(Four Walls Eight Windows, October 1993, 299pp)
In June I focused on reading classic science fiction novels, partly to see how many I could get through in one month, considering other obligations (answer: 6 and a bit), and partly to revisit two novels that have, in the past couple three years, become semi-permanent residents on extended bestseller lists, just as Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHT-FOUR and Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451 have been for decades.
The first of these is Octavia Butler’s PARABLE OF THE SOWER, from 1993. I read it shortly after it came out (that’s the first edition shown above), and thought it a perfectly decent novel, if not especially outstanding. There have been plenty of other near-future novels about the collapse of society, the survivors having to fend off criminals and live off the land. What made it distinctive, perhaps, is that it was apparently set in Altadena CA, where the author lived at the time, and involved a female black main character. (And that the author was a female black author.)
