Octavia Butler’s American dystopia of 2025 is a harsh one. Christian fundamentalists rule the day, climate change has up-ended the traditional global order, public education is non-existent, rape and theft is rampant, and steep wealth inequality has created an America with a Gini coefficient approaching 1.
This dystopia is not a fundamentally unfounded one. Parables has root caused the problems of modern America and proposes logical extensions of them. Religious conservatism tuned to 11, schooling pared down to its essentials (if it’s even offered), and technology that is harmful by design. We see glimpses of them now, in Amazon’s company towns, in Palantir’s techno-dystopian vision, and in (obviously corrupt) politicians promoting charter schools as broken solutions to a systemic under-education of poor Americans. Parables’ prescience is thoughtful.
Certain aspects of this future aren’t quite right. For example, Butler got the Internet and portable phones wrong. This is largely a product of the time the books were written, i.e., when they were more fringe tools. Talents gets this slightly better than Sower, which is the benefit of 4 years to refine its view of the future. I’ll give Butler a pass for this one, since her predictions of what problems plague modern America have largely been correct. I’ll return to this dystopia in a bit.
It’s difficult to review Parable of the Talents in a different context as its predecessor, Parable of the Sower (and vice versa). Both have certain inherent flaws that I originally attributed to not having the context of Talents.
For instance, though Butler’s dystopia is well considered, oftentimes the characters living in this dystopia feel one-dimensional. From the POV of Butler’s protagonist, Lauren Olamina, they often converge to a single flat archetype. They share the same mannerisms and speak the same. Perhaps there is a literary angle here. Perhaps it is a literal reality of the books centring around Lauren. I disagree: Butler often emphasises the individual nature of her dystopia. Why is it that everyone is the same?
Lauren’s philosophy is strange. Her philosophy of “change” conflicts with how she seeks safety in conventional strategies. She respects land ownership in a world where property rights are violated without second thought. She seeks some police protection in a world where they’ve shown themselves to be provably corrupt, absent, and actively harmful.
There’s a certain lack of separation between Lauren’s dialogue and what Butler herself thinks. This is ordinarily an unfair point to make, but I think this is well-substantiated by interviews with Butler about the book. Butler’s voice and opinions are so transparently mapped onto Lauren that the book feels distinctly anti-literary. This lack of artistic distance is to the book’s detriment.
Thanks to Xavier and Bridget for their discussions over the course of this summer’s book club.
Sower: 3/5 Talents: 2/5
Written 15 September 2025
Adapted from my review on Goodreads.
Notes
- see Parable of the Sower. read for Xavier’s book club
- STILL gets lots of things right
- being published 5 years later gives a bit more time to refine the view of the future
- predicting right-wing Christian fundamentalist MAGA almost 17 years ahead of time
- writing voice
- really do not care very much for it
- sounds like a “Reddit wholesome 100% chungus”
- Lauren has a weird habit of deconstructing people into what motivates them to survive. everyone begins to sound the same, too
- manic pixie dream girl? like wtf