
"We had a fire today." This was a diary entry for Feb. 1, 2025, in Octavia Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. The story is set in the fictional town of Robledo, based on Altadena, the historically Black neighborhood where Butler lived in the 1990s and where she is buried. The Eaton fires destroyed Altadena in January 2025. How was the "Mother of Afrofuturism" able to envision these fires?
Many are now calling Butler a prophet, but she wasn’t. She was a divine gift to this world, but she was also an avid student of history and science. She crafted her stories around the patterns that point to a disastrous, anti-Black future to make a stronger argument about the world we need to build instead.
When a student asked her about the troubles she described in her books, Butler responded, "I didn't make up the problems. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters." Butler didn’t leave us without answers.
Butler's 1998 sequel to Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, revealed the secret to surviving the 'Sower' world. Her work points to the idea that liberation requires us to work together to build the communities we deserve to live in.
It won't be easy or perfect, but to survive the anti-Black systems impacting us, we must reimagine and rebuild our futures accordingly. What role will you play in helping build our future?