Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

Multiple awardwinner Octavia E. Butler's astonishing novels have made her a powerful,acclaimed voice in women's fiction, African-American literature, and modernscience fiction. PARABLE OF THE TALENTS is her mesmerizing vision of anear-future world filled with irrational hatred...and divine hope.

EARTHSEED

Lauren Olamina's love is divided among her young daughter, hercommunity, and the revelation that led Lauren to found a new faith that teaches"God Is Change." But in the wake of environmental and economic chaos,the U.S.governmentturns a blind eye to violent bigots who consider themere existence of a black female leader a threat. And soon Lauren must eithersacrifice her child and her followers or forsake the religion that cantransform human destiny.

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tomy aunts

Irma Harris and

Hazel Ruth Walker,

and in memory of my mother

Octavia Margaret Butler

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PROLOGUE

FromEARTHSEED:THE BOOKSOF THELIVING

ByLaurenOya Olamina

Here we are

Energy,

Mass,

Life,

Shaping life, Mind,

Shaping Mind, God,

Shaping God.

Consider

We are born

Not with purpose,

But with potential.

THEY'LL MAKE A GOD of her.

I think that would please her, if she could know aboutit. In spite of all her protests and denials, she's always needed devoted,obedient followersdiscipleswho would listen to her and believe everything shetold them. And she needed large events to manipulate. All gods seem to needthese things.

Her legal name was Lauren Oya Olamina Bankole. Tothose who loved her or hated her, she was simply "Olamina."

She was my biological mother.

She is dead.

I have wanted to love her and to believe that what happenedbetween her and me wasn't her fault. I've wanted that. But instead, I've hated her,feared her, needed her. I've never trusted her, though, never understood howshe could be the way she wasso focused, and yet so misguided, there for allthe world, but never there for me. I still don't understand. And now that she'sdead, I'm not even sure I ever will. But I must try because I need tounderstand myself, and she is part of me. I wish that she weren't, but she is.In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was.That is my reason for writing and assembling this book.

It has always been my way to sort through my feelingsby writing. She and I had that in common. And along with the need to write, shealso developed a need to draw. If she had been born in a saner time, she mighthave become a writer as I have or an artist.

I've gathered a few of her drawings, although she gavemost of these away during her lifetime. And I have copies of all that was savedof her writings. Even some of her early, paper notebooks have been copied todisk or crystal and saved. She had a habit, during her youth, of hiding cachesof food, money, and weaponry in out-of-the-way places or with trusted people,and being able to go straight back to these years later. These saved her lifeseveral times, and also they saved her words, her journals and notes and myfather's writings. She managed to badger him into writing a little. He wrotewell, although he didn't like doing it. I'm glad she badgered him. I'm glad tohave known him at least through his writing. I wonder why I'm not glad to haveknown her through hers.

"God is Change," my mother believed. Thatwas what she said in the first of her verses in Earthseed:TheFirstBookofthe living.

Allthatyoutouch

YouChange.

AllthatyouChange

Changesyou.

Theonlylastingtruth

IsChange.

God

IsChange.

The words are harmless, I suppose, and metaphoricallytrue. At least she began with some species of truth. And now she's touched meone last time with her memories, her life, and her damned Earthseed.

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2032

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THELIVING

We give our dead

To the orchards

And the groves.

We give our dead

To life.

Chapter1

FromEARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THELIVING

Darkness

Gives shape to the light

As light

Shapes the darkness.

Death

Gives shape to life

As life

Shapes death.

The universe

And God

Share this wholeness,

Each

Defining the other.

God

Gives shape to the universe

As the universe

Shapes God.

fromMemoriesofOtherWorlds

by taylor franklin bankole

I have read that the period of upheaval that journalists have begun torefer to as "the Apocalypse" or more commonly, more bitterly,"the Pox" lasted from 2015 through 2030a decade and a half of chaos.This is untrue. The Pox has been a much longer torment. It began well before2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended.

I have also read that the Pox was caused byaccidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It wouldbe more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal withobvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat andwatched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was bornin 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched educationbecome more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be ifcivilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, andinertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I havewatched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and morepeople.

Overall, the Pox has had the effect of aninstallment-plan World War III. In fact, there were several small, bloodyshooting wars going on around the world during the Pox. These were stupidaffairswastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defendagainst vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually foughtbecause inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knewthat they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arousepatriotic support for war.

Amid all this, somehow, the United States of Americasuffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did notsurvive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be,then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.

What is left of it now, what it has become, I do notknow.

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