decided to call this place acorn.
June 25, 2009
octavia e. butler was a fantastic science fiction writer, and it turns out she could also write a great post-apocalypse adventure and make it seem like fantasy. parable of the sower follows lauren as she treks north after her community was burned and family killed by drug addicts. in a society where trust doesn’t exist, lauren collects a small troop of folks that she aspires to start a new community with. the journey is through a terrible landscape of barren towns, roving gangs of desperate cannibals, wild dogs and countless unexpected dangers. as cheesy as it sounds this book is about finding hope in a hopeless would, it succeeds because of octavia’s brilliant writing.
parable of the sower is one of my top 5 books of all time. by now you know i am obsessed with the future primitive. most future primitive fiction comes out so…arid. not the landscape but the quality of writing. hard to put a finger on but for sure octavia butler doesn’t fall into this trap.
i want to explore this “atmosphere of book” idea more because of the ursula k le guin books i’ve been reading. not that they’re future primitive, but the ones i like less have this “arid” quality for lack of a better word, and the ones that i love are rich and moist.
i think that erykah badu was reading this during the making of “new amerykah”
[...] of the talents, sequal to parable of the sower, is a mixed bag of a book. over the last two years i’ve become a big fan of octavia [...]