Stars casting their cool, pale, glinting light. I fade into the second part of the dream-the part that’s ordinary and real, the part that did happen years ago when I was little, though at the time it didn’t seem to matter. When I wake up all the way, I can’t get back to sleep. I do sometimes when the fire swallows me. I thrash and scramble and try to swim back out of it, grabbing handfuls of air and fire, kicking, burning! Darkness. Fire has sprung from nowhere, has eaten in through the wall, has begun to reach toward me, reach for me. I drift away from the door, away from the cool glow into another light. I can see that I’m going to miss the door and hit the wall beside it, but I can’t stop or turn. Then I slide a little to the right and a little more. Then I do begin to move, as though to slide on the air drifting a few feet above the floor, caught between terror and joy. And I lean into the air, straining upward, not moving upward, but not quite falling down either. Holding my body stiff and tense, I let go of whatever I’m grasping, whatever has kept me from rising or falling so far. It seems to be a long way from me, but I lean toward it. It’s a doorway like the one between my room and the hall. I trust my ability more now, but I’m still afraid. I’ve had many lessons, and I’m better at flying than I used to be. Not a very subtle image, but a persistent one. I’m just learning on my own, little by little, dream lesson by dream lesson. I think I need to write about the dream because this particular lie bothers me so much. So last night, I dreamed a reminder that it’s all a lie. Tomorrow, I’ll try to please him-him and the community and God. Today is our birthday-my fifteenth and my father’s fifty-fifth. It comes to me when I try to be my father’s daughter. It comes to me when I struggle-when I twist on my own personal hook and try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.
Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. P RODIGY IS, AT ITS essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession.
But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy.
#Octavia butler books full#
When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale” and includes a foreword by N.
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