Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

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  Octavia Butler’s sequel to Parable of the Sower is no less prophetic than its predecessor. The language is raw and unsparing but never revels in the pain the characters go through. It is also not without its small moments of joy. The found family of Earthseed is put to the test in this book and though they do not come away unscathed they manage to survive because of their strong bonds of community and love for one another. The story picks up five years […]

God is Change

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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Add this one to the list of books I wish I’d read in my teens rather than a butt load of Stephen King. Octavia Butler’s frighteningly prescient dystopian novel needs to be added to every high school curriculum. It is a story of economic and societal collapse, climate disaster and survival in the face of unspeakable pain and loss. It’s a difficult read but none of the horrors feel gratuitous. It comes with many trigger warnings; rape, harm to children, harm to animals and fires. […]

Dawn – An intriguing take on human-alien interactions

Dawn by Octavia Butler

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I first read the Xenogenesis saga of Octavia Butler when I was a teenager and it arrived with a ton of other books I ordered from some science fiction book club (I had just gotten a job and was a dumb kid, don’t judge). What I remembered most from the initial read was the use of cancer cells by the alien race, the Oankali, to reshape their own bodies which I thought was a brilliant concept (actually still think it is brilliant). Maybe I did […]

The Gifts and Curses of our Ancestors

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It’s no secret or shock to anyone with a decent knowledge of history that America is a country built on the backs of enslaved people. When Michelle Obama, speaking at the DNC in 2016, stated that slaves built the White House, it generated waves of shock and faux outrage. How dare she point out a historical fact. I remember not being surprised by her statement at the time nor thinking it should be particularly shocking to anyone, but it was for white people who didn’t […]

“Believing the strangest things. Loving the Alien”

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Octavia Butler is a name that pops up frequently in searches for sci fi writers who aren’t white and male. Naturally when the first book in the Xenogenesis Trilogy popped up on Kindle for sale, I grabbed it up. While Dawn contains many of the same ingredients as a lot of sci fi classics (alien races, the destruction of humanity) the finished product is very different. Lilith Iyapo has lost everything. Shortly after her husband and son are killed in a car accident, humanity destroys […]



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