With Octavia Butler’s work I am very familiar with her way of writing speculative fiction. As she’s known for her story Kindred which includes time travel between the past and the future. This novel didn’t surprise me when it started off with the main character Lauren sharing her ability to feel others’ pain and that this story takes place in 2024. When I first saw that it made me realize we’re about to head into 2024 and this book was written in 1993. Octavia Butler had no idea what the future was going to look like, but in a weird way she described what she envisioned in 2024 to sound almost identical to our current day. 

The way Lauren speaks about being able to absorb the pain she see’s other’s go through as she said “I can’t do a thing about my hyperempathy, no matter what Dad thinks or wants or wishes. I feel what I see others feeling or what I believe they feel. Hyperempathy is what the doctors call an “organic delusional syndrome.” (ch 2). This made me connect it to my emotions. I definitely don’t feel it the way she does as she feels it more physically. I see it as I’m a very empathetic person. The world has been going through a crisis. Hate crimes, gun violence, massive natural disasters, drug abuse is going up, poverty, starvation, sex trafficking. The list could go on. When I see people or see the cases on the news I always feel a sense of my body having a reaction. There are more cases that will definitely make me more emotional but as Lauren said when she looks at something or someone too long the pain just starts to trickle in more. I feel like a lot of incidents I have seen on the news stick with me. I’ll think about it too much to the point where it’ll come into my dreams. I’ll do more research on it and watch video about an incident and then it becomes the algorithm that’s set on my phone. I don’t break down and hurt the same way people who are injured hurt, but emotionally when I get myself attached to any tragedy I believe I feel it more than some may feel and see like Lauren. 

When realizing this novel took place in 2024, and we were only a couple months away it made me compare Laurens living conditions versus our living conditions. As Lauren was describing her town she listed many incidents that occurred. Robbery , rape, drugs, food shortage, and the horrible living conditions the people live through. The list applied to us too. Lauren talks about how some of the homes look like “A lot of the houses were trashed—burned, vandalized, infested with drunks or druggies or squatted-in by homeless families with their filthy, gaunt, half-naked children” (ch 2). We live in a population of rich, wealthy, and luxurious lifestyles but there are homeless people on almost every corner you turn on and almost in every subway station you enter. As glamorous as New York City may seem, we are housing some of the poorest people. Some of them who may be on drugs, some of them who couldn’t afford housing, and some who made the streets their home. Los Angeles is known for the whole community of homeless people. In Philadelphia where it seems like “Zombies’ ‘ are walking around because people are drugged up on  K2, a drug so toxic to a human. 

The correlation is uncanny. How did Octavia Butler write this novel in 1993 and be accurate with her description? Part of me wonders if we’re just living in a cycle. Stuck in the same problems and the same living conditions. So many years pass but things don’t change.