299 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1993 by Four Walls Eight Windows.
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean …
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
The beginning of this book is dark and very distopian and I had to set it aside for awhile. Picked it back up and the story picked up speed and I finished it the same day. I can see why this is so highly recommended. I'll definitely be reading more from Octavia Butler after finishing this one.
This is book is a modern rendition of Earth Abides (by George R Stewart). It is superior in many ways. It is so much more well-written, more believable and a lot more emotionally attached.
But this was not a book for me.
Its diary format lends itself to a single-subject, single-threaded narrative that is too far from my preferred storytelling which is parallell storylines reminiscent of that in modern tv series. The diary format also leans into slower, observational progress which is probably intentional, to make it feel more genuine and grounded. But for me that just takes away excitement - everything is just a string of situations, there's no feeling of story arc.
For some this is probably an indication of quality, but I want my fiction to be fiction.
I did not feel invested in any of the characters, but I did find them, their stories, and the setting very interesting. In that way I feel conflicted about this book. Another thing is that I was always expecting things to get worse in the next chapter, as the protagonist realizes early on, so I was anxious about continuing before I would read each time. But because I didn't feel invested in the characters, as shocking as the events were I wasn't too bothered by them.
This is kind of a begrudging 4* review because while I cannot deny the quality of Butler's art and craft in this novel, it just really truly wasn't for me.
Strong points of this work: the writing, the vision of the future feels very real, hyper-empathy syndrome was an interesting idea because how it plays out in the novel is completely contrary to my expectations.
Weak points of this work: I didn't feel like it offered much besides "Yup, everything is well and truly fucked." There weren't enough points of relief from the general violence and despair of the setting. I think the Earthseed portions of this work were intended to provide that, but I didn't find the religion in the book to be particularly captivating and as a fan of Carl Sagan, I feel like the religion should have appealed to me. It just didn't tho.
The lead is …
This is kind of a begrudging 4* review because while I cannot deny the quality of Butler's art and craft in this novel, it just really truly wasn't for me.
Strong points of this work: the writing, the vision of the future feels very real, hyper-empathy syndrome was an interesting idea because how it plays out in the novel is completely contrary to my expectations.
Weak points of this work: I didn't feel like it offered much besides "Yup, everything is well and truly fucked." There weren't enough points of relief from the general violence and despair of the setting. I think the Earthseed portions of this work were intended to provide that, but I didn't find the religion in the book to be particularly captivating and as a fan of Carl Sagan, I feel like the religion should have appealed to me. It just didn't tho.
The lead is somewhat incomprehensible to me, but it feels like an intentional decision. Perhaps people who create religions can't be understood by normal people like me.
A dystopia that predicted many elements of the present day, including the slogan "Make America Great Again" and dealing with many issues facing us now, such as climate change and disease and the breakdown of civil society.
Eerily accurate, hopeful, and written in a cool journal style. Highly recommend.
We might not have quite reached this level of dystopia but having nearly reached 2024 nothing seems too farfetched. Butler shows that she needs nothing supernatural to power a story. This one will stick with me should I manage to live through the time period it is set in.
Me deja un poco frío la idea de religión como sustituto del resto de las instituciones sociales en un tiempo apocalíptico, y no acabo de ver qué papel juega la hiperempatía en todo esto, si es mero atrezzo o un elemento verdaderamene importante. Lo veremos en el volumen dos.
Desde luego es un terreno de juego completamente diferente del de Xenogénesis.
Well written. Lauren feels real.
The end of this book is more of a beginning. There's much promise in the characters and Lauren's philosophy/ religion and what she calls Destiny - taking root among the stars. Maybe in the second book?
This might be a book that is worth re-reading.
On a second read, I feel a lot differently than I did the first time around. I can't separate uncomfortable feelings of reading about a teenager basically starting a cult and attracting people who are at their absolute most vulnerable to join. It doesn't sit well with me to read about Lauren's glee to "raise babies in Earthseed." And the intense, intense, dehumanization and otherizing of people using drugs, making them into physically unrecognizable monsters, is something I can't get past. If Lauren has hyper-empathy, and is more sensitive to people in need of help, then why does the buck stop with people using drugs?
Finally taking the time to read more Butler, after weirdly mentally saving her books. This definitely hit differently reading it amidst a pandemic, sometimes among unhealthily smoky air outside my space. The world building and the way we learn with and from Lauren is remarkable. The complete humanity of characters is also something. The cautionary tale of our near reality is still strong.
This book is dark and heavy, so I'll start with trigger warnings: religion, violence, rape, slavery, cannibalism, environmental devastation.
The story is dark, and provocative, yet thoughtful and causes one to ponder on the various social issues such as racism, slavery, power, gender equity, etc. This book should be read as a journey and not the destination. To me, it was very much like Odyssey but much deeper and profound.
The novel contains strong religious themes, as the name of the book suggests. The religion parts of the book often include arguments for and against various aspects of the religion.
I enjoyed the author's view of California on the brink of apocalypse, from geography to the imagines social structures.
This book has been written almost 30 years ago. Yet, in 2021 the subject is still current.
I wished I had to read this book in high school or college instead …
This book is dark and heavy, so I'll start with trigger warnings: religion, violence, rape, slavery, cannibalism, environmental devastation.
The story is dark, and provocative, yet thoughtful and causes one to ponder on the various social issues such as racism, slavery, power, gender equity, etc. This book should be read as a journey and not the destination. To me, it was very much like Odyssey but much deeper and profound.
The novel contains strong religious themes, as the name of the book suggests. The religion parts of the book often include arguments for and against various aspects of the religion.
I enjoyed the author's view of California on the brink of apocalypse, from geography to the imagines social structures.
This book has been written almost 30 years ago. Yet, in 2021 the subject is still current.
I wished I had to read this book in high school or college instead of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. There is so many argumentative essays one could write about them, so many more pertinent issues one can discuss.
When I heard an old interview of Octavia Butler on NPR, I was both very impressed and very surprised that I had never heard of her. She won a MacArthur Fellowship, Hugo, and Nebula awards. At the time, there were so few women's names in science fiction, and even fewer who were African American.
Still processing this book, but I think it might be one of my favorite sci-fi books I've recently read.
This is stronger in many respects on re-read, somehow my dystopia lens last time glossed the climate youth aspect, the neurodiversity aspect, the ways she keeps the story focused on community and change at the same time so structurally.
