Parable of the Talents

"This is actually a duology, the Parable of the Sower is the first one and the Parable of the Talents is the second one. Sadly, Octavia Butler intended to continue this into a longer series and she didn’t, so this is kind of a cheat selection because the characters in these books never actually get seen in space. The second book ends with some of them launching to begin space colonization. But I really wanted to include it because it does a really good job of capturing some of the arguments of why we should settle space, and also interrogates these arguments. The main character of the first book, who is also one of the main characters in the second book, is growing up in this very-slow-climate-apocalypse-on-Earth society. The US is really falling apart and she is struggling to survive. At the same time, she is looking at the stars and she is creating her own religion, essentially, arguing that our destiny is to go out and colonize the stars. This is an argument that exists in real life, and I criticize it in my book , but I think Butler presents and frames it really well: why someone growing up in a terrible world like this—more terrible than ours but very similar—would still have hope for a future in space. Then, in the second book, Parable of the Talents , the main character’s daughter really presses her on this and says, ‘Is this what we need to be focused on? There are people starving on Earth. Why don’t you pay attention to me, your own daughter, instead of this dream of space?’ And I think those are also questions worth asking. I think it’s fascinating that you run into these really technical, science-based people who would not dream of inventing their own religions, who often bring up this argument, that it’s humanity’s destiny to go out and colonize the stars. That’s really weird to me because destiny is a very religious argument. So I think anyone who is using that argument, but also thinks of themselves as a rational analytical person, should take a moment to think about: what does that mean? Is it just my own idea, emotionally, of what I think humanity’s destiny should be? Is it based on real science? Does it represent the way everyone on earth actually feels about our place in the universe? Not to say that you’re going to decide that you are wrong and we shouldn’t settle in space, but it’s worth questioning because how we act in space is going to be based on what our motivations are for going out there. So if you think it’s our destiny to go out and reproduce as much as possible, or grab as many resources as possible, that’s going to affect how we treat the places that we go to and how we treat each other. Yes, she both builds a world where things are realistically falling apart and also does such an amazing job of showing the mindset of the people growing up and trying to survive in that world in different ways. So some of her characters—including the main character in Parable of the Talents —really turn that into an ambition for something more. Others turn it into an ambition just to protect themselves and their loved ones. Others decide to just survive at all costs, even if that means hurting other people."