In 1993, sci-fi writer Octavia Butler published her groundbreaking dystopian novel Parable of the Sower, which is set in the year 2025 in a Los Angeles suburb that is plagued by gun violence, homelessness and fires fueled by drought.
The main character is a young Black woman named Lauren Olamina. Early in the book she is forced to flee her neighborhood as it burns. She travels north and meets others who join her. Together, they try to survive on the road as civilization breaks down.
The writer Hanif Anduraquib recently wrote in The New Yorker, "The Parable of the Sower isn’t just about a time and a fire and a place; it’s about people deciding what kind of apocalypse they are going to have, and then deciding how to live in its aftermath.”
For Octavia Butler, LA’s downtown public library was a place of refuge. Butler was born in Pasadena, lived in Altadena, and did a lot of her writing at the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles. She also volunteered there, helping adults learn to read.
On April 29, 1986, the Central Library caught fire, which Butler learned as she rode the bus there. She later wrote in her diary, “He could have announced the death of one of my friends and not hit me as hard.”
After Butler’s death in 2006, the Central Library named an art-making space and technology hub after her. Today, the Octavia Lab provides access to state-of-the-art gadgets and software; plus supplies, inspiration, and a sense of safety for photographers, filmmakers, fashion designers, and others.
A digital screen at the lab’s entrance displays a handwritten page from Octavia Butler’s diary. Photo by David Weinberg
One of the first things you see when you enter the lab is a digital screen displaying a handwritten page from Octavia Butler’s diary. It describes her reaction to the library’s 1986 fire. On a recent visit, a woman named Sharon Wooden took a photo of the diary entry, saying it reminded her of the day the library caught fire: “I came down that day and helped rescue books.”
Wooden, a retired lawyer, was at the Octavia Lab to attend a songwriting workshop, hoping to write a song that “gets people excited and mad and ready to rock and roll.”
In addition to workshops, the Octavia Lab has sewing and embroidery machines, 3D printers, computers equipped with video editing software, a photography studio with professional lights and cameras, two podcasting studios and an animation studio.
All of it is available for free. In 2024, the lab was used more than 10,000 times.
An aspiring fashion designer uses the lab’s sewing machine to make custom phone cases out of old True Religion jeans. Photo by David Weinberg.
The teacher of the songwriting workshop where Wooden was headed is named Nivi Canela. She recorded her EP, Our Lady of Abundance, in one of the Octavia Lab recording studios.
“I would book the music studio every week for a couple of months and so I got to know the staff pretty well,” she says, “So I was like, why don't I just ask them about doing a songwriting workshop? And they liked the idea.”
The workshop filled up quickly. There were a couple of kids with their parents, some musical theater fans, a guy from Oklahoma who wrote poetry and introduced himself as a big Bob Dylan fan, and a guy named Monk Turner who said he had written and recorded 31 concept albums.
Canela explained that the goal for the day was to write a song together.
While the students brainstormed, an older man was using one of the recording studios. Ziff Sistrunk explained he was tracking voiceover for a movie he was making about the former Dodger Dick Allen. For two years, Sistrunk was Allen’s bat boy.
Today, Sistrunk was highlighting Allen’s music career. In 1968, Allen wrote and recorded a song called “Echoes of November.” “Would you actually believe that a baseball player named Richie Allen wrote this song?” Sistrunk marveled. “Wow!”
Ziff Sistrunk is a regular at the Octavia Lab, using the recording studio to track voiceover for a film he is making about former Dodger and songwriter Dick Allen. Photo by David Weinberg.
Sistrunk, like a lot of the Octavia Lab members, is a regular here. He makes sure to call the lab to reserve studio time as soon as reservations open up each week – even though that means calling just after midnight. He laughs, “I know they must be saying, ‘When do this man sleep?’”
As Sistrunk continued recording, the songwriting workshop was coming to a close. The entire class sang the song they wrote as one of the students strummed an acoustic guitar.
After the workshop, Lauren Kratz, the manager of the Octavia Lab, showed off the rest of the center’s offerings: poster printer, a “memory lab” where people can bring in old VHS tapes or photographs and have them digitized, and a state-of-the-art laser cutter. Seated at the machine, Albert Roman was watching a tiny laser burn an image onto a wooden cube, which he explained would be part of a set of dice for a board game he designed.
Albert Roman shows off a wooden die he is making with the Octavia Lab’s laser cutter. Photo by David Weinberg.
Roman had invented a game about people trying to flee a town – like the characters in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. In the book, the protagonists band together to survive in a time of great disaster. It’s a story about people choosing to help others who they initially see as threats. Roman’s board game has a similar theme.
“Your job is to avoid obstacles and try to get as far as you can without dying. It's a cooperative game,” he explained. “Everyone plays against the board game instead of playing against each other.”
As the laser cutter hummed, I watched a miniscule ribbon of smoke curl up from the wooden cube. And then the machine came to a stop. Roman picked up his die and examined it closely. The machine sat there waiting for the next lab member.
