OCTAVIA E. BUTLER HAS not lost her capacity to imagine horrifying societies set in the near future. Her Clay's Ark (1984), a work of science fiction set in California, describes the spread of an extraterrestrial organism that changes its human carriers to something...

As a culture, we are confronted with parables. Whether they are plain, or short and simple, enigmatic fables or allegorical morality tales, most readers are conscious of a parable's function, its subtext. That is to say, we know that parables are stories from which...

Provides a critical reaction to the book Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. Explores the function of individualism in the text and examines the struggle of man against man.