her brand of science fiction, specifically parable of the sower, speech sounds, and some of her other more grounded work is precisely what you're looking for i think. her genius is that while most of the sci-fi preceding her written by white men created far-flung worlds and futures to explore current questions, butler flipped the whole genre on it's head by interrogating the near-future as a consequence of the present and still calling it sci-fi because it still met all of the heuristics for the genre
parable of the sower will break your brain in a terrifying, constantly-looking-over-your-shoulder and never-looking-at-stuff-the-same way but perhaps now more than ever that is a testament to her genius as a writer
