was first published in October 1993. It tells the story of 15-year-old Lauren Olamina, a young Black woman living through a time of severe societal collapse. She creates (through observation and deduction) a new religion, Earthseed, which she expounds between her diary entries in simple verses that are both axiomatic and richly open-ended: “The Self must create / Its own reason for being.
/ To shape God, / Shape Self.” The book has been heralded over the years as an exemplar of literary sci-fi, and its author, Octavia E. Butler, has many times over been crowned the Queen of Afro-futurism.
But there is also something long and slow-burn about this masterpiece’s trajectory since publication. It took twenty-seven years for to hit the bestseller list, which it did in September 2020. And, in more ways than one, the story is only just beginning: the book opens with Lauren’s diary entry dated Saturday, the 20th of July 2024.
The relevance and impact of seem to have ever deepening after-lives. I have had several encounters recently with people who have been inspired by the date to read for the first time, and they have each been unusually shaken by it. is certainly prescient.
The issues that seem to have caused the breakdown of society in the world of the book—climate warming, scarcer natural resources, violence, extreme poverty, regressive labor laws—feel only more likely to crumble us every day. New readers are often caught breathless when they read about a presidential .