Wells and Butler: Hope in Hopeless Times

This research report has gone through some changes since its conception a few months back. It began as a close look at H. G. Wells, but that focus neglected the other texts we studied this semester. So now the focus is on critical studies of apocalyptic fiction written by Wells and Octavia Butler and a brief introduction to the apocalyptic genre. Wells wrote some incredible apocalyptic narratives, but Butler’s realistic brand of hope in dark times gives her work an emotionality that Wells could never match.

Before discussing the relevance or purpose of apocalyptic fiction it is necessary to establish a working definition of the term in the context of the content and objectives of Literature of the Future. Apocalyptic fiction is inspired by the idea of millennialism or belief in “an end-time or transformation of the world” (White). Millennialism in Western culture descends from apocalyptic predictions in the texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Within the context of Literature of the Future, large-scale (affecting humanity as a whole) apocalypses occur in The Revelation of John, Parable of the Sower, “Speech Sounds” and The Time Machine.

Wells wrote apocalyptic narratives in his early career, peaking in 1914 when his novel The World Set Free became the prototype for a new genre of fiction: the nuclear war narrative. In “Wells and the Liberating Atom,” David Seed names Wells’s 1914 novel as “the first fictional description of nuclear war” and quotes Charles Gannon’s assertion that it “establishes the ‘narrative imagery’ of the later genre” (36). Seed’s article goes into great detail describing Wells’s connection to the nuclear war narratives that followed his. Without a doubt, writers in the genres of speculative and apocalyptic fiction draw some of their inspiration from Wells’s work.

In a modern twist on the genre, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower plants the seeds of hope in a social and ecological apocalypse. Jim Miller’s “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision” explores the thin thread of hope Butler suspends in her brutal vision of the near future: “Butler’s hope is a post-utopian one, tempered by the lessons of the past.” (357). Here Miller refers to Butler’s use of realistic historical models for elements of her story. Miller connects Parable’s drug, pyro to the riots in Los Angeles “in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, as local grocery stores, gas stations, and apartment buildings went up in flames” (350). I was thirteen in 1992 and distinctly remember watching those riots on the evening news, but I did not connect Butler’s LA to that LA until reading Miller’s article. Now the novel has a new layer of realism in my imagination. Given this very real context, the fragility and rarity of hope in Parable also seems like a realistic touch.

Butler’s tempered version of hope also appears in her short story “Speech Sounds.” In a 2010 tribute to Butler, Sandra Y. Govan quotes the authors own words on hope: “the one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is give up on hope. The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is in itself an act of hope” (McIntyre et al. 434). This attitude casts new light into my understanding of Butler’s dark plot. It adds depth to a moment in the story when Rye takes the time to load two dead bodies in her car to take them home and bury them. On my first reading it seemed like an unnecessary risk for a lone woman to take, and it is, but that kind of commitment to a dead stranger and a dead almost stranger sums up Butler’s approach to hope at the end of the world.

When it comes to apocalyptic fiction, Wells set a standard, but Octavia Butler set a new standard for literary speculative fiction. Her brutally realistic, savage dystopias contain a thread of cautious hope and, according to her, the fact that her stories exist is a testament to hope.

Works Cited

McIntyre, Vonda N. et al. “Reflections on Octavia E. Butler.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, Nov. 2010, pp. 433-42. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/25746443.

Miller, Jim. “Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, July 1998, pp. 336-60. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.

Seed, David. “H. G. Wells and the Liberating Atom.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 33-48. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4241139.