[books] Earthseed, Octavia E. Butler
Aug. 6th, 2017 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettI have just finished this series, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and goodness but it does a lot of things with change and motion and theology that speak to me on a very deep level.
I find it very difficult to believe in the writing style -- I... have yet to knowingly meet a teenage girl who writes like that in her diary, okay -- but provided I ignore the conceit of diaries (and my exasperation with implausible world-building -- if food's so hard to come by where in hell are they getting enough cotton to make new jeans from) I am incredibly invested, and I want more, because of course I do, and perhaps I'm going to go and find a bunch of fic (I feel a little ashamed that the fic I want in the first instance is fix-it fic, as though that somehow erodes or elides nuance and complexity; in fact, as we perfectly well know your blue-eyed boys [MCU] is fix-it fic and in no way overlooks struggle and sacrifice and heartbreak).
And it is also sociologically fascinating to have read these books for the first time now, in 2017, when they were written in the 1990s and set in a near-future 2020s-2030s dystopia, in the context of current US politics and racism. The two things that really jumped out at me: Butler uses the term "thugs" in a way that is... clearly not consistent with the highly racialised and racist way it shows up in current usage; and the second book features, as a significant plot point, a fascist evangelical sexist US presidential candidate who's elected on a platform of "making America great again", yes, verbatim, complete with political adherents who go around doling out violence against groups said candidate "merely" speaks negatively about. There's a very strange sense of vertigo, or deja vu, or something, and it settles uncomfortably alongside the deeply weird technology level -- no mobile phones in the way we think of them, but tetanus innoculations available as skin patches.
Recommended, I think, but with the caveat that it has every single content note, to first approximation. If you'd like more details, please ask.
I find it very difficult to believe in the writing style -- I... have yet to knowingly meet a teenage girl who writes like that in her diary, okay -- but provided I ignore the conceit of diaries (and my exasperation with implausible world-building -- if food's so hard to come by where in hell are they getting enough cotton to make new jeans from) I am incredibly invested, and I want more, because of course I do, and perhaps I'm going to go and find a bunch of fic (I feel a little ashamed that the fic I want in the first instance is fix-it fic, as though that somehow erodes or elides nuance and complexity; in fact, as we perfectly well know your blue-eyed boys [MCU] is fix-it fic and in no way overlooks struggle and sacrifice and heartbreak).
And it is also sociologically fascinating to have read these books for the first time now, in 2017, when they were written in the 1990s and set in a near-future 2020s-2030s dystopia, in the context of current US politics and racism. The two things that really jumped out at me: Butler uses the term "thugs" in a way that is... clearly not consistent with the highly racialised and racist way it shows up in current usage; and the second book features, as a significant plot point, a fascist evangelical sexist US presidential candidate who's elected on a platform of "making America great again", yes, verbatim, complete with political adherents who go around doling out violence against groups said candidate "merely" speaks negatively about. There's a very strange sense of vertigo, or deja vu, or something, and it settles uncomfortably alongside the deeply weird technology level -- no mobile phones in the way we think of them, but tetanus innoculations available as skin patches.
Recommended, I think, but with the caveat that it has every single content note, to first approximation. If you'd like more details, please ask.