.