Currently our planet is on the brink of environmental collapse. For decades we have been warned about the impending perils of climate change and global warming. Yet, profit has continued to be prioritized over the necessity of reducing and rectifying the harm that is consistently inflicted on the planet. While we all will eventually have to face the repercussions of inaction, poor people of color as well as the other beings with which we share the Earth have already been disproportionately affected. However, these truths do not have to be absolute. We can still seed and bear fruit to more just environmental futures. Through speculative forms–including literature, art, and theory– we can envision a more equitable and fair future. 

The literary work of Octavia E. Butler (1947 – 2006) exemplifies the redressive potential of the speculative. As one of the greatest speculative fiction writers of all time, Butler inspired a new generation of writers, artists, and activists dedicated to imagining different worlds and futures. Butler—who spent most of her life in Pasadena and the greater Los Angeles area—was also both a student and a teacher at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop (at UCSD). She was the recipient of a 1995 MacArthur “Genius” award, and author of many important works of speculative fiction, notably including scores of influential and award-winning short stories, her early Patternmaster novels, the Xenogenesis trilogy, the Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents novels, and her last novel, a vampire story called Fledgling.  Across Butler’s body of work, the concept of shaping change is central: she believed that science fiction, as a literature of ideas, was also a “literature of change” and a “way of dealing with problems before they overwhelm us in reality.” For example, in her great apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower (which was published the year after the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings), Butler insists that “the only lasting truth is Change” and proceeds to speculate about how to reshape and reimagine a world transformed by climate change, the evisceration of public education, and the widening gap between rich and poor. In 2016 scholars, writers, and community members gathered at UCSD to commemorate the life and work of Octavia E. Butler.

Seeding Futures Now! was organized by The Speculative Environmental Futures Collective (SEFC) and the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network.