Lessons for the End of the World

Despair, too, because of how accessible escape is becoming in a world that requires more rigorous close looking, every day. And, of course, escapism is a supply-and-demand business. As the world requires more of the people in it, it also offers more opportunities to turn away.

A photo that was supposedly potent enough to tell an entire story turned out not to be real, yet people were so eager for a narrative that they would seek one out anywhere, even from a source that was empty, a source that they knew was empty. What did that say both about the story and about the people? A place was actually on fire. Evidence of the ... See more

Yes, a lost house itself is a tragedy, but there is an entire universe in the items inside, an entire universe in the single page of a book that drifts away while you’re running to catch a flight. There is an entire universe in a quote, an entire universe in interpretations of a book that begs for humanity to find a way to survive when our environm... See more

People are not incorrect about Octavia Butler predicting the future, but they’re not always clear about what kind of future she was envisioning. It’s not the fires or drug use or tumbling literacy rates that she invented—all of those problems were simply there for her to see. What “Sower” imagines, rather, is a future in which surviving the seeming... See more

In “Sower,” fire represents both finality and a kind of freedom. Its aftermath affords an opportunity to imagine a renewed world, with renewed requirements for survival.

I do not desire any technology that might bring my late mother back to life, allow me to hear her voice or her laugh again. I believe that what makes the dead worthy of our grieving (by which I mean our memories, our returns, our affections) is that they cannot come back.

I grieve for many things; the engine of my grief changes, sometimes hourly. I grieve for our increasingly hostile and uninhabitable world, and I grieve for the cruelties that make it so, both structural ones and ones that individuals inflict on one another. But today I am grieving because I struggle to fathom all of the material loss of meaningful ... See more

But I think I would like to revise this response. I was asked in one interview if I was worried about being forgotten. I don’t remember the answer I actually gave, but the answer I wish I’d given is that my greater fear is having my memory misappropriated—being gone and having what I’ve said or done be reanimated, reduced to some bite-size interact... See more

It may help, too, to be honest about what is already here. “Sower” is about a future on fire, but the author’s present was on fire, too. We can’t always be looking toward the future. The climate disaster isn’t coming. It has been upon us for years—at this point, most of the years that I’ve been alive. The crises are here, and they are speeding alon... See more