There are two major storylines here: (1) the gradual collapse of American civilization in the face of a climate crisis, and (2) the establishment of a new religion. This first book in Butler's Earthseed series focuses on the climate crisis, the second (I'm inferring) will get into more detail about Earthseed, the religion being propagated (sowed) by the novel's protagonist, Lauren Olamani.

For a book written in 1993, Butler's projection of the impacts of a climate crisis in the U.S. are chillingly in-line with current forecasts: water shortages, food shortages, high prices, eroding shorelines, and especially the disproportionately appalling impacts on marginalized populations: the poor, minorities, immigrants, etc. Butler's U.S. isn't yet a lawless dystopia - there's still a president, police forces, colleges, and big box stores, etc. - but it's well on the way to becoming one, especially for those unable to afford walled communities, food, water, and armed guards. While the novel makes clear that some states are faring better than others, Butler's southern California is well on its way to dystopian anarchy, overrun by bloodthirsty gangs, rampant drug use (including abuse of a particularly horrific substance that causes users to become pyromaniacs), wanton crime (rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism), and legalized indentured servitude/slavery.

Into this reality is born Lauren Olamani, the precocious, mixed-race daughter of college-educated preacher. As the novel begins, the creeping dystopia that has already ravaged the lower classes is beginning to claim middle class communities like the one Lauren is living in, eventually forcing her to take to the road in search of a (relatively) safe place to settle and propagate her "new religion," which she calls Earthseed - a sort of Darwinian-survival-of-the-best-adapted meets Dale-Carnagie-cult-of-affirmation mashup. Along the way she and her rag-tag community of friends/followers face the expected perils: murderous thieves, wild dogs, thirst, fire, etc.

All of which makes for an entertaining read as long as you focus on the characters (engaging) and plot (brisk), because Olamani's Earthseed credo - while good enough for plot purposes - is laced with logical fallacies and inconsistencies; no great philosophical truths will be revealed. Her depiction of the gradual degradation of civilized norms must have seemed pretty extreme and unlikely back in 1993 when this was first published. However, it's hard to read this now without seeing parallels between events in the novel and current headlines - the carnage caused by illegal drug use (opioids laced with fentanyl), the rise in overt acts of racial hatred, the social impacts of unbridled capitalism, the political manipulations of corrupt politicians, the looming climate crisis - and wondering just how extreme Butler's vision may be.

But then, if the whole idea of the science fiction genre is to analyze current scientific/cultural trends and then extrapolate possible outcomes of these trends into the future, then maybe thinking about how we are going to shape for ourselves a different future than the horrific one depicted here is precisely what we should be doing. ( )

Tremendous potential, but I don't think it quite panned out. ( )

I'll freely admit I don't get it. It's an interesting attempt to write a dystopia that is much closer to (our) present, evoking something of the simultaneous collapse and continuance of gated communities alongside shantytowns, but it just doesn't cohere into an understandable world. Half the time there's roaming gangs of drug addicted psychopaths burning, killing and stealing their way through a wasteland, where water rations equal cash money (there's a functioning monetary system?), life being valueless, with cannibalism and ravenous wild dogs eating babies straight out of The Road. Then simultaneously there's also police, corporate towns, gated communities with people working as teachers and ministers and unspecific administrative duties. Phone networks that work but are too expensive to use. Literacy rates so low just being able to read and write is a marketable skill yet they've only just cut the space program.
Amid this confusing world building a woman with "hyper empathy" akin to psionic ability must shuffle around a decaying US after losing her middle class (?) lifestyle and family, and while doing so creates a proto-religion based around change. Instead of the narrative Earthseed, we have a lot of story seeds, and none of them really come to fruition. Much like the nascent religion that's being created throughout the book, it really struggles to congeal into a solid point, instead doing a lot of handwaving around themes of social atomism, late stage capitalism, exploitation and reconnecting with humanity in spite of this.
Maybe it suffers from being heavy on the setup for a big payoff in the imagined trilogy of Earthseed books, but with Butler dying before finishing the third installment I won't be along for the ride. ( )

As noted by Steinem in her in her 2016 introduction to this edition, in Butler’s novel first published in 1993 and set in the 21st century, the writing and the story she tells is prophetically accurate. Reading the book in the fall of 2023, this novel which opens in July 2024 is chillingly predictive. It's a grim and brutal tale of escape and survival set in the author’s home state of California. Vast inequality between the rich and the poor has led to walled communities under attack by an impoverished and desperate homeless population ravaged by drug abuse and armed with fire. Public service is minimal, corrupt and designed to serve only the rich.

Butler’s novel is told in diary form by Lauren Olamina, an 18-year-old black woman, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, whose family is attacked when their neighborhood’s perimeter is breached, and burned by a mob. Its residents are assaulted and murdered, and as far as Lauren knows she is her family’s only survivor. She flees north and as she does she gathers a small group of followers. The small group watches out for each other and protects one another.

Lauren has contemplated this journey for some time before the crisis that forces her to leave. In her diary, she has developed what she calls Earthseed it’s a materialist theology with an impersonal God, or to put it another way; it’s a stoic survivalist philosophy. Chapter one of the novel opens with this verse:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

Chapter 23 starts with this verse:

Your teachers
Are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you
or taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear
Will teach you –
If you will learn.
God is your first
and your last teacher.
God is your harshest teacher:
Subtle,
Demanding.
Learn or die. ( )

How did imiss this in high school? I would have eaten it up ( )