Looking for speculative fiction stories using ecofeminism values, I was highly inspired by the dystopian novel “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler (1993). Butler introduces a near-future dystopia in which society has collapsed due to climate change. It unfolds through the journal entries of Lauren Oya Olamina, its protagonist, who lives with her family in one of the walled neighborhoods, and is equipping herself to survive in the future.
The visionary sci-fi author envisaged an alternate future that foresaw many aspects of life today. She extrapolated her vision of a near-future dystopia from what she read in the news, forecasting what kind of collapse might result if the forces of late-stage capitalism, climate change, mass incarceration, big pharma, gun violence, and the tech industry continued unhampered.
I was inspired by various aspects of this novel when writing the script of my film. I liked the way she speculated about a potential future after an imminent ecological collapse, what does society look like in this future? Society has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty, and mixed-race relationships are stigmatized amid attacks against religious and ethnic minorities. Resource scarcity is something I am looking into for my film too. How can we manufacture materials from already existing ones, without extracting them from nature?
I found it interesting that the reader knows the story from a first-person perspective. This way of narration makes the audience empathize more with the storyfrom the beginning.
