The excerpts from Octavia Butler’s “Earthseed” were exceptionally intense and in some places harrowing to read. I did enjoy it but it wasn’t fun, which is always something I hope for when I read fantasy or sci-fi, though I know that wasn’t the purpose of this story.
Reading it made me wonder what could have possibly happened that drove people to act like this, but then I found myself asking myself if there was anything in this story that hadn’t actually happened in real life? Maybe not on this scale that I know of, but there was nothing in the excerpts (except going to Mars, specifically) that wasn’t true to reality. It reminded me of something Margaret Atwood said about writing “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which was that she specifically did not include anything that had not happened somewhere on Earth in history so that people couldn’t accuse her of making up such violence. It’s a thought that makes me sick to my stomach, that stories like these are so wholly grounded in reality.
I looked up the book, and found out that Earthseed is a practicing religion. The wikipedia page on the religion is the first search result, not the book it came from. It’s amazing to see the reach that works of fiction (especially sci-fi or fantasy) can have on the way people conduct themselves. The real-world impact of these writings can’t be ignored because of the strength in which these works of fiction physically manifest themselves in our world. I think that’s pretty neat.
My only question going into class is how does this relate exactly to feminist conflict? What do we have to learn from this and discuss?