For me, the deliciously slow week between the Christmas and New Years holidays is all about comfort: comfort foods (popcorn, hot chocolate, grilled cheese), comfort clothes (PJs all day), comfort films (I binge re-watched The Matrix trilogy and let me tell you bullet time holds up), and comfort reads. 

So this week, I’m recommending a book that I keep coming back to. 

It’s also one of the finest sci-fi stories ever written, by a true legend of the genre: Octavia Butler. 

 

Butler was the first African American woman to win widespread recognition writing science fiction, and the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur “genius” award.

One of the many things I admire about her is that she wrote herself motivational notes, to help her manifest her goals by living like they were already true:

Wishing us all the Butler-esque energy to manifest the life we want this new year.

In Octavia Butler’s sci-fi epic Dawn, Lilith Iyapo awakens from a centuries-long slumber to find herself on a massive spacecraft piloted by an alien people who call themselves the Oankali. 

Lilith learns that the Oankali saved a group of humans, including her, just before Earth was made uninhabitable by humanity’s final nuclear war. Over hundreds of years, the Oankali healed the planet and learned as much about humanity as they could. 

Now, the Earth is ready to support life again and the Oankali want Lilith to lead her people back home… but not in the way Lilith expects.

Octavia Butler’s creativity and worldbuilding is legendary for a reason. She wrote many amazing stories, and this novel remains my favourite.