Decades ago, the writer Octavia Butler had imagined a Los Angeles ravaged by fires. The Altadena cemetery where the science fiction and Afrofuturism author is buried did catch fire last week but suffered “minimal damage,” according to a statement on the cemetery’s web site.
A spokesperson at the Mountain View cemetery confirmed the accuracy of the website’s announcement to The Associated Press, but would not comment on the status of individual markers. The grave of Butler, who died in 2006 at 58, is marked by a footstone etched with a quote from “Parable of the Sower,” among her most famous novels: “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
Since the fires began last week, “Parable of the Sower” and other Butler works have been cited for anticipating a world — and, particularly, a Los Angeles — wracked by climate change, racism and economic disparity. “Parable of the Sower,” written in 1993 and set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. “We had a fire today,” reads a Feb. 1, 2025, diary entry in the book, referring to a small fire that presages the destructive fires to come in the novel…