Following a devastating nuclear war,
Lilith Iyapo awakens after 200 years of stasis
to find herself surrounded by a group of aliens called the Oankali.
These highly intelligent beings want to do something
they claim will be mutually beneficial:
trade DNA by breeding with humans
so that each species’ genes can fortify the other.
Should Lilith hold on to her ideas of what it means to be human,
or make a leap into the biological unknown?
These questions haunt Octavia Butler’s Dawn,
the first in her trilogy Lilith’s Brood.
A visionary storyteller who upended science fiction,
Butler built stunning worlds throughout her work–
and explored dilemmas that keep us awake at night.
Born in 1947,
Butler grew up shy and introverted in Pasadena, California.
She dreamt up stories from an early age,
and was soon scribbling these scenarios on paper.
At twelve, she begged her mother for a typewriter
after enduring a campy science fiction film called Devil Girl From Mars.
Unimpressed with what she saw,
Butler knew she could tell a better story.
Much science fiction featured white male heroes
who blasted aliens or were uninvited saviors for brown people.
Butler wanted to write diverse characters
and bring nuance and depth to the representation of their experiences,
all while exploring mind-bending scenarios.
For Butler,
imagination was not only for planting the seeds of science fiction–
but also a strategy for surviving an unjust world on one’s own terms.
Typically, her work takes troubling features of the world
such as discrimination on the basis of race, gender, class, or ability,
and invites the reader to contemplate them in new contexts.
One of her most beloved novels,
the Parable of the Sower,
follows this pattern.
It tells the story of Lauren Oya Olamina
as she makes her way through a world ruined by corporate greed,
inequality, and environmental destruction.
As she struggles with hyperempathy,
or the ability to feel others’ pain,
Lauren embarks on a quest with a group of refugees to find a place to thrive.
There, they seek to live in accordance with Lauren’s found religion, Earthseed,
which is based on the principle
that humans must adapt to an ever-changing world.
Lauren’s quest had roots in a real life event–
California Prop 187,
which attempted to deny illegal immigrants fundamental human rights,
before it was deemed unconstitutional.
Butler frequently incorporated contemporary news into her writing.
In her 1998 sequel to The Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents,
she wrote of a presidential candidate
who controls Americans with virtual reality and “shock collars.”
His slogan? “Make America great again.”
While people have noted her prescience,
Butler was also interested in re-examining history.
For instance,
Kindred tells the story of a woman
who is repeatedly pulled back in time
to the Maryland plantation of her ancestors.
Early on, she learns that her mission is to save the life of the white man
who will rape her great grandmother.
If she doesn’t, she herself will cease to exist.
This grim dilemma forces Dana to confront the ongoing trauma
of slavery and sexual violence against Black women.
With her stories of women who founded new societies,
time travelers overcoming historical strife,
and interspecies bonding,
Butler had a profound influence on growing popularity of Afrofuturism.
That’s a movement where Black writers and artists who are inspired by the future
produce works that incorporate magic, history, technology and much more.
And today,
Butler’s work remains a powerful reminder
that imagination can be a tool for real change–
as well as a rallying call for those who seek other ways to be in the world.
As Lauren comes to learn in Parable of the Sower,
"All that you touch you Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.”