“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, 65th National Book Awards, 2014
America in 2018 is afraid of the end of the world. Economic inequality is rampant. Racism is so deep-seated in our society that most people can’t even seem to acknowledge its existence, let alone work to eradicate it. The dark shadow of climate change and ecological disaster looms. It’s reflected in all our media- the top grossing films are full of superheroes battling doomsday devices, the most popular television series include zombie apocalypses and fantasy worlds so riddled with injustice that the only thing the characters can do about anything is murder each other. The only way forward is to be able to imagine a real alternative, and thoughtful, compassionate fiction can do that. Two authors, and two books in particular, keep coming to me as I read headlines, feeling increasing dread: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.
Le Guin is the daughter of two esteemed anthropologists, and she writes with an anthropological eye. The Dispossessed follows the journey of Shevek, a physicist who has grown up on an anarcho-communist planet Anarres. The society formed after a revolution on the consumer capitalist planet Urras, and we wind up getting a detailed look at both societies through Shevek’s eyes. The book is thoughtful and critical of both outcomes- Anarres is referenced in the book’s subtitle as “An Ambiguous Utopia”, but where Le Guin particularly shines is when describing the effects of society on the individual. She invites the reader to wonder, “How would you feel differently about your work if you’d grown up here? How would you feel towards your comrades? Your soulmate?” The non-linear structure in the book underscores this- we see the protagonist at every stage of his life, watching his personal moral code develop, first through teaching, and then through life experience. Le Guin’s detail and specificity allows us to fully imagine- to hope for- a world that is more free and more compassionate than our own.
“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
If Le Guin’s novel takes us up in the stars, Butler brings us back down to earth– an earth of the near-future that Butler conceived by looking closely at the social ills plaguing the world of 1993, and imagining what would happen if these ills were ignored. It’s a near-future that looks very much like our present: drought and wildfires plague California, widespread inequality has destroyed the economy, a totalitarian President is gutting science and educational programs while stoking the fires of racial hatred. At one point, he says he’s going to “make America great again”. Butler drops us into this reality and then, point by point, instructs us on how to get out.
Butler’s prose is more blunt than the lyricism of Le Guin, but her bluntness insists that you sit up, listen, and take her seriously from the start, like a stern teacher. The narrator of Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina, is a young woman learning how to live. She begins with practical, simple basics: Learn to cook. Learn to garden. Learn to identify useful flora. How to recognize an ally. How to protect yourself, while exercising compassion. Most importantly, how to unite people around a common cause.
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Olamina hopes to be a unifying force through a religion of her own invention, called Earthseed. She is a preacher’s daughter who has rejected Christianity, but understands the power of faith to be a motivator when all seems hopeless. The God of Earthseed is Change. That’s it- the fact of change, of all things, living and non, is the only inevitability. The hope of Earthseed, then is “to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny,” the Destiny being, ultimately, to leave behind an Earth ravaged by mankind, and take root among the stars, populating the universe. It’s a grandiose idea for this orphaned young woman, traveling on foot up the California coast, with no more possessions than what she carries on her back. But the grand idea is the only hope for survival, and therefore, the only way to survive is to adapt. Change. The power of having some kind of goal gives the people she meets something to believe in, and she does, gradually, put together a little hardscrabble group of strangers who share, love, teach, and tell jokes with one another. And they also suffer injury, fear, trauma, and death. Butler wasn’t optimistic about our future, but she did see a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel, and offered one idea for how we might, with enough work and luck, be able to reach it.
Butler wrote two books in the Earthseed series- by the second, only the tiniest of gains were made, the political situation was worsening, and resources grew more scarce. She did imagine eventually writing Earthseed’s reaching space, generations later, but expected it to take four more novels for a functioning society to develop. It can be inspiring to think of the long game, too- to imagine tiny actions that reverberate into the future, and to rest knowing we may never see the results we want in our lifetimes.
Hope is a discipline. It requires practice. Practice can be volunteering, organizing, and donating. It is also creating art, being vulnerable, celebrating connection. For me, it can also be engaging with art which dreams of other realities, new ways of being, and allowing those ideas to shape me. Hope is imagining the future. Fiction that can help us do that is a powerful tool.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
