If you love science fiction, I strongly recommend you spend an hour listening to excerpts from Octavia Butler’s fiction and interviews with authors she inspired in this Throughline episode of Winter Book Club.

I was thrilled to learn that Nnedi Okorafor--an excellent science fiction author in her own right—was as blown away by Wild Seed as I was when I first found it at the library as a teenager many years ago.  As we enter year two of the second Trump administration, Parable of the Sower reads like prophecy.  So it was important to be reminded that Butler looked at and listened to Ronald Reagan during his days as governor of California and extrapolated forward from there.

My list of “must-read” books didn’t need to grow any longer, but this podcast definitely added some titles to the list.  In addition to revisting Butler’s Patternist series, Babel-17 (by Samuel R. Delany) is now on loan in my Libby app.  I read Noor last year, and had planned to read more of her but the mutual Butler fandom has accelerated those plans for sure.  I’m long overdue to read book 2 of N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities duology.  It’s been too long since I’ve read any P. Djeli Clark (The Black God’s Drums was my introduction to him).  I’ve heard Ring Shout is excellent, so that goes in the list for sure.