"When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny."
"I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out it was called science fiction."
- Octavia E. Butler All Books — Octavia E. Butler (octaviabutler.com)
"Octavia Butler is heralded as the first African American female writer of science fiction and fantasy, also termed speculative fiction. Her published works include 12 novels, a novelette, and one collection of stories; only two of her novels (Kindred and Fledgling) were written to stand alone, with all others envisioned as part of a collection of books: the Xenogenesis trilogy, the five-volume Patternist series, and Parable of the Talents and Parable of the Sower. Butler began writing science fiction out of frustration with the genre’s glaring lack of female protagonists and ethnic minorities. Her work is acclaimed for its bold projections of future worlds driven by complex explorations of race, sexuality, spirituality, and violence as foundational in shaping people and building community."
-- from The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, edited by Brian W. Shaffer, vol. 2: Twentieth-Century American Fiction, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011
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