Grant Hoskins noticed the uptick of people coming in for a certain book after the fires.

The Vroman’s bookseller saw all sorts of readers, teens, college students, parents and grandparents, “as broad as you can throw the net” asking to buy a copy of a dystopian novel written in 1993 that described the world in 2024.

The brisk sales of Octavia Butler’s ninth novel, “The Parable of the Sower” is especially notable since Butler, who died in 2006, was born in Pasadena. A middle school there bears her name. And the bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf opened in the city in 2023. Her papers are in the Octavia E. Butler Archives at the Huntington Library.

The Eaton fire came close to Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery, where Butler is buried.

“It’s still very popular, it felt like there was a boost, an awareness that people have been talking about,” Hoskins said. “I could feel it when people came in talking about it.”

One theme in Butler’s visionary work resonated among Vroman’s customers: in light of the Eaton and Palisades fires, the portents contained in the book, with its night of fire and death, prophetically describes the devastating effects of climate change.

“People were coming in and talking about  the book and climate change and you could sense there was a desire to deal with it,” Hoskins said.

In Butler’s novel, which she followed with two other “Parable” books, it is 2024 and Lauren Olamina, a preacher’s daughter is living in a country in chaos from environmental and economic crises. Lauren herself lives behind the walls of a gated community and is safe from dangers such as desperate vagabonds. But a fight for survival leads her to formulating as new faith, even as she feels others’ pain as her own.

“What do people take away? For me, apart from just enjoying her writing, and I’m throwing the word enjoying broadly because a lot of it is bleak, just the lesson of community, doing the things you need to do to survive, not like a Mad Max scenario of like one versus all but everyone coming together, the lesson of not looking away even when things are hard,” Hoskins said.

That we change the world with our choices, and the communal experience of the wildfires touching everyone’s lives, Hoskins said people are wanting to get involved in making things better, “and Octavia’s a beautiful door to get into that. There’s a lot of good, juicy wisdom in there.”

Guidance includes poems Butler wrote at the beginning of each chapter, from choosing leaders with wisdom and forethought to personal responsibility and “kindness eases change.”

At Underdog Bookstore in Monrovia chose “The Parable of the Sower” for its March Banned Book read, quoting a line from the book, “All that you touch/You change. All that you change/Changes you.”

Members chose the event theme because of Butler, “an award-winning Black science fiction writer of immense accomplishment and reputation who lived her formative years on the border of Pasadena and Altadena.”

The resurgence of the book’s popularity inspired Hoskins to put up a wall display on climate change, “bringing attention to some of the other books that we had that featured the same subject matter and although not as well known as the Butler classic are as good and deserve the attention.”

Hoskins included “Concerning the Future of Souls” by Joy Williams; “The Monkey Wrench Gang” by Edward Abbey; “A Paradise Built in Hell” by Rebecca Solnit; and children’s books introducing climate change and helping younger readers understand it.

“They’re books around the same thing and I feel like because people are interested in Octavia’s book right now, these may not be on people’s radar,” he said.

Vroman’s customer Dee Parker read “The Parable of the Sower” weeks ago and is on to Butler’s “The Parable of the Talents.”

“It’s a dystopian novel, terrifying yet gripping, and deeply unsettling,” Parker said. “Butler was way ahead of her time, writing about a violent and oppressive future that feels disturbingly close to reality now. The stress it gave me was relentless, and I was on edge the entire time—but I couldn’t put it down. I thought the main character, Lauren, was very compelling.  I understand the sequel is even more disturbing. This is a powerful, shocking, horrifying read that lingers long after the last page.”

Hoskins, who recommends Butler’s works as absolutely worth getting through for, as food for the mind, said the author would probably shake her head at modern times.

“She would look to the future from here,” he said. “You can’t just throw your hands up. You have to live in this and if you don’t, people you care about have to live in it. She would look at it and wonder what we’re going to do and take those steps.”