Parable of the Sower (40 page)

And our only way of cleaning up, adapting, and compensating for all this in
Parable of the Sower
and
Parable of the Talents
is to use our brains and our hands—the same tools we used to get ourselves into so much trouble.

Now in some of my other novels,
Dawn
,
Adulthood Rites
, and
Imago
, for instance, my Xenogenesis novels, answers come through the intervention of extrasolar aliens. Our problem as a species, we are told, results from our having two inherited characteristics that don’t work and play well together, especially since the wrong one is in control. The two characteristics are intelligence and hierarchical behavior—with hierarchical behavior dominant. The aliens fix things by altering us genetically.

In
Mind of My Mind
,
Clay’s Ark
, and related novels in my Patternist series, the future is changed by people with parapsychological abilities. It isn’t changed for the better. It simply puts another powerful group in charge and their particular shortsightedness and unenlightened self-interests bring about different changes.

These are all ideas I’ve had about the future in earlier novels. Other possibilities I’ll save for other novels.

5. What kind of research did you do for
Parable of the Sower
?

I read books and listened to taped classes that focused on religions. I found books on African religion and took a particular interest in the Orishas of the Yoruba people. Lauren Olamina’s middle name is Oya because I liked both the name and the Orisha the name represented. Oya is, among other things, the deity of the Niger River. She’s unpredictable, intelligent, and dangerous—a good namesake for Lauren Oya Olamina.

I indulged my weakness for specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias by falling in love with
The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions
. I found it at the library and liked it so much that I hunted it down and bought it.

I brushed up on guns. I had my research for my novel
Clay’s Ark
to fall back on there. All I had to do was dig it out and add to it a little.

I tacked detailed maps of different parts of California all over my walls. I used to travel up and down California on Greyhound buses, but I’ve never walked the length of the state. Since my characters had to do that, I had to understand how they would manage. I also read books by people who had walked the state, bicycled it, or ridden the length of it on horseback.

I listened to my local National Public Radio and Pacifica stations and read newspapers and magazines. This wasn’t so much research as my normal behavior, but because
Parable of the Sower
and
Parable of the Talents
were largely inspired by the news, by the trends that seemed important to me [see question 4], the news I absorbed fed right into the novel.

And finally, I pestered my mother, who had a green thumb, and I read books on gardening. I also took notes on my morning walks. What was in flower? What was in fruit? When? Gardening is popular in the Pasadena area. Most people who have houses have big yards, and everyone can grow something. My mother, who knew a good thing when she saw it, put me to work—so that I could get some practical experience.

6.
Parable of the Sower
is, among other things, a coming-of-age story. What are the most important lessons Lauren Olamina learns as she matures?

One of the first lessons Olamina learns is to value community. She learns this as a young girl, learns it without knowing she’s learning. Her father’s community is her teacher. She cannot agree with her father or other adults when they close their eyes in fear and hope to wait for the return of the good old days. But she can see that the people around her could not sustain themselves if they did not find ways to work together.

When Olamina’s birth community is destroyed, she begins to build another. She doesn’t know at first that that’s what she’s doing, and she’s afraid—terrified—of potentially dangerous strangers. But she learns to reach out in spite of her fear, to choose the best people she can find and bring them together. With her acceptance of Earthseed, she relinquishes hope for supernatural help. She recognizes a god, but not a knowing, caring, anthropomorphic entity. She believes that our only dependable help must come from ourselves and from one another. She never develops a “things will work themselves out somehow” attitude. She learns to be an activist.

7. Who or what are the most important influences on your writing?

These change from novel to novel. When I’m working on a novel, anything that catches my attention might wind up affecting the writing. Sometimes there’s an incident on a bus or on the street or in some other public place, sometimes it’s something someone says or does, or something I read.

Early literary influences were fairy tales, mythology, comic books, and animal stories—especially horse stories (
A Forest World; Bambi; Bambi’s Children; Black Beauty; Lad, a Dog; King of the Wind; Big Red; The Black Stallion
…).

Later, I read science fiction indiscriminately. I particularly liked writers who created interesting and believable characters, but I read whoever I found at the library or in the magazines that I bought at the supermarket. My first science fiction magazines were
Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, Analog,
and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
. Some of the authors I especially liked when I was in my early teens were Theodore Sturgeon, Eric Frank Russell, Zenna Henderson, Ray Bradbury, J. T. McIntosh, Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak, Lester del Rey, Fredric Brown, and Isaac Asimov. Later, I discovered Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Brunner, Harlan Ellison, and Arthur C. Clarke. I devoured the many anthologies of Judith Merril and Groff Conklin.

In short, like many science fiction fans, I read too much science fiction and too little of anything else. I also, as I mentioned earlier, read popular science. At school, I did very well in English and in history. History also took me to fascinatingly different places and made me think about the way people behave toward one another, the ways in which they handled power, for instance. These things held my interest and found their way into my writing.

Writers use everything. We can’t help it. Whatever touches us touches our writing.

8. What would you like readers to get from this novel? What would you like them to think about?

I hope people who read
Parable of the Sower
will think about where we seem to be heading—we the United States, even we the human species. Where are we going? What sort of future are we creating? Is it the kind of future you want to live in? If it isn’t, what can we do to create a better future? Individually and in groups, what can we do?

Octavia E. Butler

Pasadena, California

May 1999