Review: Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Published: Seven Stories Press, 1998

Series: Book 2 (Final Book) of the Parable Series

Awards Won: Nebula Award

Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“Amid the collapse of modern American society, Lauren Olamina soon had to face the smaller destruction of her parents gated community.  She set out on her own, armed with little more than her newborn ‘Earthseed’ religion and her determination to survive.  In Parable of the Talents, Lauren has formed her first peaceful Earthseed settlement, Acorn, and she is slowly becoming a respected religious leader. In addition to her religious responsibilities, Lauren has become both a wife and a mother.

People are beginning to rebuild the infrastructure of the United States, but things can never return to the way they were before. Tragedy has given rise to a new wave of conservative religious fundamentalism, exemplified by the charismatic sect known as “Christian America”. As religious fervor begins to combine with secular power, Acorn’s future looks anything but secure.  Soon Lauren will be struggling to protect both of her children—her baby daughter Larkin and her budding religion.” ~Allie

Parable of the Talents is a sequel to Parable of the Sower. I think Talents could be read without first reading Sower, but it would be best appreciated after having read the first novel. Sower provides a lot of background into Lauren’s character and to the origin of the Earthseed religion.

My Thoughts:

While Sower was told through the diary of teenage Lauren Olamina, Talents incorporates several viewpoint characters.  There were also numerous non-viewpoint characters, many of which were described almost solely in terms of the trauma they’d experienced and their methods of coping.  I think this was done to show how the current events affected many different people, but I think I would have preferred the story to focus more deeply on a smaller group of characters.

The characters one comes to know most deeply, of course, are the primary narrators. The main narration is through Lauren’s diary as an adult, and the other most notable viewpoint belongs to her estranged daughter.  I think having two very different narrators effectively added depth to the story.  I think it would be easy to see Lauren as simply a courageous figure, but the bitter outsider’s view provided by her daughter highlighted the costs Lauren’s choices exacted from the people around her.

I appreciated the way in which the novel managed to examine the role of religion without feeling as though it were adhering to an agenda.  Christianity takes a lot of criticism throughout the story, but it seems like the specific content of the religion is less relevant than its relationship with power and social structure.  The two religions observed, both with highly charismatic founders, are Earthseed and a new sect called Christian America. Earthseed deals from a position of weakness, while Christian America wields significant political and societal power. 

In such a difficult time, people have turned towards both religions for comfort, hope, and the assurance that their lives have a purpose. In order to attract followers, Lauren had to deliberately cater to those needs.  Some people also used religion to establish hierarchical structure and to justify their own horrific actions.  A large, powerful religion like Christian America was able to do much to improve the state of society and to rebuild the infrastructure that had crumbled.  However, the movement also ended up providing shelter and forgiveness to people who misused its doctrine to support their own illegal and immoral acts. While Earthseed was currently too small and weak to be used in this fashion, Lauren was all too aware that her religion would also begin to change the moment she was gone.  I think Butler wanted to show how religion can be both a powerful productive and destructive force, and how vitally important it is for believers not to turn a blind eye to corruption within their own ranks.

I have to say that Parable of the Talents is a much more depressing story than Parable of the Sower. Lauren’s life is full of personal tragedy, such as the fate of Acorn and her relationships with her only living relatives.  Some of Lauren’s experiences were pretty disturbing, and very difficult to read. The first novel was incredibly bleak, but it had a thread of hope—that Lauren would be able to form her community out in the country and become a force that would help rebuild the United States.  Talents still has a small thread of hope, but I felt like the story was somehow even more brutally realistic.  Such a devastating societal collapse is not something that can be easily fixed or reversed in a single lifetime.  Perhaps Lauren can make a difference, but it may only be for a future she will never see.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Parable of the Talents is a worthy sequel to Parable of the Sower.  The personal stories of Lauren and her daughter fit together wonderfully to show two very different views of the same society.  While parts of the story were painful to read, and it was a pretty depressing story altogether, it was not a story completely devoid of hope.  I enjoyed Talents also as an examination of the role of organized religion in society.  I’ve heard that Butler had planned a third novel in the “Parable” series, but, sadly, she passed away in 2006.  I think her series feels complete with Talents, but I would have loved to see what the final volume would have contained.

Review: Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler

Published: Earlier Published as ‘Xenogenesis’ by Doubleday Books(1989), ‘Lilith’s Brood’ published by Grand Central Publishing (2000)

The Book:

“Lilith’s Brood contains three novels: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. The trilogy follows the story of humanity’s fate after the entire species is nearly destroyed, along with the planet, in a nuclear war. A relatively small group of survivors are rescued by a powerful alien race called the Oankali.  Masters of the manipulation of life, the Oankali travel through the stars in organic ships, ‘trading’ genetic information with the species they meet.  They’ve determined that the human race will be their next trading partner.

While the human survivors are kept in suspended animation, the Oankali spend centuries painstakingly healing the dying Earth.  It is there that they intend to merge with what remains of humanity, creating a new hybrid species. They awaken Lilith Iyapo to act as teacher and guide to the rest of the recovered humans, and to become one of the first humans to enter the trade--by mating with an Oankali family.  For the trade progress successfully, Humans and Oankali must learn to understand one another. The decisions they make will determine the fate of the Oankali, Humanity, and the new species that they will create together…”  ~Allie

I was originally reading Lilith’s Brood for the June selection of the 2011 Women in Science Fiction Book Club.  When I heard Dreams & Speculations, the hosting blog, was going inactive, I set it aside for a week or two to focus on other books. I will not give away any major plot points, but be aware that I will give away a lot of information on the nature of the Oankali relationship with humanity. 

My Thoughts:

The three novels that make up Lilith’s Brood each follow a character that is the first of its kind in some way.  Despite the odd choice of cover art, this is not actually a romance. I don’t even remember any explicit sexual content, though it does often refer to sex.  A lot of the story concerns  ‘mating’ relationships, but it is typically in terms of societal structure and emotional/chemical relationship bonds. While the trilogy was quite long, Butler’s writing style is easy and accessible.  The best way I can think of to review this massive book is by going through each section (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago) and discussing what stood out to me of each one as I go.

The first story, Dawn, follows Lilith Iyapo, a human woman who is awakened by the Oankali, centuries after the war that destroyed human civilization.  The Oankali intend to have Lilith teach the other surviving humans and encourage them to embrace coexistence and interbreeding with the Oankali.  She is also tasked with helping them accept the fact that they are intended to be the last generation of pure humanity.  Lilith must find a way to cope with her unwanted role as the mother of a new species and the betrayer of her own. I really enjoyed learning about the Oankali, and seeing how different people responded and related to them. Achieving a peaceful coexistence does not seem like an easy task, even with all the power the Oankali have at their disposal.

The dynamic between the two species makes Lilith’s Brood one of the most interesting alien contact stories I’ve read.  The Oankali are a little too certain about their understanding of humanity and its needs, and that certainty leads to some situations that are very uncomfortable to read. They are very fond of humanity, and they want to help and care for us. They understand the biology of humanity incredibly well, but they can’t really understand our psychology.  As a result, many of their efforts at guidance end up causing great, sometimes irreversible, harm.  Despite their failures, they remain smugly confident that they know what is best for humanity.  I liked how neither humanity nor the aliens were set up as a villain. They are simply two very different species with two very different ways of looking at the world. They both want, essentially, the same thing—to save humanity.  The clash arises from their definition of what that rescue would entail and what means should be used to achieve it.

Adulthood Rites follows Akin, Lilith’s hybrid Oankali-Human son.  He’s the first male hybrid (or ‘construct’) to be born to a human woman.  He spends his childhood struggling to reconcile his Oankali and Human heritage and find his place in the world.  Akin is a hyper-intelligent child, a character type that can often be grating.  In this case, it didn’t bother me very much, possibly due to the fact that Akin was not actually a human child.  I thought he offered an interesting new perspective on Oankali/human relations. 

However, I was a little irritated by the stereotypes surrounding Akin’s story.  The Oankali are wary of Akin, since they are convinced that male humans are particularly dangerous.  I could accept that the Oankali would be more prone to stereotyping than humans, since their species is more homogenized within each social niche.  All of the Oankali (and their human mates) follow very strict biologically defined roles, and they are shaped to these roles through various chemical interactions. While I accept that certain tendencies may be determined by biology in humans, I’ve never been convinced that any particular tendency is universally linked to one gender or the other. Therefore, the Oankali’s generalization that human men tended towards violence and conflict annoyed me.  The generalization did not ruin the story for me, though, as the story itself contained plenty of perfectly decent men, and some dangerous women.

The final story, Imago, features Lilith’s child Jodahs, the first hybrid Human-Oankali ooloi.  Oankali have three sexes: male, female, and ooloi.  The male and female are roughly equivalent to the human genders, but they require an ooloi for mating.  The ooloi mixes the genetic contributions of both male and female parents and designs the child.  The ooloi, with their special organs that allow them to manipulate living tissue and genetic information, are the least familiar to humans.  The Oankali do not know what to expect from Jodahs, and he has to find a way to prove to them he is stable, in control, and not a danger to others.  I thought Jodahs story was the most removed from humanity of the three, and I enjoyed seeing the world from his point of view.  I liked how the three novels progressed, with the viewpoint transitioning from completely human in Dawn to almost completely alien in Imago.

My Rating: 4/5

Lilith’s Brood is a broad, ambitious story that follows humanity’s near-death, and their uncertain future with the powerful, well meaning, and manipulative Oankali.  It follows both Lilith Iyapo, a surviving human, and several of her children, Akin and Jodahs, who are prototypes in the creation of a new species.  I loved how creatively alien the Oankali were, and how the misunderstandings and differences between the two species drove a lot of the conflict of the story.  I was a little bothered by the adherence to gender stereotypes and biological determinism.  There are many other topics I did not address, such as my disbelief of what the Oankali call the ‘human contradiction’. Even though I sometimes disagreed with attitudes or beliefs I encountered in Lilith’s Brood, I still found it to be an incredibly interesting story of alien-human contact and coexistence.

Review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Published: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993

Series: Book 1 of the Parable Series

Award Nominations: Nebula, Locus SF

The Book:

“Amid the breakdown of modern civilization, the more fortunate citizens have sequestered themselves in carefully guarded gated communities.   Outside their walls lies a terrifying world where theft, arson, rape, murder, and even cannibalism are becoming commonplace.  As people grow more desperate for food and shelter, they are growing more willing to accept slavery to get it.  In addition, new drugs are on the market, including one that makes watching fire orgasmic.

Another drug, taken by her late mother, caused the teenage girl Lauren Olamina to inherit ‘hyperempathy’, a psychosomatic disorder that forces her to experience the pain she imagines from witnessing others.  Lauren is lucky to live in a walled community with her father, who is a Christian minister, and the rest of their family.  However, she knows that this haven will not last forever, and she has already begun making plans for the future.  She is also working on the development of “Earthseed”, a religion and philosophy that she is slowly shaping in an attempt to make sense of her reality.   Lauren rises to meet the future not only determined to survive, but determined to create a life worth living.” ~Allie 

This is the first book I’ve ever finished reading by Octavia E. Butler, though I started reading Lilith’s Brood (which is good so far, but very long) at the same time. I’m sort of getting the impression that Butler wrote a lot of fiction about the collapse of human society, but maybe I just chose an odd sampling of her work.

I’d also like to mention that my review rate should be back to normal (2-3 reviews a week) in a week or two.  For the past few weeks I’ve been dealing with a combination of picking some very long novels and some major deadlines at work.  Once I finish reading Lilith’s Brood (I’m at ~50%) and All Clear (I’m at ~25%), I should be back on schedule.

My Thoughts: 

Parable of the Sower feels like a more realistic look at how civilization might collapse than most apocalyptic fiction.  Instead of a nuclear war or a pandemic, Lauren’s world is just slowly getting worse and worse.  The quality of life is plummeting as a result of many factors—an economic depression, government and police forces slowly losing credibility, a rise of crime, disease, and other things.  Despite how bad things are becoming, many people refuse to acknowledge the changing world.  They desperately believe that the current situation is just a rough patch, and that things will go back to normal eventually. In some ways, this was more interesting than an undeniable, cataclysmic event.  The focus was less on the mechanism of destruction, and more on how regular people coped or failed to cope with the changes in their world.

Despite its future setting, Parable of the Sower actually has very few of the common science fiction elements.  The level of technology appears to be similar to our current civilization, with the exception of some new drugs.  One of those resulted in Lauren’s hyperempathy, and another causes people to sexually enjoy burning things and people.  Honestly, I did not really feel like these elements added all that much to the story, since the topics they brought up could have been addressed in other ways.  In contrast to the realism of the rest of the story, the hyperempathy and fire drugs felt a little out of place.  In general, I liked that the characters and their interactions were close enough to modern society to feel familiar and realistic.

The story was related through Lauren’s diary, which also helped to ground the story in daily life and the lives of ordinary people.  I thought that Lauren’s voice seemed very authentic for a teenage girl, particularly at the beginning.  She was perceptive and intelligent, but did not seem unnaturally wise beyond her years. The one drawback of seeing the world through the filter of Lauren’s thoughts and writing is that it created a certain distance from the other characters in the story.  Lauren describes the many people she knows or encounters, but only when their actions or stories are particularly significant to her own life.  Overall, I thought that Lauren was compelling enough as a protagonist that I didn’t really mind not getting quite as deep a picture of her companions.

Reading Lauren’s thoughts about her new religion of “Earthseed” made the theological aspects of the book easier to accept. She started putting Earthseed together when she was an adolescent.  I think this makes a lot of sense, since that is the age that most children begin questioning their parents’ religion.  To Lauren, her father’s religion (Christianity) did not adequately describe her reality or her ideal way of life.  She formed Earthseed as an attempt to explicitly define her own perception of the current world and the way she believed people needed to live in it.  She was trying to get people to let go of the structure of their old, dying civilization, and apply themselves to creating something new.   I think the novel dealt really well with her development of Earthseed and her attempts to convince others of its validity and worth.  I was glad that Lauren’s new religion did not feel like a excuse to preach to the reader, but rather a discussion point to help the characters to cope with their world.

My Rating: 4/5

Parable of the Sower is in some ways a bleak and depressing book, but it also carries with it a message of hope.  The world is always changing, but we can survive and find a worthwhile way of life.  I was a little afraid that it would end up being a rant against current organized religion.  On the contrary, Lauren embraces religion as a way that people make sense of the world.  Her Earthseed is less a rejection of established religion than it is her attempt to define her own experience of reality and share it with others.  Aside from the religious aspects, Parable of the Sower is a compelling survival story set in the middle of the death of our modern civilization.  Lauren’s diary entries keep the story grounded in everyday events and their continuing struggle to survive.