Menlo Common Book

Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Summary:

In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America's future.

In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.

About the Authors

Damian Duffy (Adapted by)

Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and a Glyph Comics, Eisner Comics, Bram Stoker, and Hugo Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist. He holds a MS and PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches courses on computers & culture, and social media & global change. His many publications range from academic essays (in comics form) on new media & learning, to art books about underrepresentation in comics culture, to editorial comics, to a graphic novel adaptation of Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, with his J2D2 Arts counterpart John Jennings. Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation (Abrams ComicArts) was awarded the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, and the 2018 Eisner Comics Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium. Their follow-up, Parable of the Sower: A graphic novel adaptation (Abrams ComicArts) won the 2021 Ignyte Award for Best Comics Team, and the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. The co-editor of the Black Comix Returns art book from the Magnetic Collection at Lion Forge Comics, Damian has given talks and lead workshops about comics, art, and education internationally.

- from Damian Duffy's personal website: About

John Jennings (Illustrated by)

John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture. As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color.   His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric. Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.

- from John Jennings Studio website: About

Octavia E. Butler

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother.  She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

Though the MacArthur Grant made life easier in later years, she struggled for decades when her dystopian novels exploring themes of Black injustice, global warming, women’s rights and political disparity were, to say the least, not in commercial demand. During these years of obscurity Butler, always an early riser, woke at 2 a.m. every day to write, and then went to work as a telemarketer, potato chip inspector, and dishwasher, among other things. She passed away on February 24, 2006. At the time of her death, interest in her books was beginning to rise, and in recent years, sales of her books have increased enormously as the issues she addressed in her Afro-Futuristic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant.

 

Her work is now taught in over 200 colleges and universities nationwide. The #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel adaptation of her book KINDRED, created by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, received the Eisner Award for best adaptation.

- from the official site of Octavia E. Butler: About 

Interviews, Articles, and Other Resources

• 2022 Hugo Award Interview with John Jennings and Damian Duffy - Interview by Stanford Carpenter, advisory board chair of Black & Brown Comix Arts Festival (BCAF), and hosted by The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation (NorcalMLK Foundation)
• Adaptation Team for the Parable of the Sower Graphic Novel - Presentation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings breaking down the process of how this graphic novel adaptation was made. Hosted by Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) as part of their Octavia E. Butler Celebration

Discussion

• America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) Book Club Discussion Guide of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (Graphic Novel Adaptation) by Damian Duffy and John Jennings (2021) - April 25, 2024
• Teaching guide from graphic novel adaptation publisher ABRAMS COMICARTS

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma

Summary:

An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance--from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI.

We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.

In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. How do we ensure the flourishing of humankind? How do we maintain control? How do we navigate the narrow path to a successful future? This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes "the containment problem"--the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies--as the essential challenge of our age.

About the Authors

biographies from The Coming Wave official website

Mustafa Suleyman

Mustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI. Previously he co-founded Inflection AI and DeepMind. He brings 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, technologist and leader in artificial intelligence. He is on the board of directors of The Economist and is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Michael Bhaskar

Michael Bhaskar is a writer and publisher based in the UK, author of The Content Machine, Curation and Human Frontiers.

Interviews, Articles, and Other Resources

• Explainer Video- The Coming Wave animation
  • What is the coming wave of technology? Why does it matter? And what should we do next? A short explainer narrated by Mustafa Suleyman.

• Glossary of Key Concepts in The Coming Wave
• TED Radio Hour: AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman shares his vision for the future of AI

• Mustafa Suleyman on The Coming Wave of AI, with Zanny Minton Beddoes -- Interview hosted by Intelligence Squared, a forum for live, agenda-setting debates, talks and discussions around the world.

Discussion

• AI Book Club: The Coming Wave - recording of the AI Book Club: A Human in the Loop's discussion about Mustafa Suleyman's The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma, from  May 18, 2025
  • AI Book Club: A Human in the Loop is a book club that involves reading and discussing books about AI on a regular basis run by Tom Johnson of I'd Rather Be Writing, a blog about technical writing. 
  • AI-generated notes and transcription of the discussion can be found here