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| Octavia Butler (1947-2006) |
The author Octavia Butler wrote two science fiction works that incorporated Jesus's parables into their titles and stories: Parable
of the Sower (1993) and Parable
of the Talents (1998). Butler also started a third book in the series (Parable of the Trickster) but abandoned that project.
I am grateful to my friend and colleague Adriane Ivey for suggesting that I include these two works in my book. The first draft about them is almost 8000 words, so only 25% of that will make it into the final manuscript. That means that most of what I include here will not be incorporated into the book.
At the young age of twelve, Octavia Butler saw the science
fiction film, Devil Girl from Mars, thought
it to be a “silly movie,” and was convinced that she could write a better story
(Francis 2010: 82). The film inspired her to embark on what would become a
prolific writing career before her untimely death in 2006: her books and short
stories won numerous awards, including two Hugo awards and two Nebula
awards—science fiction’s most prestigious prizes—as well as a James Tiptree
award. She also won a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1995.
Butler’s father, who shined shoes
for a living, died when she was a baby, and Butler and her mother survived on
what her mother earned as a maid. Painfully shy, Butler coped with her
difficult childhood by daydreaming, reading, and writing. As she noted in a
1993 interview: “I’m black. I’m solitary. I’ve always been an outsider”
(Francis 2010: 38). She read her way through the children’s section of the
Pasadena Public Library and, since she could not be admitted to the adult
section of the library before the age of fourteen, started reading science
fiction magazines. It was love at first sight. She started sending stories to
publishers at age 13, and, in 1969, Butler was admitted to the Screen Writers
Guild Open Door program, where she studied with the science fiction writer,
Harlan Ellison. He suggested that she enroll in the Clarion Science Fiction
Writers’ Workshop. This six-week program was in effect a “science fiction boot
camp” for aspiring writers. Butler actually sold two stories while attending
the workshop, but she did not have another piece accepted for publication for
the next five years. While she worked at various jobs to support herself, such
as sweeping floors and washing dishes, she arose at two or three in the morning
to write. Finally, her novel, Patternmaster,
was published by Doubleday in 1976, the first of her ten novels and the first
of five novels in her Patternmaster series (Francis 2010: 40).
Butler’s works include the
challenges involved with issues of the use and abuse of power, the care and
destruction of the earth’s resources and environment, and different ways of
being human and humane, including gender, race, ethnicity, and class
differences. In addition, in a 1995 autobiographical essay, Butler defended
both the importance of science fiction writing in general and in particular its
efficacy for representing the type of struggles associated with African
American history. The specific question she addressed was, “What Good is Science
Fiction to Black People?” Some of the points she makes could also apply to
parables:
What good is any form of literature
to Black people? What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the
future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider
alternative ways of thinking of doing? What good is its examination of the
possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and
political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and
creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow,
narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking—whoever “everyone”
happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people? (Francis 2010:
99).
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