A 1993 dystopian novel imagined the world in 2024. It’s eerily accurate – the Washington Post
Excerpt:
Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ predicted devastating climate change, inequality, space travel and ‘Make America great again’
This is life in 2024.
Or at least it’s life in 2024 as imagined by the writer Octavia Butler 31 years ago.
“Parable of the Sower,” a 1993 novel by the late science fiction writer and MacArthur Fellow, depicts a future America ravaged by ecological collapse and civil unrest. The book’s narrator, African American teenager Lauren Olamina, begins writing a journal in July 2024 documenting the upheaval.
In the time it’s taken us to reach 2024 for real, Butler’s story has been adapted as an opera and a graphic novel; a movie adaptation is also in the works. In 2017, director Melina Matsoukas cited Butler among the Black thinkers who inspired her “Formation” video from Beyoncé’s award-winning album “Lemonade.”
In September 2020 — perhaps fueled by an interest in apocalyptic fiction prompted by covid-19 lockdowns — “Parable” appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for the first time, 27 years after publication.
Butler didn’t live to see the renewed interest in her ninth novel — she died in 2006 — but she indicated that the issues faced by the characters in “Parable” and by the United States today were inevitable…
ADDITIONAL READING . . .
How Octavia Butler Told the Future - the Atlantic
Excerpt:
“Sometimes a one-page pamphlet translated into two languages isn’t the best way for people to receive information, but a song about go-bags played on the synth is…”
Edgemere Farm was born out of a climate catastrophe and community resilience. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, volunteers transformed an abandoned, flood-damaged, city-owned plot into a lush organic garden.
One day in mid-September, the half-acre site in Far Rockaway, New York, underwent another makeover: For an hour, it became a chai shop. Two hundred people gathered to watch a performance of Flood Sensor Aunty, an hour-long play written by local urban planner and theater artist Sabina Sethi Unni. She stars as an humanized flood sensor — a tool that detects high water levels and delivers that data to a publicly-accessible map.
Sethi Unni’s anthropomorphized device clashes with her chai-shop coworkers and dreams of becoming a movie star. A pair of lovelorn city health inspectors, an attention-seeking city council member, and a rain god running a cult out of a cramped one-bedroom apartment round out the cast.
Many people associate urban flooding with cities like New Orleans and Miami. But it’s becoming more frequent further north, too. Thirty-four of the 43 people killed when Hurricane Sandy pummeled New York City in 2012 drowned in storm-surge flooding, many of them in low-lying neighborhoods. The rain that followed Hurricane Ida’s march up the coast in 2021 killed 13 people, 11 of them in basement apartments. Even a heavy downpour like the one New York experienced in July can inundate homes and threaten lives.
Flood Sensor Aunty strives to educate people about the threat by combining absurdist comedy with practical advice for surviving disasters yet to come. It celebrates the power of the community to overcome crises, while providing audiences with useful, tangible tools like free flood alarms and headlamps provided in collaboration with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and local nonprofits. The play explains how to access 311 and make a disaster plan — through a synth-heavy, brightly-costumed, Chappell-Roan-referencing extravaganza performed in parks, warehouses, and, on at least one occasion, a boat.
Sethi Unni talked about her work at Climate Week in September and recently performed her play in Boston. She hopes to take on other dramatic topics, like community board meetings — and wants to see more artists tackling the climate crisis with humor and hope.
Grist caught up with Sethi Unni to discuss public art as disaster preparedness infrastructure, Facebook pages and gossipy families as artistic inspiration, and just what a flood sensor is, anyway.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity…
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The Visions of Octavia Butler | Interactive - the New York Times
Excerpt:
“Sometimes a one-page pamphlet translated into two languages isn’t the best way for people to receive information, but a song about go-bags played on the synth is…”
Edgemere Farm was born out of a climate catastrophe and community resilience. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, volunteers transformed an abandoned, flood-damaged, city-owned plot into a lush organic garden.
One day in mid-September, the half-acre site in Far Rockaway, New York, underwent another makeover: For an hour, it became a chai shop. Two hundred people gathered to watch a performance of Flood Sensor Aunty, an hour-long play written by local urban planner and theater artist Sabina Sethi Unni. She stars as an humanized flood sensor — a tool that detects high water levels and delivers that data to a publicly-accessible map.
Sethi Unni’s anthropomorphized device clashes with her chai-shop coworkers and dreams of becoming a movie star. A pair of lovelorn city health inspectors, an attention-seeking city council member, and a rain god running a cult out of a cramped one-bedroom apartment round out the cast.
Many people associate urban flooding with cities like New Orleans and Miami. But it’s becoming more frequent further north, too. Thirty-four of the 43 people killed when Hurricane Sandy pummeled New York City in 2012 drowned in storm-surge flooding, many of them in low-lying neighborhoods. The rain that followed Hurricane Ida’s march up the coast in 2021 killed 13 people, 11 of them in basement apartments. Even a heavy downpour like the one New York experienced in July can inundate homes and threaten lives.
Flood Sensor Aunty strives to educate people about the threat by combining absurdist comedy with practical advice for surviving disasters yet to come. It celebrates the power of the community to overcome crises, while providing audiences with useful, tangible tools like free flood alarms and headlamps provided in collaboration with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and local nonprofits. The play explains how to access 311 and make a disaster plan — through a synth-heavy, brightly-costumed, Chappell-Roan-referencing extravaganza performed in parks, warehouses, and, on at least one occasion, a boat.
Sethi Unni talked about her work at Climate Week in September and recently performed her play in Boston. She hopes to take on other dramatic topics, like community board meetings — and wants to see more artists tackling the climate crisis with humor and hope.
Grist caught up with Sethi Unni to discuss public art as disaster preparedness infrastructure, Facebook pages and gossipy families as artistic inspiration, and just what a flood sensor is, anyway.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity…
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
ALSO OF INTEREST . . .
TED-Ed (02-25-2019):
Why should you read sci-fi superstar Octavia E. Butler?
Much science fiction features white male heroes who blast aliens or become saviors of brown people. Octavia E. Butler knew she could tell a better story. She built stunning worlds rife with diverse characters, and brought nuance and depth to the representation of their experiences…
Storied – PBS (06-29-2021):
Octavia Butler, The Grand Dame of Science Fiction | It’s Lit
If you are a fan of science fiction a name you should be familiar with is Octavia E. Butler. One of the most prolific and important Black authors in the genre, Butler’s storytelling pushed the boundaries of what Black people were allowed to be in science fiction…Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes..
EXHIBITION:
Hyde Park Art Center (Exhibit runs from 11-11-2023 through 03-03-2024):
Candace Hunter: The Alien‐Nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E Butler
In The Alien‐Nations and Sovereign States of Octavia E Butler, Candace Hunter presents new works created with synthetic plants, remnants of a sustainable food experiment, a reading nook, and painted doors as imagined portals to other worlds to create what she describes as an “alien lush space.” The exhibition addresses the concepts of nationhood. Candace Hunter poses questions about who is other, and in what situations do we see people as other to ourselves? How do we become universal?
