If you want to talk about sci-fi novels that foresaw our current predicament decades before it happened, you have to acknowledge Octavia E. Butler and Parable of the Sower. Butler’s most famous work hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2020, 14 years after her death. The novel’s popularity — and seeming prescience — has brought a new wave of interest to the late sci-fi author, so much so that a book she personally disliked is coming back into print.
Butler was relatively prolific during her lifetime, publishing 12 novels and two short-story collections between 1977 and her death in 2006. Of that group, 1978’s Survivor was by far her personal least favorite of her works, and after its initial printing, the author used her influence to keep it from ever coming back into print. As a result, first-edition copies of the book can now go for thousands of dollars through rare-book dealers.
