Parable Of The Sower/Talents

Literature/Fiction

So these are often lauded as solarpunk reading...and after reading them I'm BAFFLED at that notion. Did I miss something?

They are good books. Very good books in fact. They are prescient, and fascinating books considering when they were written. The prose is solid. The characters are compelling.

I just don't see how they fall remotely under solarpunk. Lauren has a single conversation with her friend about using wild seeds as food, and the concept of a rural community away from the chaos....that's it. There's nothing else here that feels like anything but apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic. Going to space/other planets because earth is ruined is not very solarpunk to me either. I also feel like replacing a brutal Christian theocracy with the Earthseed religion is not a good thing. The book feels like it was written by a Christian who had a crisis of faith, leaned agnostic for a time, and then created a religion that used tenets of Christianity to wrangle people under another false set of rules and behaviour. Lauren essentially becomes the thing she's fighting against....leaving "god" in her tenets of her book is what says that to me.

I dunno. I just guess I was expecting the BRTUAL end of the world she portrays in her book (in all its grim dark 90's glory) to be juxtaposed against the founding of an ACTUAL solarpunk community and vibe. It never ever feels like that, and the second book dives even HARDER into that usnure-of-what-it-wants-to-be nature of the first book with various characters who live in that Christian theocracy trying to straddle the line between that and Earthseed...

Like I said, great books, but I don't think it should be recommended as Solarpunk reading. I don't need solarpunk to have no visceral and juts be about happy communities living off the land and nature...but it should at least have SOME of the solarpunk notions in it.

Guess I gotta go back to KSR for this type of thing.

in solarpunkby Bubbly_Ad_2021

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10d

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A_Guy195

Writer

10d

It is unfortunate that Butler died before managing to continue the books....I've read that the next stories were supposed to be much more utopian that the first two. Like, the Earthseed people would go to the moon and find new communities there. Let's just say these books are Solarpunk-adjacent but not 100% Solarpunk.

Bubbly_Ad_2021

10d

Let's just say these books are Solarpunk-adjacent but not 100% Solarpunk.

Yes, that's a fair assessment I think. I wish she'd have written those others...but I understand they were too depressing for her to write.

A_Guy195

Writer

10d

I've also read that she did start writing the third book.... But then she found out that the plot was very similar to a book by a different author that was just published then. So she scrapped it.

Bubbly_Ad_2021

10d

It's mostly sad she's not with us anymore. She was a wonderful writer. I'd love to see what she'd have written since then, and what she would have thought of Trump getting elected in 2016 on the back of a slogan she had her Christofascist president in Talents get elected on...

SolarpunkGnome

10d

I found that erie until someone pointed out it was also a slogan used by Reagan.

Agree it still felt very prescient, but really depressing. I also have some concerns about how earthseed is a colonialist religion...

I think some of the solarpunk argument comes down to how you define solarpunk. Some people want a certain end goal, but others have suggested that the true solarpunk lies in stories on the way toward optopia/protopia. 🤷

There are hints of that in the books, and had she been able to continue, perhaps we would've seen these as solarpunk prequels of a sort?

Emperor_of_Alagasia

Trump took the slogan in part due to its ties to Reagan

SolarpunkGnome

Yep

Scuttling-Claws

10d

I'd argue that the Earthseed ethos, and the struggle of trying to found a value based community is incredibly solarpunk.

Bubbly_Ad_2021

10d

No, I know, I get that....but the fact that the progression of the novel is "leave earth behind; it's ruined" and go to other planets and found new colonies that won't be screwed up feels like a copout to me. We want to try to fix THIS earth, Because the resources needed to get colonies on other planets are MASSIVELY wasteful as things stand, and the only people who could achieve that are rich capitalists. Talents doesn't tackle any of that....you just see Lauren at age 81 before she dies watching the ships head into space.

We also don't really see much of that value-based community. Acorn as a community is inly touched on in the barest of ways, while the search for her daughter, the slavery of the Christo-fascists, and the conflict between the daughter, the mom, the uncle gets VASTLY more focus.

Not_A_Pangolin

That's not how I understood the goal of going to space in Earthseed. I understood it as a way of allowing humanity to spread to new worlds so that it can't be eradicated by failures on any one world. Lauren still seeks to fix the world, but she also seeks to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

Spinouette

10d

I totally get where you’re coming from. Pre-solarpunk is a good description for Butler’s novels. I too prefer the more hopeful stories of Cory Doctorow and Becky Chambers and others. And we need more of these, from all different kinds of authors. I’d like to see more stories that show working consent based community decision making. Many stories allude to them, but don’t show any of the very sophisticated systems that have been developed to support the idea.

TJ_Fox

10d

If you're into early '90s proto-Solarpunk and haven't come across it yet, I'd strongly recommend Starhawk's novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, which is largely set in a post-Apocalyptic but Utopian, solarpunk and neoPagan future version of San Francisco. There's also a sequel called City of Refuge and a prequel whose title escapes me at the moment.

Bubbly_Ad_2021

10d

Oh sweet! Thanks for the recco, I'll check it out!

TJ_Fox

10d

All good - there's also Ernest Callenbach's early 1970s, ur-Solarpunk novel Ecotopia, set in a future in which Northern California and the Pacific Northwest have seceded from the USA.

monsterscallinghome

10d

...which also has a prequel, Ecotopia Emerging.