Paperback, 345 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2000 by Warner Books.
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.
Until I read this book, I always thought the sci-fi genre was not for me because I find stories about faraway space aliens difficult to chew. This book is so solidly grounded in the black female experience that it feels almost surreal, a wholesome experience. I thank Butler for introducing me to Afrofuturism.
Both right-wing and left-wing preppers will find something for them in this book. Written from the POV of a teenager in a life-or-death situation, the book is pretty much on survival mode the entire time, with the accompanying lack of nuance and fear permeating throughout. Still, seems like an important and balanced read.
If you have the stomach to read a book about how to survive an apocalypse right now, this is a banger. As created literary religions go, Earthseed is better than most, and Lauren Olamina is just such a well-written, thoughtful character.
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.
even though, shit, im pretty sure she had a good dose of internalized toxic masculinity.
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?
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.
Absolutely brutal dystopia, and it feels so real it hurts. Recommended like a painful stretch after a long hike through difficult terrain.
blew my mind, changed the way i see the world and my fears and vision of future. but gave me hope. Realllly hard to drive n a freeway in so called los angeles and stare at the land on the sides.......
