Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [500]

I don’t know how it will happen or when it will happen. There’s so much to do before it can even begin. I guess that’s to be expected. There’s always a lot to do before you get to go to heaven. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 500

Note

Four flat sentences that build to a joke which isn’t quite a joke. The register stays deliberately unlyrical — ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I guess that’s to be expected’ — so that the final line arrives as an offhand shrug. ‘Before you get to go to heaven’ does the whole chapter’s work of comparing an interplanetary future to a religious promise: a destination secured by preparation, unverifiable, and possibly for the dead. The dryness is what makes it land rather than cloy.