"In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith."-- Publisher's webpage.

"Octavia Estelle Butler dreamed of the stars, and Ibi Zoboi uses prose and poetry to give us what she terms a "biographical constellation" of a Black woman writing science fiction when it was very much still a white boy's club. Though written for children, the biography offers much for adults familiar with Butler's work may appreciate, from the titles of the sections ("Parable of the Sower," "Parable of the Talents") to lines in the poems referencing...

Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever. In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative...

Lilith Iyapo has given birth to what looks like a normal human boy named Akin. But Akin actually has five parents: a male and female human, a male and female Oankali, and a sexless Ooloi. The Oankali and Ooloi are part of an alien race that rescued humanity from a devastating nuclear war, but the price they exact is a high one the aliens are compelled to genetically merge their species with other races, drastically altering both in the process. There...

The human race, now infertile, fights to maintain its identity when the alien species, Oankali, offers to trade genetic material and bioengineering at the price of metamorphosing a new kind of being.

"...As I gathered these poems...they seemed to flow together like linked movements in a musical composition. Thus, I began to think of them as suites of poems whose preoccupations or leitmotifs are related. In one movement: grief and the impulse to honor the "saints" in my personal and creative life. In another: the sacramental power of works of art and the natural wold to illuminate life and loss. Finally, poems born of opposing, but not mutually...

In the parable of the sower, Jesus foretold all the ways the world would try to reject God's Word: "Rocks will be thrown at the righteous. Dirty birds will try to steal your peace and assurance. Briars will try to choke out the clear truth with noise and confusion." Those words are more relevant today than ever before as we face a world in turmoil, where everyone chooses their own truth and believers are mocked. In this fresh and timely look a a familiar...

Retells the story of the sower who scatters seeds on hard ground, on rocky soil, in the thorns, and in good soil.