Before I chose this book, I had no idea who Octavia Butler was, and when I walked into the Green Hand bookstore, I didn’t have an idea of which book I was going to choose. However, in the bookstore, both a random man and the owner recommended Parable of the Sower, the 1993 novel by Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower is a post-apocalyptic novel set in California, that depicts the devastating effects of climate change. It follows the story of Lauren Olamina, a teenage girl, and how she deals with the terrible events that affect her and her family. It also explores religion in an interesting way. Parable of the Sower is a dystopian SF novel, that also deals with themes of climate change and social/wealth inequality. I loved this novel for many reasons. I loved Butler’s writing, the characters she develops, and how real the scenarios and characters felt. I also loved (and was scared by) how prescient this novel (and Parable of the Talents, the sequel) were. I would highly recommend this book, and the sequel, to anybody, not just SF fans.

(Nominated for the Nebula, and a NYT Notable book of the Year)

Butler, Octavia E. 2019. Parable of the Sower. London, England: Headline Book Publishing.

Written in 1993.

The other day, I rewatched Interstellar, a 2014 science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan. I really enjoyed rewatching it, especially while taking this course. The movie utilizes a lot of hard SF, and attempts to be quite realistic in explaining time dilation and time travel.

The movie starts in a future Earth where the environment has been ruined, with crop failure and extreme amounts of dust present. I won’t completely spoil the film, but the main character, Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) goes to space to attempt to find a new habitable planet. The fascinating part of the film was how time and time travel was depicted.

The first instance of time (travel?) I want to explore is on a water planet that Cooper and his team visited, where one hour on the planet is seven years on Earth, due to the planet’s closeness to a massive black hole, and the distortion of time. I found this idea extremely interesting, and upon further research after watching the film, it actually seems to be scientifically possible. The film utilized Kip Thorne, a former Caltech physicist, for the science, and he actually wrote a long book about the science of Interstellar, explaining what was scientifically possible and what was just for the film.

The second interesting thing I thought about in this film was how they represented time travel. Cooper enters the blackhole, and finds himself in a Tesseract, which represents time as a physical dimension. Thus, through moving about the Tesseract, Cooper is able to go back in time and influence the past by creating a signal in his daughter’s room, which in turn is the signal that causes him to go on this journey many years ago. It all gets quite confusing, as this seems like a paradox, but I won’t go too far into it as I don’t want to spoil the film, which I highly recommend!

Overall, I found this film extremely interesting and one of the best SF films I’ve seen, partially because of the plot and cool SF devices, but also because of the attempt at scientific realism.
This is the visual representation of the black hole.

-Ezra Jones