This is a book that tends to come up if you mention that you liked Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake, and it was also an excuse to finally finally take Octavia Butler off the list of authors I’d never read before! This one felt even more eerily prescient than Atwood, set in 2024 (the book was published in 1993) in a United States suffering from civilization breakdown in the wake of climate disasters. Lauren Olamina is a teenager in what was once a middle-class LA suburb but has become both less actually wealthy and much more relatively so. Her neighborhood is walled off from the outside world to protect the little (food, some money earned by those who still can find work, guns) that they still have. Lauren’s mother used drugs during pregnancy, leaving her with hyperempathy, a condition in which she literally feels the pain that others experience. Both smart and canny, she understands that the little comparative oasis she’s been raised in can’t last long, and she starts preparing to have to survive in the outside world as well as developing her own religious philosophy based on an acceptance and even embrace of change, which she calls Earthseed. The crisis she’s anticipated does in fact arrive, and she finds herself one of many people on the road hoping for something better while they try to evade theft, rape, and murder. I found Lauren a refreshing kind of heroine. Usually a teenage girl in a story like this one would be plucky and sassy, hiding an inner core of insecurity. Lauren is serious, smart, and resourceful. She’s confident in her beliefs. And despite being a preacher’s daughter, she’s no goody two-shoes. The other characters are also developed in ways that make them feel like people rather than stock characters. Butler’s prose is engaging, and the narrative journey she crafts for Lauren kept me turning the pages to see where it would go next. My major complaint here would be that it feels more like a “first in a series” than a standalone novel, with lots of set-up and character introductions (indeed there is a sequel, and Butler had originally intended there to be several entries). I am excited to read the sequel and more of Butler’s other work as well! ( )

Interesting, original story. Writing is alright, nothing awe-inspiring. ( )

Not sure why I happened upon this classic sci-if novel, written in 1993, which interestedly begins its narrative in 2024. It might be because my current Libby App is not offering much in the way of decent literary fiction. So somewhere I heard this author mentioned and decided to venture into unknown territory. Octavia Butler became the first science-fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur fellowship, and the book is often grouped with 1984 and the Handmaid's Tale.
The narrator, Lauren Olamina, is a 15 year old girl living in a walled California community, trying to fend off the outside groups from invading. Climate change, poverty and unemployment have created this Mad Max existence- speculative fiction; no aliens or vampires, just a projection of what was current issues. "I considered drugs and the effects of drugs on the children of drug addicts. I looked at the growing rich/ poor gap, at throwaway labor, at our willingness to build and fill prisons, our reluctance to build and repair schools and libraries, and at our assault on the environment. In particular, I looked at global warming and the ways in which it’s likely to change things for us."
In addition to the vivid portrait of the setting, the narrator is equally engaging. Lauren has hyper-empathy, meaning she feels the pain of others as her own. She is a sharer. She also is forming the tenets of her our religion- Earthseed, where God is Change. Butler writes"change is the one inescapable truth, change is the basic clay of our lives. In order to live constructive lives, we must learn to shape change when we can and yield to it when we must. Either way, we must learn and teach, adapt and grow."
The arc of the novel is a journey Lauren takes with others when her community is destroyed. Having lost her family, she bonds with others to hopefully find a place where they can exist. The novel reaches a satisfying ending but also sets up the sequel.
Lines:
The dogs used to belong to people—or their ancestors did. But dogs eat meat. These days, no poor or middle class person who had an edible piece of meat would give it to a dog.

And you know that drug that makes people want to set fires?” She nodded, chewing. “It’s spreading again. It was on the east coast. Now it’s in Chicago. The reports say that it makes watching a fire better than sex.

I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.

“That’s the ultimate Earthseed aim, and the ultimate human change short of death. It’s a destiny we’d better pursue if we hope to be anything other than smooth-skinned dinosaurs—here today, gone tomorrow, our bones mixed with the bones and ashes of our cities.” ( )

Well written in terms of character and world-building but it felt 'lite' almost conceited, a faint smug sense of 'I'm alright' all the way through and didn't properly capture the fear, uncertainty and unpreparedness the characters would actually have - which is ironic because that was part of the message it was trying to convey.

One of those the future is now books. Written decades ago, the opening is a futuristic 2024. We had managed to develop much better technology (although phones are close and not envisaged) but the trends of growing extremism and drug gang segregation, enclaves and no-go areas, have all risen much faster and overcome the world. Our heroine is living in a low-middle class such enclave surrounded by the mostly lawless and feral Outside. More feared than experienced. However the frequent attempts to break in are proof that at least some of the fears are real. It of course all comes crashing down and she's forced to flee, initially alone, but then with a small but growing crowed of trusted friends and companions to whom she preaches her new-though religion - why don't we all try to be nicer to each other.

I'm sure at the time it was ground-breaking and much disliked by many of the conservative side, even though it's portrays the evils of drugs etc. but I could never quite suspend my disbelief far enough, not just from the timeline, but also in how the enclaves and towns they passed through survived. Civilisation relies on a lot more integrated networks than seemed to exist. And all the people she met were either nice or obviously terrible, and the world just doesn't work that way. ( )

This is such a hard book to rate according to a 5 star system. I'd give it 4.5 if I could. In many ways it reminds me a great deal of [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488213612l/18423._SY75_.jpg|817527]--in its plot structure and in some of its flaws. ( )