An Octavia Butler story 10 years in the making — and even more relevant now

FOR MOST OF my life, I knew of Octavia Butler in only a vague, ambient sense, only as a name, unattached to any particular work or ethos. Then in 2012 I interviewed Ishmael Butler (no relation to Octavia), a Seattle-based musician and generational talent known for his hip-hop groups Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets.

Ish’s intellect and physical demeanor both are restrained, imposing, powerful. When he speaks, his words are intentional and consequential, so you listen. In that interview he mentioned some influences on his current frame of mind: George Clinton, the sci-fi novel “Altered Carbon” and Octavia Butler. The first two touchstones I was intimately familiar with. Octavia Butler I wasn’t.

I let several years pass before I picked up my first Octavia Butler book, “Parable of the Sower,” but it hit me like a meteor. Trump was president, Seattle was choking under a blanket of forest fire smoke and the city’s cost of living was among the highest in the nation, driving lifelong residents away, sometimes onto the streets.

“Sower,” published in 1995 and set in 2024, put the world right outside my front door into a harrowing speculative thriller. And Earthseed, the fictional religion it depicts, offered a way of engaging that world through resilience, adaptability and openness — an ideology that was both daunting and comforting. Change is hard, but it’s also inevitable. Better to meet it head-on than to hide. 

In the following years I devoured much of Butler’s writing, magnetized by her unique and startling perspective and gripping narratives. I also turned to the constellation of contemporary authors, thinkers and activists inspired by her. Their work was not only entertainment but also a survival guide. 

With an urge to share my enthusiasm, I began writing this story in early 2018, starting with a conversation with another Seattle hip-hop sage, Gabriel Teodros. I intended to publish it in the magazine I worked at, City Arts, a journal of the Puget Sound’s creative community. Then as now, that community was economically devalued and systemically marginalized, as was City Arts itself, which shuttered later that year, leaving this story, and countless others, untold.

With the Octavia Butler boom currently underway, my compulsion to share her work as widely as possible is even more urgent today.