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Reading
I stopped at the neighborhood indie bookstore a few days ago to see whether the copy of Floodtide I ordered back in November, a few days before official release date, had come in yet, and it hadn't, but they say it has finally reached the warehouse from which they get most of their books, so it should be here this week.
While standing at the counter asking about this, I looked over at the shelf where I got the previous three Octavia Butler books, and saw Parable of the Talents prominently displayed. This is a sequel to Parable of the Sower, so I grabbed it.
OK, in 1998 she wrote this book about an America, c. 2030, that's falling apart and being taken over by a dreadful new President named Jarret whose campaign motto is (I kid you not) "Make America Great Again". He's a sort of combination of Mike Pence's right-wing Christian theocracy and Donald Trump's sense of victimization and encouragement of mob violence.
Climate change is causing a lot of strange weather, and spreading tropical diseases to formerly-temperate regions, and everybody's moving north to escape this: Los Angelenos moving to the Bay Area, San Franciscans moving to Oregon and Washington, or in some cases moving to Alaska or Siberia, except that Oregon, Washington, and Alaska have all closed their borders to further immigrants (Alaska has gone so far as to secede from the Union). Most of this moving is done on foot, since fuel, cars, and car repair are almost unaffordable for most people. If you're not part of an armed group you're easy pickings for kidnappers, pimps, muggers, rapists, etc. In the previous book, the new threat was roving bands of people hopped on a new drug that makes watching fire an orgasmic experience, so they tend to set things and people on fire just to watch. In this book, the new threat is roving bands of religious crusaders, whipped up by Jarret's sermons to slaughter infidels. In both books, the main protagonist is a charismatic young woman who forms a religious sect of her own: it survives and grows by Being Decent To One Another (e.g. not killing people except in self-defense, perhaps a low bar), with a long-term goal of reviving the space program and colonizing other planets. The path from a commune of a few dozen people to the size and wealth necessary to mount a space program is utterly unclear, both to the reader and to the protagonist. This impossible dream and the sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes tautologous dicta of her religion make her a decidedly ambiguous figure: it doesn't feel as though the author wants the reader to actually believe or follow those dicta so much as go along with them as the price for admission to the Being Decent To One Another group, as many of the characters seem to do.
I'm only a third of the way through the book. More later.
While standing at the counter asking about this, I looked over at the shelf where I got the previous three Octavia Butler books, and saw Parable of the Talents prominently displayed. This is a sequel to Parable of the Sower, so I grabbed it.
OK, in 1998 she wrote this book about an America, c. 2030, that's falling apart and being taken over by a dreadful new President named Jarret whose campaign motto is (I kid you not) "Make America Great Again". He's a sort of combination of Mike Pence's right-wing Christian theocracy and Donald Trump's sense of victimization and encouragement of mob violence.
Climate change is causing a lot of strange weather, and spreading tropical diseases to formerly-temperate regions, and everybody's moving north to escape this: Los Angelenos moving to the Bay Area, San Franciscans moving to Oregon and Washington, or in some cases moving to Alaska or Siberia, except that Oregon, Washington, and Alaska have all closed their borders to further immigrants (Alaska has gone so far as to secede from the Union). Most of this moving is done on foot, since fuel, cars, and car repair are almost unaffordable for most people. If you're not part of an armed group you're easy pickings for kidnappers, pimps, muggers, rapists, etc. In the previous book, the new threat was roving bands of people hopped on a new drug that makes watching fire an orgasmic experience, so they tend to set things and people on fire just to watch. In this book, the new threat is roving bands of religious crusaders, whipped up by Jarret's sermons to slaughter infidels. In both books, the main protagonist is a charismatic young woman who forms a religious sect of her own: it survives and grows by Being Decent To One Another (e.g. not killing people except in self-defense, perhaps a low bar), with a long-term goal of reviving the space program and colonizing other planets. The path from a commune of a few dozen people to the size and wealth necessary to mount a space program is utterly unclear, both to the reader and to the protagonist. This impossible dream and the sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes tautologous dicta of her religion make her a decidedly ambiguous figure: it doesn't feel as though the author wants the reader to actually believe or follow those dicta so much as go along with them as the price for admission to the Being Decent To One Another group, as many of the characters seem to do.
I'm only a third of the way through the book. More later.