Despite winning the first MacArthur Genius grant to be awarded to a science fiction writer, the author Octavia Butler was critically overlooked during her lifetime, both because of her genre and because she was a Black woman. Her reputation has grown since her death in 2006, and her novels about America’s dystopian future have never rung so true. Written in 1994, Parable of the Sower is set in 2024: water is scarce, the ocean is rising, and the poor barricade themselves against the homeless in a society plagued by severe inequality. Inspired by lines of verse taken from Parable of the Sower, this six-part radio play is set in a world much like the one envisioned by Butler, and chillingly similar to our own. —C.J.F.