The Huntington Library in San Marino, CA recently acquired and organized a slew of archival materials relating to Octavia Butler. Attached here are her handwritten notes on a typed sheet about her plans for Parable of the Sower, the first in a planned trilogy (the third incomplete at the time of her unexpected death) about a cult religion Earthseed and the attempts of its founder to create earthseed communities intent on taking the human race to outer space. I found the notes almost crass in Butler’s insistence on adding “more racism” and “more violence” to her story, ostensibly to make the environment of a dystopic future California so gruesome and miserable that Earthseed becomes the most appealing alternative.