Five SFF books about radical community

Phoebe Wagner is an author, editor, and academic writing at the intersection of speculative fiction and climate change. Their debut novel is A Shot of Gin (2023), and their new novella is When We Hold Each Other Up (2023). She is the editor of three solarpunk anthologies, including Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation. They blog about speculative literature at the Hugo-winning Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together. Wagner holds a PhD in literature, and she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania.

At Tor.com they tagged five favorite SFF books about radical community, including:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Butler’s classic dystopia demonstrates that community is vital to surviving social collapse. As a teenager, Lauren doesn’t believe her community in a walled cul-de-sac is prepared for the worsening social and environmental issues. The community led by her Baptist preacher father is focused on the past, and the idea that the world might return to the “good old days.”

Lauren believes the only way to prepare for disaster is to read the future by examining what has happened to the communities around them and changing to adapt and prepare. When her community is destroyed by people outside the walls, she takes to the road in search of a new home. She gathers two survivors, but while she is wary of others, she soon attracts people to her group. The community forms around kindness as a method for survival. At first Lauren is wary of others, but when she trusts her instincts to help people–such as two young parents with a baby–she attracts her strongest supporters. Rather than focusing on people with resources, she embraces those who need the help of others.

This need and desire to move beyond just survival to some sort of hopeful future gathers a diverse group of people to Lauren.In addition to a strong, trusting community, Lauren shares her spiritual belief called Earthseed, a religion based on the idea that “god is change” and that such change can be shaped. Lauren shapes change in her life by growing her community and finding a place to build a permanent home called Acorn. There, Lauren plans to live sustainably while strengthening the community by encouraging new skills, new friendships, and welcoming those in need.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Parable of the Sower is among Jessie Greengrass's nine haunting postapocalyptic novels and Liz Harmer's five works involving weird, unsettling isolation.

--Marshal Zeringue