Several of the people who reviewed my 2024 science-fiction/political-fiction novel, Exit Velocity, compared it to Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. I had read Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy and think very highly of her and her writing. But I had never read Parable.

For at least the first year after Exit Velocity was published, I was very busy marketing it, which meant I had little time to read. This year, however, I finally got around to reading Parable of the Sower. I really, reall...