Column — In Climate-Scorched L.A., the Burning Truth of Octavia Butler's Science Fiction

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan The devastating fires burning Los Angeles stand as a monumental example of nature’s profoundly destructive potential when accelerated by human-caused climate change. The Palisades fire and the Eaton fire have together burned almost 40,000 acres, and damaged or destroyed over 12,000 homes and other buildings, killing at least 25 people. These fast-moving fires vaporized entire neighborhoods in hours, even minutes, forcing residents to flee with what they could carry. These climate-fueled fires have also drawn renewed attention to the writing of the late Octavia Butler, who broke ground as a Black woman science fiction writer, and her novel, The Parable of the Sower, a dystopian tale set in California. In the book, climate change has completely disrupted society as we know it. Wealth inequality has spurred crimes of desperation and driven neighborhoods to wall themselves off and form armed self-defense groups. A new, populist pro-business, anti-regulation president gets elected, enacting policies that intensify inequality. Written in 1993, Butler’s prophetic book is set in the years 2024 through 2027. The Parable of the Sower is told via diary entries of a Black teenage girl, Lauren Olamina. Lauren lives with her family near Los Angeles, in a walled enclave shared by eleven families. Octavia Butler grew up in Pasadena with her widowed mother, who worked as a maid for wealthy white families. The book’s fictional community of Robledo is similar to Altadena, neighboring Pasadena. As a result of racist redlining throughout L.A.’s history, Altadena developed as a largely middle class Black community, on LA’s northern edge. The Eaton fire has destroyed much of Altadena. Lauren Olamina, in one of her diary entries, describes how even the modest comforts of their walled cul-de-sac proved to be a target for those with less: “[E]verything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.” Violent attacks on the neighborhood increased, and, after one in which her family and most neighbors are killed, Lauren flees with two others, heading north. In one passage during their flight, she writes, “Fires are illegal. You can see them flickering all over the hills, but they are illegal. Everything is so dry that there’s always a danger of campfires getting away from people and taking out a community or two. It does happen. But people who have no homes will build fires.” As early as 1993, Octavia Butler saw the threat of climate change. The Parable of the Sower was to be the first in a series of Parable novels. It was followed by The Parable of the Talents (in which a Christian nationalist is elected president, promising to “Make America Great Again”). Butler died in 2006, after an accidental fall, leaving the rest of the series unwritten. She is buried in Altadena. In 2005, in one of her last recorded interviews, Octavia Butler said on the Democracy Now! news hour, “I wrote the two Parable books back in the '90s … books about what happens because we don't trouble to correct some of the problems that we’re brewing for ourselves right now. Global warming is one of those problems. I was aware of it back in the ’80s. I was reading books about it. A lot of people were seeing it as politics, as something very iffy, as something they could ignore because nothing was going to come of it tomorrow.” Octavia Butler continued, setting the scene then reading an excerpt from The Parable of the Sower: “I have a character in the books who is … taking the country fascist and who manages to get elected president …Here is one of the things that my character is inspired to write about this sort of situation. She says: Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” We write this days before the second inauguration of Donald Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal disaster aid for California unless the state enacts policies demanded by Republicans. Of course, the climate catastrophe doesn’t recognize borders, nor cares if a state is red or blue – look no further than hurricane damage in North Carolina and Florida. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, fires still burn as authorities try to locate and identify the dead. In a city known globally for its creative output, life is now, sadly, imitating the art of Octavia Butler.