Octavia Butler’s 1993 Novel Predicted The LA Fires …And Trump

Considered one of the first Black female science fiction writers, Octavia Butler’s body of work could be described as made-up, dystopian tales of an alternate universe. You know, on some “War of the Worlds,” “Dune,” “Starship Troopers” type of stuff. But if you’ve ever read her 1993 novel “Parable of the Sower,” you might think the book is rooted in a lot more fact than fiction and that the Pasadena native, who passed away in 2006, knew something the rest of us didn’t.

The story is told from the perspective of 15-year-old Lauren Olamina, who lives in a gated community with her family in a 2024 California ravaged by fires and rocked by political unrest due to an authoritarian president who wants to “Make America Great Again.” Sound familiar? After being displaced from her home, Lauren sets off on a dangerous journey to rebuild her life and establish a new community rooted in faith.

Butler didn’t live to see the dangerous fires that have destroyed homes and displaced thousands of people in the community she grew up in, and she had no idea that we would elect a President Donald Trump who signed an executive order to remove the United States from an international pact to fight climate change. But when asked by a student if she believed the things she wrote about could really happen, she said the writing was on the wall.

“I didn’t make up the problems,” she said at the time. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

Butler still has strong ties to the community. She is buried at Mountain View Mortuary and Cemetery in Altadena. And Octavia’s Bookshelf, a Pasadena bookstore named for the beloved author is doing its part to help those impacted by the Eaton fire.

But as the area tries to rebuild after unspeakable tragedy, Marquette University professor Gerry Caravan reminds us that fiction is almost always rooted in the truth.

“She seems to have seen the real future coming in a way few other writers did,” he said in 2020. “It’s hard not to read the books and think, ‘How did she know?’”